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In America, you can solve ANY problem with a gun

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Kiwithrottlejockey
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« on: September 29, 2012, 10:50:02 pm »


Connecticut teacher kills masked teen, learns it was son

By JOHN CHRISTOFFERSEN - Associated Press | Friday, September 28, 2012

Visitors arrive at the home of Jeffrey Giuliano in New Fairfield, Connecticut, Friday, September 28, 2012. Giuliano fatally shot a masked teenager in self-defense during what appeared to be an attempted burglary early Thursday morning, then discovered that he had killed his son, Tyler, state police said. — Photo: Associated Press/Jessica Hill.
Visitors arrive at the home of Jeffrey Giuliano in New Fairfield, Connecticut, Friday, September 28, 2012. Giuliano fatally
shot a masked teenager in self-defense during what appeared to be an attempted burglary early Thursday morning,
then discovered that he had killed his son, Tyler, state police said. — Photo: Associated Press/Jessica Hill.


NEW FAIRFIELD, Connecticut — A small Connecticut town was sent reeling in grief and confusion Friday after a popular fifth-grade teacher shot and killed a knife-wielding prowler in a black ski mask, only to discover it was his 15-year-old son.

No immediate charges were brought against the father, Jeffrey Giuliano, in the slaying of his son, Tyler, who was gunned down in his aunt's driveway next door to his own home around 1 a.m. Thursday.

"It's something out of a Hollywood script," said John Hodge, the first selectman, or top elected official, in the town of nearly 14,000 people about 50 miles from New York city. He said he couldn't recall another killing in his eight years on the job.

State police spokesman Lieutenant J. Paul Vance said the boy had never been in trouble with the law, and some of those who knew him described him as a good kid with an easygoing personality. Investigators and acquaintances said they were at a loss to explain what he was doing outside dressed all in black and carrying a weapon.

"Certainly, that is the major question we are trying to answer at this point," Vance said.

State police said the shooting happened after Jeffrey Giuliano got a call from his sister next door saying that someone might be trying to break into her home in their neighborhood of attractive colonial-style houses. Giuliano grabbed a handgun and went outside to investigate, troopers said.

He confronted someone in a ski mask and opened fire when the person came at him with something shiny in his hand, police said.

When police officers arrived, Tyler was lying dead in the driveway with a knife in his hand, and his father, in T-shirt and shorts, was sitting on the grass. Detectives informed the elder Giuliano several hours later that he had shot his son, Vance said.

"All in all it's a tragedy," Vance said.

Police were investigating whether the father's gun was registered.

No one answered the door at Giuliano's home or his sister's.

Tyler was a student at New Fairfield High School and a Civil Air Patrol cadet. Some of those who knew him said he enjoyed spending time with his family and flying gliders and small planes. He was adopted by Giuliano and his wife a few years ago, friends said.

One classmate said many students were baffled by what happened.

"I just thought it was so weird when I heard because I knew Tyler, not very well, but he was just a sweet person and he always made everyone laugh. I met him in the chorus room, actually, and he just wasn't the type to do what happened," said Erin Pallas, 16. "So it didn't make sense to us. It doesn't make sense to the student body."

Brett Rasile, a 14-year-old friend, said he and Tyler were playing an online game called Minecraft while talking and laughing together via Skype until about 10 p.m. Wednesday, when Tyler said he had to go to bed. Brett said Tyler wasn't in any trouble that he knew of, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

"Same old Tyler. He was perfectly fine," Brett said. "He didn't really leave any evidence, any hints towards what he would do."

Alicia Roy, New Fairfield superintendent of schools, said the elder Giuliano grew up in the town, holds summer music and zoology camps for his students and plays guitar in a local rock band that raises money for charity. He is affectionately known as "Mr. G" around Meeting House Hill School.

"He was the teacher you requested in the fifth grade. He was a great teacher. All the kids loved him," said Rosemary Rasile, Brett's mother.

Brian Wyckoff, 17, said Mr. G "was always walking around with a smile on his face. He always says hi to everyone."

The high school stayed open late to provide grief counseling for students and parents.

"The community is deeply saddened, and our hearts go out to all the family members," Roy said.


Associated Press reporter Dan Sewell reported from Cincinnati.

Pat Eaton-Robb and Stephen Singer reported from Hartford, Connecticut.

Associated Press video journalist Ted Shaffrey also contributed to this story.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ihSOm_mKGrkRKuFbPUFreVqTfqRA?docId=49e087761dbf44ef9c227a82d2216d7d
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guest49
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« Reply #1 on: September 30, 2012, 09:13:40 am »

Someone coming at you with a knife?  Of course you can solve the problem with a gun.  I would do the same thing with one of my firearms if the same thing happened to me. 
I really dont think this is a fit subject for one of your anti American diatribes.  It could so easily happen anywhere.

If all is as described in the article, it must be truly heart-wrenching for the father and my heart goes out to him.
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« Reply #2 on: September 30, 2012, 11:34:23 am »

You have to wonder what was this 'good kid' doing at 1am dressed like a burglar and armed doing trying to break into his aunts house.   
Hard to imagine how the father will overcome this one.  Poor man.
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« Reply #3 on: September 30, 2012, 12:15:31 pm »

You have to wonder what was this 'good kid' doing at 1am dressed like a burglar and armed doing trying to break into his aunts house.  
Hard to imagine how the father will overcome this one.  Poor man.

It's something he will never get over
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« Reply #4 on: December 08, 2013, 10:55:24 am »


Man with Alzheimer's fatally shot

A 72-year-old with Alzheimer's knocks on a
stranger's door at 4am — and ends up dead.


By RAY HENRY - Fairfax NZ News | 9:54AM - Sunday, 08 December 2013

Ronald Westbrook was a retired US Air Force lieutenant colonel. — Photo: Chattanoogan.com.
Ronald Westbrook was a retired US Air Force lieutenant colonel.
 — Photo: Chattanoogan.com.


THE LAST WALK that Ronald Westbrook took began as early as 1am when he slipped unnoticed from his US home in Georgia with his two dogs.

It ended three hours later when Westbrook, a 72-year-old who suffered from Alzheimer's disease, knocked in the dark on a stranger's door last month. Police said a man inside that home, 34-year-old Joe Hendrix, got a .40-caliber handgun, went outside to investigate and shot Westbrook in a horrible mistake.

The unlikely collision between two strangers — one deeply confused, another perceiving a threat in the dark — illustrates both the difficulties that caregivers face in keeping loved ones with Alzheimer's safe and the consequences of miscalculation in a state that celebrates its gun culture.

Westbrook's widow struggles to comprehend how she lost her husband of 51 years and discussed what happened in an interview in her house this week, sitting on her couch beside her Bible.

"I can't imagine him feeling threatened by my husband, that's what surprises me," said Deanne Westbrook, 70.


‘LOOKING FOR HELP’

]"Because Ron wasn't like that. He probably, I think he was so cold. He was looking for help when he was ringing that doorbell at their place. I think he just wanted somebody to help him."

Hendrix declined to comment because of the ongoing investigation. His attorney, Lee Davis, described his client as distraught. The local district attorney has not yet decided whether to press criminal charges against Hendrix for what happened in Chickamauga, North Georgia, on November 27th.

"He is not a gun-toting rights activist who's saying, ‘Keep off my property’," Davis said. "He's a man who thought he had to take action because of what he believed to be a real and imminent threat."

A retired nurse who once cared for dementia patients in a nursing home, Westbrook's wife was perhaps better equipped than most to care for a spouse with Alzheimer's. The progressive disease results in memory loss, impairs judgment and can leave its victims disoriented.

She installed door alarms to alert her if her husband tried wandering away. She was already making plans to get more advanced care at home as the disease progressed.

"I don't feel angry," she said. "I just feel sad. I never would have thought he would've (come) to an end like this. I was prepared for the Alzheimer's to get worse and for me to take care of him here. And I was going to do it."

