Felipe Rodriguez, an adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and former detective sergeant for the New York City Police Department, slammed the officers who interviewed [mass killer Colt]Gray.
“They walked in there like it was their first day out of the academy,” said Rodriguez of the way the deputies took what the 13-year-old said at face value. “Good cops get facts and you corroborate it. When you don’t corroborate it, that’s when you drop the ball and then we look like idiots.”
A crucial failure, he said, was not getting into the house where they could have verified the elder Gray’s guns were inaccessible or checked the house for cleanliness and whether there was enough food – red flags that would have prompted a call to child services.
[The] officers failed to ask either Gray for details on their answers or present the elder Gray with facts concerning the family’s own run-ins with the law, from 911 calls to an eviction a year earlier.
Rodriguez also said Colt fit the profile of a mass shooter: a young, white, male, loner.
“We’re getting mass shooters left and right, you have to do whatever you can,” Rodriguez said. Instead, “they were talking and joshing like the kid stole a cupcake.”
***************************
A photograph of the encounter shows the father wearing a humongous cross on his chest – could the “idiots” have done what George Bush did with Vladimir Putin, and assume that anyone who wears a big cross is too Christian to do anything naughty?
‘[Another family member] said that Colt “was begging for help from everybody around him.”’
Nancy Lanza,Deja Taylor, the Crumbleys, Colin Gray – the crazed, gun-obsessed parents of America’s littlest mass killers/mass killers in waiting — what are we to say about them? Is there anything we can do?
There are so many of them by now. The list of four highlights only the most depraved/pitiable progenitors of the sickest of the shooters; but it’s easy to recall plenty more child/preteen/teen predators with a smaller body count, or with a higher age of slaughter-onset. These are America’s version of Africa’s child soldiers, automata we glance at in court and quickly look away from because we are totally not interested in taking on board just how grotesque a gun culture we have now achieved, how the AR-15 revolution is actively eating its children, how generational gun insanity is upon us. Crazy people with guns produce crazy children with guns; and families and neighbors watch it happen and think none of my business or hey maybe weaponizing this troubled kid will help him.
Gun laws in this country will only become more lax. No point looking there. The only thing that might make a difference is vigilance — people in the orbit of graphically fucked up and highly armed families finding the guts to call the authorities. It take guts cuz duh these are nutty violent people with twenty guns.
And then the authorities must do whatever they can do — remove the guns, take the killer-to-be out of the classroom, detain the parents for other shit they have going on (drugs, illegal weapons, child abuse, disturbing the peace, whatever) — to begin neutralizing America’s emergent children’s army.
He’s still at large, still fully armed, so, you know, WATCH YOURSELF.
“When our first two units got to the scene there, they said it was a madhouse: people on the sides of the road, emergency flashers going, bullet holes, windows shot out, nine vehicles shot. Can you imagine that? Just chaotic.” This sheriff dept spokesman is so silly! Don’t sound like much more than your typical UK tailgate… And it’s so stupid because as Wayne LaPierre says The only thing that stops abad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun so where was he? Kentucky needs more people to carry more guns so next time there’s a mass shooting on an interstate people can grab a Glock in their glove compartment and shoot right back and neutralize the bad guy. Piece of cake. Clean as a whistle.
Meanwhile yeah thoughts and prayers for the mass casualties for real!
Update: They found the AR-15 but not the shooter. Maybe he killed himself with one of his other 25 or so guns.
Nother: Says he’ll kill himself after he feels he has finished his work.
Opening scene begins with an evangelical preacher, who looks like David Bowie at the nadir of his drug addiction, boarding his private jet; his luggage consists of multiple machine guns and large quantities of fentanyl, of which he is a user. He has flown from North Carolina to Las Vegas to find his daughter, who lives in one of the city’s flood control tunnels.
Police arrive at his hotel room; they assume the guns are part of a mass shooting/terror plot and arrest him.
The preacher himself has called the police to his room to report something of his stolen. It has not occurred to him that his appearance/situation may arouse the suspicion of the police, who begin to ask about weapons. “I have a gun in my guitar case,” he tells them. The police discover the other weapons, which include an AR-15 with a scope. He also tells them about his fentanyl.
The preacher fails to appear for his probable cause hearing.
‘Richard Aspinwall, a math teacher, heard commotion outside his classroom and entered the hallway to see what was going on. When he did, he was shot in the chest by the 14-year-old suspect, according to family friend Julie Woodson, who cited accounts by Aspinwall’s students.
“We had to watch our teacher come back in the classroom holding himself like he’s been shot, and fell to the floor,” 17-year-old Malasia Mitchell said. “And as he kept going, my teacher was shot again.”
Lauren Vickers, a neighbor, told the New York Post that the family had been trouble ever since moving into the neighborhood in 2022 and the kids were clearly not being taken care of.
‘There were nights where the mom would lock him and his sister out the house. And they would be banging on the back door, just screaming like ‘Mom! mom! mom!’ and crying. It was absolutely devastating,’ she said.
She added that Marcee was often clearly intoxicated, even when driving her children [ … ] to school.
‘I would find her in the driveway, passed out, with the car running and blaring music early in the morning,’ Vickers added.
They keep updating as reams of evidence that this madman should never have been in a public school come in. At 13, he’d already threatened to shoot up a school; at 14, he did it. His father kept multiple huge guns in the home, and UD is pretty confident that one of his ARs – easily accessible to his mentally ill son? – did the deed.
So… we’ve already corralled three probable enablers – negligent parent, indifferent school administrators, and inept law enforcement. Mes petites – you’d think in a country with 450 million or so guns, and routine mass killings, some effort would be made to identify likely mass killers. But guns are considered beautiful here; a 14 year old handling an AR is a beautiful thing. His classmates report he never spoke – completely alienated, it seems. Completely out of it. Rarely attended. Pity the teachers compelled by idiot administrators to harbor a student who probably frightened them.
Every country has mentally ill people. Only America arms them, Adam Gopnik writes.
UPDATE: Oh – and get ready for the lawsuits. Abigail Zwerner’s forty million dollar suit against the Newport News Public Schools is humming along.
ANOTHER UPDATE: As with so many other school shooters, blatant mental health problems, fucked up parent, fucked up school administrators, fucked up law enforcement, guns all over the place. Dad let this child – at age 13, and probably before – handle all the weapons.
A perfect storm here, and a perfect idiot could have seen this before it broke. It’s very easy to see the father in court, and it’s even easier to see the school district sued for tens of millions of dollars. The monster the father made (it’s not clear the mother is at all involved – the parents are divorced, and it looks as though the shooter lived with his gun-totin’ pa) will never get out of prison. Might even get the death penalty.
‘The state of Utah, where the shooting took place, does not have any laws to prosecute those failing to secure an unattended firearm... The state also has no laws requiring unattended firearms to be stored in certain ways.‘ I mean, you know, just go to it!
