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!
Pinellas deputies have arrested a 14-year-old boy on a first-degree murder charge after they say he shot and killed a woman with his father’s gun last week… [T]he 14-year-old confessed to shooting Fernandez at random and said he got the gun from his father’s bedroom…
UD lately has featured preppy upbeat mugshots, but here’s one that’s simply …vintage. Our man hails from the barrens of Stanton Nebraska. He likes to get shitfaced, leave his feloniously owned shotgun at home, mount his ATV, and bomb through local streets.
[A] four-wheeler was observed being operated recklessly at high speeds and running multiple stop signs near the Stanton County courthouse.
Sheriff Mike Unger, who was on foot in the area, attempted to stop the four-wheeler near 7th and Jackpine, but the driver failed to do so and nearly struck the Sheriff as he accelerated away from the residential area at 70 to 80 mile an hour estimated speeds.
… [The charges are] speeding, multiple stop sign and ATV violations, willful reckless driving, and driving while intoxicated-2nd offense. He was also charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm after … a search warrant at his residence turned up a shotgun and ammunition.
Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam. New York Times
George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days. The Electron Pencil
It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading. Professor Mondo
There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life. AcademicPub
You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics. truffula, commenting at Historiann
Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption. Dagblog
University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings. Dissent: The Blog
[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho... The Wall Street Journal
Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo. Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education
[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile. Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University
Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure. Roland Greene, Stanford University
The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan... Carlat Psychiatry Blog
Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant... Perplexed with Narrow Passages
Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here... Outside the Beltway
From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip... Money Law
University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it. Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association
The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ... Medical Humanities Blog
I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic... Ducks and Drakes
As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ... The Bitch Girls
Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard. Tenured Radical
University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know. Mary Beard, A Don's Life
[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter. More magazine, Canada
If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot. Notes of a Neophyte