Others can sympathize. Marylou Hable, who works for A Place for Mom, helping match families with care and living facilities, said she works with Alzheimer's patients and their families every day. Yet she still struggled when her husband's uncle came to live with them.

She took all sorts of precautions to protect him, but one night he wandered out around 12:35am. She and her husband were exhausted and didn't hear the alarms. Alzheimer's patients often seize on a past memory, and the uncle was trying to find the streetcar to go home to Cleveland, Ohio, even though he had moved to Michigan. He was beaten up and robbed, but luckily police contacted Hable and her husband when he turned up in the hospital.

"Here I am in the industry and I couldn't keep John safe," she said.


COUPLE FELT THREATENED

An incident in mid-November may have set the stage for the fatal error. Shortly after Hendrix's fiancee moved into her new rental home, a man appeared at the door just before midnight on November 19th. He pounded on the door while Hendrix's fiancee was alone with two children, and he demanded to see someone whom Hendrix's fiancee did not know, Davis said.

She called Hendrix, who was in nearby Chattanooga, Tennessee, who told her to call 911. By the time sheriff's deputies and Hendrix arrived, the man was gone. Davis said what happened was documented in a police report.

Afterward, Hendrix took a Glock handgun that he kept in his apartment and brought it to his fiancee's home.

The following week, Deanne Westbrook woke up and noticed that her husband and the couple's two dogs were missing. Not long after, a police officer arrived to deliver the news.

For reasons that are not clear, Westbrook left his home and started walking. A deputy sheriff noticed him along a road around 2:20am and stopped to ask what he was doing, Wilson said. Westbrook told the officer that he was gathering mail and then planned to return to his home up a hill. While Westbrook's answers were curt, nothing about the conversation alarmed the deputy.

Wilson said barking dogs woke up Hendrix and his fiancee in her home sometime before 4am. Westbrook had walked to their house, the last in a cul-de-sac. He rang the doorbell, knocked on the door and tried the handle. In what may have been a startling move, Westbrook left the front of the home and moved out of view.

The woman called 911, and Hendrix got his gun.

While the woman was on the phone with a dispatcher, Westbrook returned to the door a second time, Wilson said.

Hendrix left the house and found Westbrook outside in the dark. He told police that Westbrook refused commands to stop, identify himself and raise his hands. Police said Hendrix fired four shots.

"Obviously, in hindsight, it's very easy to say, ‘Why didn't you stay inside? Why didn't you keep the door shut?’" Davis said. "But the reality is, how long are you supposed to wait until somebody comes through your door? And had the person come through his door with his fiancee there, then what would have happened?"

Under Georgia law, people are not required to try retreating from a potential conflict before opening fire to defend themselves from serious imminent harm, said Russell Gabriel, director of the Criminal Defense Clinic at the University of Georgia. State law allows people to use lethal force to stop someone from forcibly entering a home if those inside reasonably fear they are going to be attacked. Deadly force can even be used to stop someone from trying to forcibly enter a home to commit a felony.

"Different people have a different understanding of what is reasonable," Gabriel said. "Reasonableness is a classic jury question."


http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/americas/9491371/Man-with-Alzheimers-fatally-shot
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« Reply #5 on: December 09, 2013, 05:28:21 pm »

thats all good then hes 72 years old almost dead anyway, cant remember where he lives have you ever thought the person who shot him may have done him a favor,

why are you worried ktj you don't believe in life after death so what does anything matter your getting old soon you will die haha do you want to linger around like an old ghost of a man or bang your dead.
lmao
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And the many things that will personally effect you.
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Crusader
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« Reply #6 on: December 10, 2013, 07:21:05 pm »

thats all good then hes 72 years old almost dead anyway, cant remember where he lives have you ever thought the person who shot him may have done him a favor,

why are you worried ktj you don't believe in life after death so what does anything matter your getting old soon you will die haha do you want to linger around like an old ghost of a man or bang your dead.
lmao

I have always said that as soon as I need to put the nappies back on, then that is it, I'm pulling the pin. A true greenie would also advocate that stance to ensure our precious resources weren't wasted on the weak.
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« Reply #7 on: December 11, 2013, 05:58:26 am »

Quote
have always said that as soon as I need to put the nappies back on, then that is it, I'm pulling the pin. A true greenie would also advocate that stance to ensure our precious resources weren't wasted on the weak
Start with a bloody good clean up in the jails.
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« Reply #8 on: January 14, 2014, 09:33:45 pm »


from The Tampa Tribune....

One dead, another wounded after Wesley Chapel theater shooting

By LAURA KINSLER and RONNIE BLAIR | 11:54PM EST - Monday, January 13, 2014

From left, Charles and Alex Cummings talk about what they saw in the theater. Both had blood on their clothes from trying to help the victims. — Photo: Cliff McBride/The Tampa Herald.
From left, Charles and Alex Cummings talk about what they saw in the theater. Both had blood on
their clothes from trying to help the victims. — Photo: Cliff McBride/The Tampa Herald.


WESLEY CHAPEL, FLORIDA — A retired Tampa police captain, angry about a man texting during movie previews, shot and killed the moviegoer and wounded the man’s wife Monday afternoon just before the showing of “Lone Survivor” at the Grove 16 theater, the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office said.

Chad and Nicole Oulson of Land O’ Lakes were taken by ambulance to St. Joseph’s Hospital in Tampa. Chad Oulson, 43, died, and Nicole Oulson, 33, was treated for a gunshot wound to her hand and released, authorities said.

Curtis Reeves Jr., 71, was charged with second-degree homicide.

The Oulsons were sitting in front of Reeves and his wife, and Chad Oulson was texting as they waited for the movie to begin, the sheriff’s office said. Detectives said Reeves asked Oulson several times to stop.

Reeves eventually left the theater to complain to staff. When he returned, Oulson asked if Reeves had reported him to management, the sheriff’s office said.

The two began to argue and Reeves pulled out a gun and shot Oulson in the chest, the sheriff’s office reported. Nicole Oulson put her hand in front of her husband as the shot was fired, and the same bullet struck both of them, the sheriff’s office reported.

After the shooting, Reeves put the gun, a .380-caliber handgun, in his lap. An off-duty Sumter County sheriff’s deputy who had come to see the movie secured the gun and detained him, the sheriff’s office reported.

“(The deputy) ran into the hot zone to make sure nobody else got hurt,” Pasco Sheriff Chris Nocco said.

Reeves retired from the Tampa Police Department on September 30th, 1993, and does not appear to have had any contact with the department since his retirement, said police spokeswoman Laura McElroy. Reeves was instrumental in establishing the department’s Tactical Response Team, she said. His son, Mathew Reeves, works for the department as a patrol officer.

Reeves also served as director of security at Busch Gardens, a position he left in 2005.


Grove 16 management put a message on its website to say the theater was temporarily closed “due to circumstance beyond our control”. — Photo: Cliff McBride/The Tampa Herald.
Grove 16 management put a message on its website to say the theater was temporarily closed “due to circumstance beyond our control”.
 — Photo: Cliff McBride/The Tampa Herald.


Patrons leave the Grove 16 theater after the shooting Monday afternoon. — Photo: Cliff McBride/The Tampa Herald.
Patrons leave the Grove 16 theater after the shooting Monday afternoon. — Photo: Cliff McBride/The Tampa Herald.

Grove 16 is a Cobb Theatre and in the Groves at Wesley Chapel Shopping Center on Wesley Grove Boulevard.

Movie patrons were evacuated after the shooting.

About 25 people were in the theater where “Lone Survivor” was showing, said Melanie Snow, a spokeswoman for the Pasco sheriff’s office.

Among them was Charles Cummings, a Vietnam veteran who had come to see the movie to celebrate his 68th birthday. Cummings said he was about two seats away from where the shooting happened.

Cummings, who was at the theater with his son, Alex Cummings, said when the argument first began, Reeves left to find a manager. When Reeves returned, the argument started again, he said.

