Via Wendy, a reader.
Three people have been shot and killed in Athens, Georgia, and police are looking for a professor at the University of Georgia, George Zinkhan, in connection with the killings.
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Update: Seems to have killed his wife and two bystanders.
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Another Update: An earlier UD post on the subject of professors who murder. All of the cases she’s encountered since starting this blog involve men murdering their wives — estranged, ex-, current. (The man featured in the post, Rafael Robb of the University of Pennsylvania, eventually confessed.)
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Witnesses.
… [A]n argument between the suspect, who was well known to the theatre group, and an unidentified man immediately preceded the shootings.
According to [police], witnesses told police that Zinkhan left the event and returned a few minutes later with two handguns. He fired both guns… and afterward walked away, got in a car and drove off.
…“At high level of threat for anyone who comes into contact with him,” said [an investigator].
Adams said after the shootings, Zinkhan apparently took both [of his] children to another neighbor’s home.
“He said he had an emergency,” Adams said Saturday evening. Police questioned neighbors on the street.
The two children are now in police custody…
The two wounded people did not suffer life-threatening injuries… Both were injured by ricochet — one victim in a leg and the other in a foot… Both were taken to St. Mary’s Hospital in Athens.
A man outside the shooting scene said his son was a witness to the slayings.
John Hardy of Conyers said his son, Matt Hardy, was standing next to one of the victims. John Hardy says his son told him that the victim, Tanner, was shot twice — once in the front and the back.
John Hardy said Matt Hardy, who lives in Athens, was a friend of Tanner’s. His son was being questioned by Athens police and released. He declined to comment on what he told investigators.
“At 22 you’re not supposed to watch people die,” said John Hardy.
According to Tanner’s Facebook profile, he has acted in 50 productions, including “Sherlock Holmes – The Final Adventure,” the current play being produced at the theater.
Gary Moon of Athens had just left classes at nearby Piedmont College when he heard gunshots.
“It was like pow, pow, pow. At first I thought it was just somebody fooling around with a cap gun or something,” Moon said. “Then I saw a lady who was walking her dog. She took off running and screaming down the street.”
Moon called 911 and reported the shooting, then drove up to the scene. Trained in CPR he sought to help. “I was too late. There wasn’t anything I could do.”…
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A couple of random thoughts:
1.) I think it likely that Zinkhan will be found dead by his own hand.
2.) I would guess that Zinkhan and his wife were estranged, and that the man with whom he had an argument before leaving and returning with guns was protecting her from Zinkhan.
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This report calls Marie Bruce Zinkhan’s ex-wife.
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Ex-wife, but apparently they still lived together in the same house with their two children.
Was she going to move out? Had she fallen in love with one of the men Zinkhan apparently argued with and then returned to shoot? If she’d told Zinkhan she was leaving him to move in with a lover, that could have set him off. Custody issues, too, would have played a part in his rage, as they did in the case of Thomas Murray and Raphael Robb, two other professors who killed their wives.
The profile here, whether it turns out to match Zinkhan or not, is that of a control freak who thinks he’s a genius to whom no rules apply. And who’s not going to let some woman get away with messing up the carefully crafted pattern of his life.