He said Chad Oulson told the shooter, “I was just texting my 3-year-old daughter.” Then the voices got louder, someone threw popcorn and one man shot the other, Cummings said.

“I can’t believe people would bring a pistol into a movie,” Charles Cummings said.

Alex Cummings said his father told him to go out and call 911. When he returned, Alex Cummings said, he heard Oulson say, “I can’t believe I got shot.”

Oulson then collapsed, Alex Cummings said. The man’s wife also had blood on her, he said.

Two off-duty nurses attended to Oulsons until paramedics arrived, the sheriff’s office reported.


The shot couple, Nicole and Chad Olsen. — Facebook photo. Nicole Olsen poses with her daughter, Lexy. — Facebook photo.
Left: The shot couple, Nicole and Chad Olsen. | Right: Nicole Olsen poses with her daughter, Lexy. — Facebook photos.

Both Cummings had blood splattered on their clothes while trying to assist the husband and wife after they were shot.

Kareen Lasky, who was in a different theater watching “August: Osage County,” said she didn’t hear the shots and was unaware anything was happening until the lights went on and a theater employee said they would have to leave.

“The first thing I thought of was the theater out there in the West,” Lasky said, referring to a 2012 mass shooting at a theater in Aurora, Colorado.

Nocco said he had similar thoughts when he first got word.

“The back of your hair sticks up as you are running toward this location wondering what is really going on here,” he said.

In this case, though, it was an isolated incident involving an argument between two people who happened to be sitting near each other, the sheriff said.

“These two people were brought together by fate today,” Nocco said. “They would have never known each other.”

He said the movie hadn’t started at the time of the shooting, which happened about 1:20 p.m., but previews of coming attractions had started.

“It’s absolutely crazy that it would rise to this level of altercation over someone just texting in a movie theater,” Nocco said. “But I can tell you right now when this goes out everybody is paranoid, they are scared because a movie theater should be somewhere safe where people are out there to enjoy themselves. But unfortunately what America has seen over the last couple of years is movie theaters have become dangerous places.”

By mid-afternoon, Grove 16 management had put a message on the theater website to say the theater was temporarily closed “due to circumstance beyond our control.”

Bennie Holder worked closely with Reeves when the two were on the Tampa department’s SWAT team. Holder eventually went on to become chief from 1993 to 2003.

Holder said he was shocked to hear the accusations against his former colleague.

“I never saw anything that he would be involved in something like this,” Holder said. “I didn’t see that character in him. He was a great cop, great person.”


Chad Olsen poses with his daughter, Lexy. — Facebook photo. Chad and Nicole Olsen pose with their daughter, Lexy. — Facebook photo.
Left: Chad Olsen poses with his daughter, Lexy. | Right: Chad and Nicole Olsen pose with their daughter, Lexy. — Facebook photos.

No one was home at the Oulsons’ Land O’ Lakes home Monday evening, but family friends had dropped by to provide support to Nicole Oulson.

“Just a good all-around guy,” family friend Joseph Detrapani said. “Father of a beautiful little girl. Just a tragic loss for her and her family for something that’s just kind of senseless. Not really sure what all happened, but the end result didn’t justify anything that could have happened.”

Detrapani said Sunday and Monday are the normal days off for Chad Oulson, a finance manager at Sky Powersports in Port Richey. He said Nicole Oulson took the day off from her job at USAA so she could spend time with her husband.

The couple’s daughter was at daycare at the time of the shooting, according to neighbor Saverino Mongelli.

“I heard it was an ex-cop,” Mongelli said. “How does that happen? Just blows my mind.”

Detrapani said Chad Oulson spent much of his downtime participating in motocross.

“You’d be hard-pressed to find somebody who doesn’t like him,” Detrapani said. “He was a friend to everybody, whoever he met.”

Chad Oulson was a dependable worker and fun loving person who excelled the last three years as the Powersports finance manager, said business owner Robert Lehoullier.

Lehoullier described Oulson as “a fun loving family man out to help anybody at anytime’’ who loved being a dad. He said Oulson is not an aggressive person and doesn’t understand how a minor argument could have ended in a death.

“It makes no sense to me,” Lehoullier said. “Why would you shoot somebody over a disagreement over a cell phone?”


Tampa Tribune reporters Eddie Daniels and José Patiño Girona contributed to this report.

http://tbo.com/pasco-county/deputies-reports-of-two-people-shot-at-wesley-chapel-theater-20140113
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« Reply #9 on: January 15, 2014, 09:29:23 pm »



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« Reply #10 on: January 16, 2014, 07:30:39 am »


From the Los Angeles Times....

Florida theater killing proves guys with guns are primed to shoot

By DAVID HORSEY | 5:00AM PST - Wednesday, January 15, 2014



GUNS don’t kill people, popcorn kills people. Or maybe it’s texting. Or just being in the wrong place at the wrong time with some fool who thinks he needs to take a gun to the movies.

Each and every day it is possible to scan the news from across the U.S. and find an example of human stupidity turned lethal by the presence of a gun. This week’s top horror is the shooting of a father out on a kid-free date with his wife who was gunned down by an idiot with a pistol in his pocket.

Except he wasn’t really an idiot.

Gun-rights fanatics (these days there are few who are not fanatics) insist that only a few poorly trained, mentally unstable or criminally inclined gun owners give all the millions of God-fearing, Constitution-defending firearms enthusiasts a bad name. But can anyone think of a person more well-trained and responsible than a retired police captain, SWAT team leader and security guard?

That’s Curtis Reeves, 71, who left the Tampa police force with a distinguished record and now finds himself facing life in prison for shooting and killing Chad Oulson in a movie theater in Wesley Chapel, Florida.

Reeves and Oulson were both at the theater with their wives for a matinee showing of “Lone Survivor”, a new film about a military mission in Afghanistan gone bad. Their afternoon at the movies went bad during the previews when Reeves became annoyed that the fellow in the row in front of him was texting during the previews. The texting guy was Oulson who was checking in with the babysitter caring for his 3-year-old daughter.

According to the police report, Reeves went out to the lobby to complain to the theater manager when Oulson failed to cease texting. When Reeves came back, he again told Oulson to stop. Apparently heated words were exchanged, Ouslon threw popcorn and Reeves pulled out his gun and pulled the trigger.

Yes, Oulson probably should have been more considerate. He should have gone out to the lobby himself to trade messages with the babysitter. And, heaven knows, he should not have thrown popcorn. But did he deserve to die?

Reeves said he felt threatened. I suspect he just felt the weight of that weapon in his pocket. As a friend of mine in the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office told me, the presence of a gun, time and again, turns a hot situation lethal. Human beings get stupid. Angry words are spoken. Sometimes something gets thrown — whether popcorn or fists. But usually nobody dies unless there is a weapon.

Curtis Reeves thought he would be protected by carrying a gun. Instead, he killed somebody’s father and husband for no good reason and he, a respected man of the law, may spend the rest of his life in prison.

Guns may not kill people, but people who think they need to carry guns too often find themselves killing other people in the most wasteful, needless, pointless ways.


http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-florida-theater-killing-20140115,0,6873191.story
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« Reply #11 on: January 26, 2014, 01:25:19 pm »


from the Baltimore Business Journal....

Columbia Mall shooting leaves 3 dead

By STAFF REPORTERS | 2:43PM EST - Saturday, January 25, 2014

THREE PEOPLE are dead after a shooting at the Mall in Columbia in Columbia, Maryland.

One of the three victims is the suspected shooter, according to the Howard County Police Department. Little information was available about the victims and the sudden spasm of violence at one of the region's largest shopping malls, located about halfway between Baltimore and Washington, D.C.

Howard County Police Chief William J. McMahon said at a media briefing that the shootings took place in one store on the mall's upper level, not in the lower-level food court, as was earlier reported. McMahon also said police believed there was a single shooter.

Four other people were injured in the shootings and taken to Howard County General Hospital for treatment. All are expected to survive.

Police plan to hold another press conference at 4 p.m.

Shots were reported fired about 11:15 a.m., police said. The Mall in Columbia is anchored by several department stores and well-known restaurant chains as well as a 14-screen AMC Theatres. The mall, owned by General Growth Properties, is home to more than 200 businesses and completed a 70,000-square-foot expansion in 2013.

Like many malls in suburban communities, the Mall in Columbia is a hub not just of commerce but of social life for teens and families who live in and around the planned community, built by legendary developer James Rouse in the 1960s. The mall opened in 1971.

Howard County Police announced via Twitter that the mall "will be closed at least through tonight."

Social media reports described shoppers frantically fleeing the mall, shoppers and employees hiding in storage closets, and crowds of people being moved from the mall toward the movie theater. The mall remains on lockdown.


The Baltimore Sun has reporters and photographers on the scene.

• The Columbia Patch has several eyewitness accounts.


http://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/news/2014/01/25/columbia-mall-shooting-leaves-3-dead.html?page=all
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« Reply #12 on: January 26, 2014, 01:26:03 pm »


From the Los Angeles Times....

Victims of Maryland mall shooting identified; motive still unknown

By RICHARD SIMON and SABA HAMEDY | 4:16PM PST - Saturday, January 25, 2014

Police work the scene at the Columbia Mall after a gunman killed three people, including himself, in the food court of the mall in Columbia, Maryland, USA on 25th January 2014. Police were confident it was a single shooter, said Bill McMahon, chief of Howard County police, in broadcast remarks. Many in the weekend shopping crowd took cover and found hiding places, as the general public has been instructed to do. Police were scouring the mall to find anyone still sheltering, police said. — Photo: Pete Marovich/EPA.
Police work the scene at the Columbia Mall after a gunman killed three people, including himself, in the food court of the mall in Columbia, Maryland,
USA on 25th January 2014. Police were confident it was a single shooter, said Bill McMahon, chief of Howard County police, in broadcast remarks.
Many in the weekend shopping crowd took cover and found hiding places, as the general public has been instructed to do. Police were scouring
the mall to find anyone still sheltering, police said. — Photo: Pete Marovich/EPA.


COLUMBIA — Maryland authorities identified two victims who were killed Saturday morning at a shopping mall by a man wielding a shotgun, but they were still trying to identify the gunman and his motive.

The victims, Brianna Benlolo, 21, of College Park, Maryland; and Tyler Johnson, 25, of Ellicott City, Maryland; were both employees at a skateboard shop called Zumiez, located on the upper level of The Mall in Columbia, Howard County Police Chief Bill McMahon told reporters.

The gunman was also found dead at the scene, and five other people were injured, authorities said.

“This shouldn't happen in a Columbia mall,” McMahon said. “This shouldn't happen anywhere.”

Authorities said they found ammunition next to the gunman's body and were investigating whether he was carrying explosives. They said it appeared the man committed suicide but had yet to confirm that.

Although some news outlets reported that the gunman's motive was related to a domestic dispute, McMahon said that was speculation.

“We do not know yet what caused the shooting incident,” he said at an afternoon news conference, five hours after the gunfire, which erupted about 11:15 a.m.

Police are conducting interviews with witnesses and reviewing surveillance footage, McMahon said.

Five people were treated for injuries at Howard County General Hospital, McMahon said. One suffered a gunshot wound to the foot, and the four others were being treated for medical conditions or injuries related to tripping while moving away from the mall. The hospital said on Twitter on Saturday afternoon that all five of the patients had been treated and released.


Howard County police chief William McMahon speaks to reporters at the parking lot of the  Mall in Columbia, Maryland, after a shooting at the mall on Saturday January 25th, 2014 in Howard County, Maryland. Police in Maryland say three people died Saturday in a shooting at a mall in suburban Baltimore, including the presumed gunman. — Photo: Jose Luis Magana/Associated Press.
Howard County police chief William McMahon speaks to reporters at the parking lot of the  Mall in Columbia, Maryland, after a shooting at the
mall on Saturday January 25th, 2014 in Howard County, Maryland. Police in Maryland say three people died Saturday in a shooting at a mall
in suburban Baltimore, including the presumed gunman. — Photo: Jose Luis Magana/Associated Press.


Mall shoppers and staffers described a scene of confusion and terror.

“Suddenly, I heard a shot and I heard three more — boom, boom boom!” said Roger Aseneta, 52, the manager of Aunt Annie’s, a pretzel emporium. Then he saw people running and heard screaming. “I never dreamed I would experience this. I see this on television — all the shootings everywhere.”

Robert Ashton, 49, of Fontana, California, who is in Maryland on a business trip, was in the food court with co-workers. “There was a loud boom. At first we thought it was a table falling,” he said. “But then we heard at least three more shots. We took off running.”

It took authorities hours to evacuate the mall. On a Saturday night, the movie theaters and restaurants would be bustling, but as the sun set the mall was closed and deserted, except for police and news media.

Howard County Executive Ken Ulman told reporters that police responded to emergency calls within two minutes.

“This was a very scary incident,” he said. “A lot of people were very close to where this happened.”

Ulman thanked the community and officials for their thoughts and prayers.

“The outpouring of love and compassion that I've seen today through tragedy really warms my heart," he said.


Richard Simon reported from Columbia and Saba Hamedy from Los Angeles.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-nn-maryland-mall-shooting-victims-20140125,0,4350772,full.story
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« Reply #13 on: January 30, 2014, 10:33:53 am »


From the Los Angeles Times....

Guns sent 20 children to U.S. hospitals every single day, study finds

By MELISSA HEALY | 3:08PM PST - Monday, January 27, 2014

A new study provides one of the most comprehensive recent efforts to tally the toll of accidental and intentional gun discharges on children in the U.S. — Photo: Jose Juarez/Detroit News.
A new study provides one of the most comprehensive recent efforts to tally the toll of accidental and intentional gun discharges
on children in the U.S. — Photo: Jose Juarez/Detroit News.


TWENTY CHILDREN or adolescents were hospitalized for firearm-related injuries every day in 2009, and 453 died of their wounds, a new report says.

The study provides one of the most comprehensive recent efforts to tally the number of children hurt nationally in gun-related incidents. It was published on Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

A national database of patients younger than 20 who were admitted to hospitals in 2009 shows that boys represented nearly 90% of the total, and that the rate of gunshot-related hospitalizations for African American males was 10 times that of white males.

Blacks ages 15 to 19 were 13 times more likely than their white peers to be injured by gunfire. And 70% of all black children hospitalized for gun injury (compared with 32% of all white children injured by firearms) were classified as victims of assault. Latino children and adolescents were three times likelier than white children to be hospitalized with a firearm-related injury.

Hospital care for youths injured by gunfire cost $147 million in 2009, according to the report, but that is a fraction of the overall cost of the injuries. It doesn't include physician-related services, rehabilitation and ongoing care and rehospitalization, and does not take into account many victims' loss of future productivity. (Past research has found that almost half of children hospitalized for gun-related injury are discharged with a disability.)

The latest estimate boosts the number of those younger than 20 hurt by firearms in 2009 to 7,391, from 6,496.

For years, public health researchers have relied on the National Epidemiological Injury Surveillance System to track gunfire-related injuries in the United States. Though that system is to be expanded under an Obama administration initiative launched last year, it has based its national estimates of all kinds of injuries — including those resulting from gunfire — on a yearly sampling of 66 hospital emergency departments across the country.

The database used in the latest research samples a larger number of hospitals and is thus likely to generate a more accurate accounting of firearms' toll on children and adolescents. The database covers all but six states, covering 96% of the U.S. populace.

In the latest accounting, researchers from the medical schools of Yale and Boston universities asserted that decades of aggressive injury-prevention efforts have driven down the pediatric toll of poisonings, household fires and drownings. By contrast, they said, "there have been no robust public health efforts to reduce firearms injuries." They suggest that is largely because, since 1996, federal law has essentially blocked the use of taxpayer dollars for research that might bolster calls for gun control measures.

Meanwhile, the researchers wrote, gun-related injuries have followed a pattern of inequality seen elsewhere on the American health landscape: Victims are far more likely to be poor and members of an ethnic minority than they are to be white and affluent.

Victims ages 15 to 19 made up 84% of the children brought to the hospital with gunshot wounds, and two-thirds of those injuries were attributed to assault. Among these older children, roughly 24% of the cases were considered unintentional. Suicide attempts accounted for 239 of 4,143 of those firearm-related hospitalizations.

Among younger children, accidental firearm injuries were most common. Of the 378 children under 10 brought to the hospital in connection with a firearm injury, roughly three-quarters were considered victims of an accidental or unintended shooting. Thirty-one children younger than 5 and 47 ages 5 to 9 were injured in gun-related assaults in 2009.

Among Latino youths, firearm-related injuries were three times higher than among white children, the data show. And African American girls were more than six times as likely as their white counterparts to be injured by gunfire.

Suicide attempts accounted for 3.7% of the gun-related hospitalizations — a total of 270 kids in 2009 (25 of whom were younger than 15). One-third of these children and adolescents died, a fatality rate roughly eight times higher than that of assault or unintentional-injury victims.


To download the full report, CLICK HERE.

http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-guns-toll-children-20140127,0,2247874.story
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« Reply #14 on: July 25, 2015, 09:40:06 pm »


from The Washington Post....

Another day, another massacre — and it’s hard to explain why

By JOEL ACHENBACH | 6:08PM EDT - Friday, July 24, 2015

IN_GUNS_WE_TRUST

ANOTHER DAY, another massacre, and once again it’s a gunman targeting strangers in a public place for no obvious reason. Each of these mass shootings, or rampage shootings, or “active shooter” events, has its special element of horror, whether it’s racism or misogyny or sheer randomness. In this case, the victims were doing nothing more exotic than watching the new Amy Schumer movie, “Trainwreck”.

The killer sat behind them, alone in the dark. Then the shooting began.

Authorities in Lafayette, Louisiana, identified the shooter as a 59-year-old drifter from Alabama who had been staying at a nearby motel. He killed two people and wounded nine others before taking his own life.

It has been three years since a similar tragedy occurred, when a mentally troubled and heavily armed PhD student opened fire at a midnight showing of a new “Batman” movie in a theater in Aurora, Colorado. Since then, the United States has seen a number of shootings in public places with elements that seemed designed for maximum shock value.

Their unpredictable nature creates the sense that we’re all caught in a great national crossfire. The motives have been all over the place. So have the locations: a historic African American church, a military recruiting office and now a cinema, just in the past few weeks. The killers have shot up colleges, elementary schools, restaurants, shopping malls and government offices.

“With these types of incidents, everyone and anyone could be the next victim. And there’s really nowhere we’re safe out in the public — or at least that is the perception,” said Adam Lankford, a criminal justice professor at the University of Alabama who has studied what he prefers to call “rampage shooters”.

The mass shootings are paradoxical in the broader picture of crime in America: The murder rate nationally has been halved in the past two decades. But homicides with four or more victims have held basically steady. Then there are these special “active shooter” events, which appear to be on the rise.

A 2014 FBI study of 160 active-shooter events since 2000 showed a staggered increase over time, with the four most violent years occurring in the last five years of the survey. Criminologist James Alan Fox of Northeastern University has questioned the rigor of the FBI calculation, saying it may be influenced by media reports. But if this is a real trend and not a fluke — a spike that will be followed by a drop in such incidents — then it is one not easily explained. This appears to be an emergent phenomenon with no single cause and no simple fix.

With so many motives in play, it’s hard to know how to screen potential mass shooters, said Christopher Ferguson, a psychology professor at Stetson University who specializes in criminal psychology.

“We’re playing whack-a-mole with these things,” Ferguson said.

Some of the shooting rampages in the past two decades have had a narcissistic element, said Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University and co-author of The Narcissism Epidemic.

She cited the 1999 Columbine massacre, in which one of the killers talked in a video about getting “the respect we’re going to deserve,” and the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings, where the killer paused early in the episode to mail a media package to NBC News.

“It’s not just a crime, it’s not just homicide, it’s this attention-seeking that seems to play a key role in these mass shootings,” Twenge said.

In the world of crime statistics, an incident with a total of three dead, including the gunman, wouldn’t traditionally qualify as a “mass shooting”, even though that’s exactly what the Lafayette shooting was. The standard has traditionally been four dead, but a federal law passed in 2013, after the Sandy Hook school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, changed the statistical standard to three deaths.

The common element in mass shootings is, by definition, the use of firearms. Some of the killers have been “pseudocommandos” who have used multiple weapons. The political establishment has taken no action on gun laws in recent years, however, because the electoral math has inhibited efforts to challenge the gun lobby.

The orthodoxy among political advisers for candidates is that no one votes for a candidate because of his or her support for gun control laws, but lots of people will vote against him or her for that single reason. The National Rifle Association continues to take a hard-line stance on gun rights and the Second Amendment, and it can back up that position with muscle at the polls.

President Obama thought he could push through gun legislation after the Sandy Hook shooting, but he and his allies got nowhere on the issue. Just hours before the Lafayette theater shooting, Obama told the BBC that the area where he has been “most frustrated and most stymied” in his tenure is on the gun issue.

“The United States of America is the one advanced nation on Earth in which we do not have sufficient common-sense gun-safety laws. Even in the face of repeated mass killings,” Obama said.

Frustration isn’t a plan, though, and the criminologists say there are steps the United States could take that might indirectly limit these kinds of active-shooter incidents, even though it might be hard to measure success.

Ferguson, the Stetson professor, said the United States should provide more access to long-term mental health care. Most people with mental illness are not violent. But it’s the right thing to do in any case, he said. Lankford, the University of Alabama professor, noted that suicidal tendencies are a common thread in many active-shooter cases.

“It’s clear that social isolation is a risk factor for suicidal behavior in general. Having real friends — close, face-to-face friends — those people can be moderating forces on your moods. They can help you get treatment if you really need it,” Lankford said.

These ideas were echoed Friday by Fox, the Northeastern professor and author of Extreme Killing: Understanding Serial and Mass Murder. Fox said there’s no way to screen society for mass killers; they’re just too rare, and their actions are too unpredictable. “It’s a matter of a very large haystack and very few needles,” Fox said.

The killers “tend to be people who are failures,” he said. “They failed at jobs, they failed at education, they failed at marriages, and their ability to cope with life’s frustrations begins to wear thin. They’re isolated. They don’t have a lot of close friends around to serve as a support system or a reality check.”

That suggests to Fox something that everyone can do to make a marginal difference in the violence that afflicts the nation: We can get to know our neighbors again. We can connect in real life and not just online. We can help people who obviously need it.

“We oftentimes try to avoid people who seem angry, because we don’t know what to say and what to do. That’s the wrong move,” Fox said. “We can try to restore the sense of community in our neighborhoods, in our workplaces, in society more generally.”


Joel Achenbach writes on science and politics for the Post's national desk and on the “Achenblog”.

__________________________________________________________________________

Read more on this topic:

 • ‘Why did he come here?’: Police search for Louisiana shooter’s motive

 • A reminder that mass shootings are happening more often

 • How the NRA’s true believers converted a marksmanship group into a mighty gun lobby

 • Colorado shootings add chapter to long, unpredictable story of U.S. mass murder

 • There have been 204 mass shootings — and 204 days — in 2015 so far

 • The life of victim Jillian Johnson


http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/another-day-another-mass-shooting-americans-are-caught-in-a-crossfire/2015/07/24/1c3b01dc-3225-11e5-97ae-30a30cca95d7_story.html
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« Reply #15 on: July 29, 2015, 06:14:37 am »

Barack Obama condemns African leaders who refuse to step down in historic speech to African Union
Posted about 3 hours ago

 Barack Obama addresses the African Union
PHOTO: Barack Obama has urged African leaders to respect democracy. (Reuters: Jonathan Ernst)
RELATED STORY: Obama says 'still more to do' for Ethiopia democracyRELATED STORY: Obama says Kenya is at a crossroads; urges nation to ditch 'bad traditions'
MAP: Ethiopia
Barack Obama has condemned African leaders who refuse to give up power and urged the continent to end "the cancer of corruption", in the first ever address to the African Union by a US president.

But Mr Obama also said the world needed to change its approach to Africa by boosting fair trade and not just aid, vowing that the United States stood with the region to defeat terrorism and end conflict.

The speech marked the end of a short tour that has seen Mr Obama visit Kenya, his father's birthplace, and Ethiopia.

Both are key security allies in the fight against Somalia's Al Qaeda-affiliated Shebab militants, but they were also taken up on concerns over democracy, human rights and corruption.

"Africa's democratic progress is also at risk when leaders refuse to step aside when their terms end," Mr Obama said, drawing huge applause and cheers from some sections of the audience in the AU's Nelson Mandela hall.

"No one should be president for life," he said.

"Now let me be honest with you: I do not understand this. I am in my second term... I love my work, but under our constitution, I cannot run again.

Economic relationships cannot simply be about other countries building infrastructure with foreign labour, or extracting Africa's natural resources.
US president Barack Obama
"I actually think I'm a pretty good president, I think if I ran again I could win, but I can't.

"And, I'll be honest with you, I'm looking forward to life after being president.

"I won't have such a big security detail all the time, it means I can take a walk, it means I can spend time with my family.

"The point is I don't understand why people want to stay so long. Especially when they've got a lot of money," he said, drawing a huge cheer.

Mr Obama said Africa's rapid economic growth was changing "old stereotypes" of a continent of war and poverty.

But he warned: "Nothing will unlock Africa's economic potential more than ending the cancer of corruption."

Mr Obama singled out Burundi's president Pierre Nkurunziza — whose successful bid for a third term provoked weeks of unrest in the small central African nation — as an example of the dangers of trying to stay put and risking "instability and strife".

Obama takes swipe at China

Mr Obama said the United States was a trusted partner of the continent, and took a veiled swipe at resource-hungry China — which has massively stepped up its presence on the continent, symbolised by the Chinese-built AU headquarters where he gave the speech.

Real economic partnerships have to be a good deal for Africa. They have to create jobs and capacity for Africans.
US president Barack Obama
"Economic relationships cannot simply be about other countries building infrastructure with foreign labour, or extracting Africa's natural resources," he said.

"Real economic partnerships have to be a good deal for Africa. They have to create jobs and capacity for Africans. That's the kind of partnership America offers."

China has built huge amounts of infrastructure across Africa, including a new metro snaking across Addis Ababa.

But Africans have increasingly accused Chinese firms of using expatriate labour and sucking out commodities without adding value.

China insists it is also a partner in development.

Mr Obama said the United States also stood with Africa to defeat terrorism and end conflict, warning that the continent's progress will "depend on security and peace".

"As Africa stands against terror and conflict, I want you to know the United States stands with you," he said, highlighting threats ranging from Somalia's Shebab, Boko Haram in Nigeria, insurgents in Mali and Tunisia, and the Uganda-led Lord's Resistance Army rebels in central Africa.

Mr Obama said the United States was backing AU military efforts and saluted the "brave African peacekeepers" battling militants.

"Many of these groups claim the banner of religion, but hundreds of millions of African Muslims know that Islam means peace," he said.

"We must call groups like Al Qaeda, ISIL (Islamic State), Al-Shebab and Boko Haram, we must call them what they are — murderers."

AFP/Reuters
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« Reply #16 on: August 02, 2015, 05:05:43 pm »


Reason number #5592013 why many Americans are TOO STUPID to be allowed access to firearms....



from The Washington Post....

Texas man shoots at armadillo, but the varmint got him back

By PETER HOLLEY | 1:58PM EDT - Saturday, August 01, 2015

A nine-banded armadillo. — Photo: Chase A. Fountain/Texas Parks and Wildlife/Associated Press.
A nine-banded armadillo. — Photo: Chase A. Fountain/Texas Parks and Wildlife/Associated Press.

AN East Texas man ended up in the hospital after he fired a gun at an armadillo and the bullet bounced off the animal's back and hit the man in his face, according to news reports.

Cass County Sheriff Larry Rowe told Reuters that the shooting took place on the man's property in Marietta, Texas — population 134 — about 3 a.m. on Thursday.

“His wife was in the house,” Rowe said. “He went outside and took his .38 revolver and shot three times at the armadillo.”

What drove the man to shoot at the critter? He told authorities he had seen the animal previously on the highway, which — for reasons unexplained — prompted him to draw his weapon and pull the trigger.

At least one of the bullets ricocheted off the animal's bony, protective shell and then struck the man in his jaw, according to Reuters.

Rowe told the wire service that the injury was serious enough that the gunman had to be airlifted to a nearby hospital, where doctors wired his jaw shut. The armadillo’s condition remains a mystery.

This is the second time this year that an armadillo shooting has gone awry.

In April, a Georgia man accidentally shot his mother-in-law when he fired a pistol at an armadillo, according to ABC affiliate WALB News. The bullet killed the animal, but it “also ricocheted off of it, hit a fence, went through the back door of his mother-in-law’s mobile home, through a recliner she was sitting in, and into her back,” according to WALB News.

The shooter was about 100 yards away from the mobile home, police later determined. The victim — 74-year-old Carol Johnson — was not severely injured and no charges were filed in the case.

“Just the circumstances, just all the way around, the whole situation was unusual,” said Investigator Bill Smith with the Lee county Sheriff's Office told WALB News.

Added Smith: “I really think if they’re going to shoot at varmints and whatnot, maybe use a shotgun… with a spread pattern with a lot less range.”


Peter Holley is a general assignment reporter at The Washington Post.

__________________________________________________________________________

Related stories:

 • Man killed by shark as horrified daughter watches

 • Kipenzi, baby giraffe beloved by millions, dies in Dallas Zoo mishap


http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/08/01/texas-man-shoots-at-armadillo-but-the-varmint-got-him-back
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« Reply #17 on: August 02, 2015, 05:44:23 pm »


...in NZ...a 16 year old can solve any problem with a ....what Roll Eyes
..give him a slap mover the wrist with a wet train ticket and send them off to reoffend Shocked


16-year-old charged with murder of elderly man

Breaking1:43 PM Sunday Aug 2, 2015

A teenager has been charged with the murder of an elderly man in his Christchurch home.

The 16-year-old was among a number of people interviewed by police after the man's body was found with unexplained injuries in his Upper Riccarton house earlier today.

Police were called to the Owens Tce address at 9.30am and found the man, the owner and occupier of the house, dead inside.

DO YOU KNOW MORE? SEND US AN EMAIL

The house remains cordoned off, along with a second Christchurch property. Scene guards are at each property as police forensic teams carry out scene examinations.

Detective Inspector Tony Hill said that could take days.

He said the 16-year-old was known to the victim, whose name has not been released yet.

There are 18 police staff currently working on the investigation and they are focusing on speaking with and locating people that have been in contact with the victim leading up to his death.

"Although the investigation is in its early stages, the arrest should help assure our community that the Upper Riccarton area continues to be safe place to live" Mr Hill said.

- NZ Herald

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« Reply #18 on: August 02, 2015, 06:38:28 pm »


...in NZ...a 16 year old can solve any problem with a ....what Roll Eyes
..give him a slap mover the wrist with a wet train ticket and send them off to reoffend Shocked


ROFLMAO....in other words, you're TOO STUPID to come up with any reason why Americans AREN'T too stupid to be allowed access to firearms (would YOU be silly enough to shoot bullets at an Armadillo like that silly Texan boofhead — obviously a stupid rightie Republican-supporter — did?), so instead you post some bullshit from New Zealand (....a country which thousands of kilometres away on the opposite side of the Pacific Ocean from America, the country this thread is about) in order to desperately attempt to cover up for your stupidity.

Faaaaaark.....I'd put a loaded gun to my head and pull the trigger if I ever ended up being as STUPID as YOU! 
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« Reply #19 on: August 03, 2015, 03:57:10 am »

...problem solved Grin


Police shoot man dead in central city park

8:42 PM Sunday Aug 2, 2015


Myers Park in Central Auckland remains in lockdown tonight following a police shooting that has left one man dead.

Police say they were called to Myers Park by a man at 7.23pm. When they arrived he told them he was armed so they called for armed officers to attend.

"Verbal negotiations were initiated but were unsuccessful," said police in a statement.

"The man was fatally shot when he indicated he was about to use a firearm. "
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« Reply #20 on: August 20, 2015, 09:07:04 pm »


Reason #99381107 why Americans are TOO STUPID to be allowed access to firearms....



from The Washington Post....

Toddler may have accidentally shot and killed his father, Alabama authorities say

By ELAHE IZADI | 5:22PM EDT - Wednesday, August 19, 2015

IT APPEARS that a two-year-old accidentally shot his father in the head and killed him on Tuesday, police in Alabama said.

The boy's mother had left work and returned to the apartment in Hoover, Alabama on Tuesday afternoon when she discovered the scene, Hoover Police said in a statement.

The Jefferson County Coroner's Office on Wednesday identified the victim as 31-year-old Divine Vaniah Chambliss of Birmingham. A spokesman told The Washington Post an official autopsy report was not yet available.

“‘Horrible tragedy’ is as close as I can come to putting words to it,” Hoover Police Captain Gregg Rector told The Post on Wednesday. “You think you've seen everything in this line of work and then something like this happens.”

Police said that Chambliss and the toddler were the only two people home at the time of the shooting, and the preliminary information they've received indicates the toddler “may have accidentally shot his father.” Police added that “there does not appear to be an intruder or any third person involved.”

Rector said police aren't making an official determination of cause of death yet, “but all indications are that this was an accidental gunshot caused by the two-and-a-half-year-old.” Rector added: “We're certain that this is not a suicide.”

A semi-automatic handgun, which police believe Chambliss owned, was found in the apartment. “We don't know where the child found the gun,” Rector said.

The mother and Chambliss also had a young daughter together who was in school at the time of the shooting. Chambliss would often come to the apartment to watch the children while the mother was at work, Rector added.

An official ruling on cause of death could come as early as Thursday. The child's mother is cooperating with authorities.

“People find it hard to believe that a two-and-a-half-year-old is physically capable of firing a handgun,” Rector said. “Sadly, I found numerous examples. It's not unheard of.”

It's unclear how many children unintentionally kill people with guns in the United States each year, as The Post has previously reported.

“We know how many times children die each year as a result of gun deaths,” Jon S. Vernick, co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, told The Post last year. “We don't know how many times children pull the trigger and someone dies.”


• Elahe Izadi is a general assignment national reporter for The Washington Post.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/08/19/toddler-may-have-accidentally-shot-and-killed-his-father-alabama-authorities-say
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« Reply #21 on: August 21, 2015, 08:00:43 am »

Father let child have access to a gun. 
He wont do that again.
Problem solved.
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« Reply #22 on: August 21, 2015, 08:15:22 pm »

for some happiness is a warm smoking gun



meanwhile out of africa



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« Reply #23 on: August 22, 2015, 04:09:29 pm »

Shooting on high-speed train wounds two, Marine overpowers shooter  gallery  video
 
 
France's Interior Minister says the country's anti-terrorism prosecutor is investigating a shooting that left three people wounded on a train between Paris and Amsterdam, in which US citizens helped disarm the attacker.

A machine gun-toting attacker wounded three people on a high-speed train in France on Friday before being overpowered by passengers who included an American soldier.

Officials said the attacker was arrested after the shooting when the Amsterdam-to-Paris train stopped at Arras station in northern France.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said the French anti-terrorism prosecutor was investigating the incident and that the gunman's motives were not known.

French judicial police stand on the train platform near gun cartridges and a backpack in Arras, France. Shots were fired on a Thalys high-speed train between Amsterdam and Paris on Friday and several people were injured.
PASCAL ROSSIGNOL/REUTERS
French judicial police stand on the train platform near gun cartridges and a backpack in Arras, France. Shots were fired on a Thalys high-speed train between Amsterdam and Paris on Friday and several people were injured.

The wounded included the US citizen and French actor Jean-Hugues Anglade, Cazeneuve said.

Chris Norman, a 62-year-old British consultant, told reporters he had been sitting in the same carriage as the Americans when they heard a shot.

"I looked up and saw a guy carrying an AK-47 or at least I assume it was some kind of machine-gun," he said. "It could have been a real carnage, there's no question about that."



Anthony Sadler, from Pittsburg, California, Aleck Skarlatos from Roseburg, Oregon, and Chris Norman, a British man living in France helped to disarm an attacker on a train from Amsterdam to France. They're pictured at a restaurant in Arras, posing with medals they received for their bravery. Photo: REUTERS

Alek Skarlatos, a 22-year-old member of the US National Guard from Oregon, said his friend, who is also in the military, had been injured while he grappled with the gunman. They eventually got the attacker under control, Norman said.

"I just got back from Afghanistan last month, and this was my vacation from Afghanistan," Skarlatos said.

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Passenger Christina Cathleen Coons, of New York, described the drama in car 12 of the train in an interview with Ouest France newspaper.

"I heard shots, most likely two, and a guy collapsed," she is quoted as saying.

Coons, identified as a 28-year-old vacationing in Europe, said a window broke above one woman's head. "A guy fell to the floor and had blood everywhere," she is quoted as saying.

She described lying on the floor herself and taking photos with her phone.

"I thought there would be a shootout in the train," the newspaper quotes her as saying. Then, "people came to take care of him".

British media cited a Foreign Office official saying no British national had been injured, as had been previously reported by the French interior ministry.

France has been on high security alert since Islamist militants killed 17 people in and around Paris in January, among them staff of satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and hostages held in a Jewish shop.

Commending the involvement of what he said were two US citizens, Cazeneuve said: "Without their courage, we would have surely faced a terrible tragedy."

A spokesman for the United States European Command confirmed that one of the passengers who had been injured was a US soldier, and said his life was not in danger.

Cazeneuve urged caution over the nature of the attack, which he said was a matter for the prosecutor to investigate.

"As always where an act that could be terrorist in nature is involved, the greatest care and the greatest precision will be used," he said.

A spokesman for French railway SNCF said on iTele television: "The man was armed with automatic weapons and blades. He was stopped by passengers." A statement from SNCF's European affiliate Thalys said the attacker got on its train in Brussels.

Police union official Slimane Hamzi said the 26-year-old man was armed with a kalashnikov and had said he was of Moroccan origin.

Since the January attacks in Paris there have been other incidents. In June, a suspected Islamist beheaded his boss and tried to blow up a US-owned industrial gas plant in the suburbs of Lyon.

And in July, French officials said they had prevented an attack on a senior French military official by arresting four people whose leader had links to jailed jihadists.

Thalys is partly owned by SNCF and Belgian railways and runs international trains joining France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. All four countries are part of the Schengen area through which people travel without the need for passports and security check-ins.

French President Francois Hollande said he had talked to Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel and that the two governments were cooperating in the investigation.

Michel said in a tweet, "I condemn the terrorist attack ... and express my sympathy for the victims."

The Belgian government is considering taking extra security measures, a spokesman said.

PHOTOS FROM THE SCENE:



French police stand over a man who is apprehended on the platform at the Arras train station after after shots were fired on the Amsterdam to Paris Thalys high-speed train. Photo: REUTERS

A man lies on the on floor in the Amsterdam to Paris Thalys high-speed train where shots were fired and several people were injured, according to the French interior ministry, in Arras, France, August 21, 2015. A man was arrested when the train stopped at Arras station in northern France but his motives were not yet known, a ministry spokesman said.  It is unclear if the man in the picture is the shooter. REUTERS/Christina Cathleen Coons/Handout via ReutersATTENTION EDITORS - THIS PICTURE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY. IT IS DISTRIBUTED, EXACTLY AS RECEIVED BY REUTERS, AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS. REUTERS IS UNABLE TO INDEPENDENTLY VERIFY THE AUTHENTICITY, CONTENT, LOCATION OR DATE OF THIS IMAGE.  NO SALES. NO ARCHIVES. FOR EDITORIAL USE ONLY. NOT FOR SALE FOR MARKETING OR ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS. MANDATORY CREDIT.

A man lies on the on floor in the Amsterdam to Paris Thalys high-speed train. Three people were injured, two seriously, after a gunman opened fire.



French emergency services transport a victim of the shooting to hospital. Photo: REUTERS



French investigating police in protective clothing prepare to enter the Thalys high-speed train where shots were fired. Photo: REUTERS

 - Reuters
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« Reply #24 on: August 23, 2015, 08:10:16 am »

...get the Kiwis in...problem solved..no guns required Tongue



US summons firefighters from New Zealand, Australia to battle blazes  video
 
A federal state of emergency has been declared in Washington state, as more than 30,000 firefighters battle wildfires sweeping across the bone-dry region. Jillian Kitchener reports.

First they called in the US military - and Canadian firefighting support.

But with the nation still at wildfire preparedness Level 5 - the highest there is - and spending US$150 million (NZ$224 million) per week fighting fires, it still hasn't been enough.

So now, 71 firefighters from half the world away, Australia and New Zealand, are being called up to help, according to the National Interagency Fire Centre.

A firefighter pulls a fire hose as he works to battle the so-called "Cabin Fire" in the Angeles National Forest near Los Angeles, California.
JONATHAN ALCORN/REUTERS
A firefighter pulls a fire hose as he works to battle the so-called "Cabin Fire" in the Angeles National Forest near Los Angeles, California.

FAST FACTS

• 76 fires are burning across the US
• NZ$244 million is being spent per week fighting them
• In Washington state, three firefighters have been killed
• Fire season started with a 20,600 square kilometre fire
• In comparison, Wellington is 290sq km, Auckland is 1086sq km

READ MORE: A fire chief called for help. There was no-one to respond

"We currently remain at National Preparedness Level 5, our resources are fully committed and there are no season-ending weather events in the foreseeable forecast," said National Multi-Agency Co-ordinating Group chair Aitor Bidaburu in a statement.

"Because of the current level of commitment and forecast, having fire management expertise from Australian and New Zealand firefighters will be of tremendous help as we continue suppressing ongoing fires."

Okanogan County Firefighter Tyler Stevenson sprays down a hillside near a structure after the Okanogan Complex Fire swept through in Riverside, Washington.

Okanogan County Firefighter Tyler Stevenson sprays down a hillside near a structure after the Okanogan Complex Fire swept through in Riverside, Washington. Photo: REUTERS

As of Thursday, there were 76 large fires across the United States, including 14 in California, 17 in Idaho, 11 in Montana, 12 in Oregon and 16 in Washington.

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To see why more help is needed, you need only read this Los Angeles Times story, about a Washington state fire chief in Stevens County, Rick Anderson, who had to fight off a blaze with a "small crew of volunteers" after his repeated calls for help went unanswered.

As the story reads:

First, he called surrounding fire agencies for help. They were already overwhelmed by other wildfires.

"Nobody came," he said.

Next, he called the county.

"Nobody came," said Anderson, who also works as a communications specialist for the sheriff's office.

Then he called the Washington Department of Natural Resources.

"They had nobody to come help us," he said.

Also in Washington state, three firefighters died this week, fighting a blaze when their vehicle apparently crashed and a fire overtook them.



Firefighters work to dig a fire line on the Rocky Fire in Lake County, California, on July 30. Photo: MAX WHITTAKER/REUTERS

"These were three big heroes protecting small towns," Washington Governor Jay Inslee said on Thursday. "These are people who were lost doing what firefighters do, which is to rush toward the fire, rather than away."

This is not the first time that the United States has relied on firefighters from so far away. There's a history of such international collaboration with Australia and New Zealand, going back to the year 2000, which the National Interagency Fire Centre says is "the first time their firefighters fought fires on American soil."

The United States has also sent its own firefighters to these countries when they need aid: 67 to Australia in 2007 and 73 in 2009.



Firefighters watch the Rocky Fire advance in Lake County, California. Photo: MAX WHITTAKER/REUTERS

The reason this works, according to the NIFC, is that the two countries are "very similar to the United States national fire organisation in training requirements and structure".

Superlatives are warranted when discussing this year's US wildfire season. It started out with a large burst of activity in Alaska — where 2.06 million hectares (20,600 square km) have burned so far, in the second worst wildfire year on record - and then shifted to the lower 48.



A firefighter flees as the Twisp River fire advances unexpectedly near Twisp, Washington, on August 20. Photo: DAVID RYDER/REUTERS

Here, the total acreage burned has not been so large (it's hard to compete with Alaska in this respect). But so many large fires have erupted in so many different states in the past week or more that the Level 5 preparedness designation was needed to attempt to fight them all simultaneously.

As of now, 2,918,171 hectares have been consumed, putting 2015 ahead of the pace of burn for all of the past 10 years.

It is only since 2004 the United States has seen a national wildfire season with over 3.2 million hectares burned, with reliable records going back to 1983. Starting with that year, there have been six of them.

MORE PHOTOS:

Fires burning in Oregon, Idaho and Washington state are shown captured by NASA's Terra satellite in this August 19, 2015 handout photo released to Reuters August 20, 2015.  Crews battling a flurry of wildfires raging unchecked in the Pacific Northwest braced on Thursday for high winds forecast in the region a day after three firefighters were killed and four others were injured in Washington state.  REUTERS/NASA/Handout via ReutersATTENTION EDITORS - THIS PICTURE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY. THIS PICTURE IS DISTRIBUTED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED BY REUTERS, AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS. REUTERS IS UNABLE TO INDEPENDENTLY VERIFY THE AUTHENTICITY, CONTENT, LOCATION OR DATE OF THIS IMAGE. FOR EDITORIAL USE ONLY. NOT FOR SALE FOR MARKETING OR ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS.

Fires burning in Oregon, Idaho and Washington state are captured by Nasa's Terra satellite in this August 19 photo.



A CAL FIRE spotter plane monitors the so-called "Rough Fire" in the Sierra National Forest, California, on August 20. California is suffering its worst drought on record. Photo: MAX WHITTAKER/REUTERS



A firefighter monitors a backfire in California in early August. Photo: STEPHEN LAM/REUTERS



Firefighters flee as the Twisp River fire advances unexpectedly near Twisp, Washington on August 20. Three firefighters in Washington state were killed and four injured while battling a wildfire threatening the town this week. More than a dozen major blazes burned in parched Western US states. Photo: DAVID RYDER/REUTERS



Smoke rises from the Twisp River fire near Twisp, Washington in this August 20 aerial photo. Photo: MIKE BONNICKSEN/WENATCHEE WORLD



Lake Roesiger firefighters keep an eye on flareups during the Okanogan Complex Fire in Riverside, Washington. Photo: JASON REDMOND/REUTERS



Smoke plumes rise from the so-called "Rough Fire" in the Sierra National Forest, California on August 20. Photo: MAX WHITTAKER

 - The Washington Post
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