History > 2007 > USA > Gun violence (I)

Gunshot Kills F.B.I. Agent

in a Stakeout

April 6, 2007
The New York Times
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN

A veteran F.B.I. agent on a bank-robbery detail was fatally wounded yesterday morning, apparently when another agent’s weapon accidentally discharged during a confrontation with three gunmen outside a bank in a quiet town in central New Jersey, the authorities said.

While the circumstances were still under investigation, a statement by the F.B.I. said that the agent, Barry Lee Bush, 52, of the bureau’s Newark office, “may have been fatally wounded as a result of the accidental discharge of another agent’s weapon during a dynamic arrest situation.”

In the 99-year history of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Mr. Bush, who was married and the father of two grown children, was the 51st agent killed in the line of duty, and the first to be fatally shot in 10 years. He had worked for the bureau for almost 20 years, in Newark, Kansas City, Mo., and elsewhere.

The events yesterday that led to the agent’s death were part of an extensive federal, state and local task force investigation organized in response to a series of bank robberies this year in Middlesex and Monmouth Counties. Teams, some with shotguns, some in SWAT gear, wearing bullet-resistant vests and armed with assault rifles, have staked out some banks in central New Jersey in recent weeks. The team yesterday was following a group of suspects.

As hundreds of federal, state and local officers swarmed to the scene of the shooting in Readington Township, in Hunterdon County about 50 miles west of New York City, two suspects were reported captured and assault weapons were seized in the late-morning violence. The captured suspects were identified as Wilfredo Berrios, 28, and Michael Cruz, 21, both of New Brunswick, N.J.

But a third suspect, identified as Francisco J. Herrera-Genao, 22, also of New Brunswick, who was said to be armed with a rifle and wearing a sweatshirt and only one shoe, fled into a densely wooded area of horse farms and country clubs and was hunted into the evening by more than 300 troopers and officers with dogs and helicopters.

Roads were closed, schools and businesses were locked down and officers with drawn guns went door to door at homes and farms, advising people to stay inside. The search was to continue all night, officials said.

“There’s a lot of tension, I can tell you,” said Kate Sarles, the police commissioner in neighboring Branchburg Township, where the search was under way last night. “People are coming home and locking themselves in. Obviously the man is desperate.”

The shooting took place shortly after 11:30 a.m. near a PNC Bank on Route 22 in the rural township of about 15,000 people, where sensational crimes are rare. Witnesses said the suspects, riding in two vehicles, pulled into the parking lot of a garden supply store across the highway. One remained in his car while two stepped out and began to approach the bank.

A group of federal agents and state troopers who had been following the suspects suddenly swarmed in on the gunmen, who were intercepted before they reached the door of the bank.

Witnesses said they heard three shots, or bursts from automatic weapons, and F.B.I. officials later said that the suspects had not fired their weapons. One official said that Mr. Bush had been shot from behind at close range. He was taken by helicopter to University Hospital in Newark, and while he was alive on arrival doctors were unable to save him, officials said.

Mr. Bush had testified in two high-profile cases, the successful prosecution of terrorists in the 1998 bombing of American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the conviction of James C. Kopp, an anti-abortion activist, in the death of Dr. Barnett A. Slepian, an obstetrician.

Explaining yesterday’s events, the F.B.I. said: “Special Agent Bush and his team were in pursuit of heavily armed serial bank robbers who are believed to be responsible for four bank robberies. In two of those robberies, the suspects, armed with assault weapons, fired rounds while inside the bank.”

The previous robberies occurred at a Commerce Bank in Piscataway on Feb. 8 and at three branches of the Bank of America — in East Brunswick on Feb. 16, in Ocean Township on March 2 and in South Brunswick on March 16. Investigators at first believed that only four men were involved, but now say that as many as six to eight may have participated.

The authorities said the robbers in those cases wore ski masks, baseball hats, black gloves, hooded sweatshirts, trench coats and work boots, and carried a big money bag. They were heavily armed and carried additional ammunition. Their weapons were believed to have included a .380-caliber pistol and AK-47 assault weapons with 30-round magazines, officials said.

They also used Hondas that had been stolen the night before each of the robberies. The cars were parked in front of the banks during the robberies, with the engines running and doors open. After the getaways, the robbers switched to other vehicles and abandoned the stolen cars in residential areas or parking lots.

At a news conference late last night, Pedro Ruiz, the acting special agent in charge of the F.B.I.’s Newark office, said the task force investigators had information that the suspects intended to rob the PNC Bank in Readington Township yesterday and had been following them.

The three suspects, in two cars, drove into the parking lot of Arvins Farm and Garden Center, across Route 22 from the bank, said James Margolin, another F.B.I. spokesman. One remained in his car while the others got out and walked toward the bank, but they were intercepted before they went in, he said.

Agent Ruiz said the gunmen had fired no shots in the confrontation, with all the bullets coming from law enforcement officers’ guns.

Witnesses in the bank, including Josh Bavosa, 35, who was making a deposit, said they heard three bursts of gunfire. When they looked out the big plate-glass windows, they said, they saw men lying on the ground. Moments later, they said, a large number of police cars converged on the scene.

Maynor Veliz, 19, was working in the back of the garden center when he heard the shots. He said he looked out and saw one man lying on the ground by a white car with its windows broken. Moments later, he said, he saw a swarm of police officers converge on the scene.

Mr. Berrios and Mr. Cruz were seized there, Agent Ruiz said.

It was unclear how one of the suspects got away. The man, identified as Mr. Herrera-Genao, was last seen carrying a rifle and running into a heavily wooded area behind the bank that lies between two country clubs. The fugitive was described as Hispanic, at least 6 feet tall, wearing a sweatshirt and one shoe. His other shoe was found in the woods near Raritan Valley Community College.

He and the other two suspects were charged yesterday with attempted armed bank robbery, which is punishable by up to 25 years in prison, law enforcement officials said. Another man, Efrain Lynn, 21, of New Brunswick, was arrested at another location later and charged with attempted armed bank robbery in connection with the March 16 holdup, the F.B.I. said.

As hundreds of state police troopers and police officers from surrounding communities converged on the scene yesterday, a huge hunt began. The search, coordinated by the state police and using numerous dogs, spread out through a densely wooded area north of Route 22 and south of Interstate 78 between the Fox Hollow Golf Course and the Fiddler’s Elbow Country Club.

At least four helicopters circled the area all afternoon, witnesses said. Route 22, an east-west thoroughfare that cuts across Hunterdon County, was closed in both directions for much of the day in the vicinity of the shooting, as were many secondary roads. Officers with drawn guns went door to door at homes and businesses, advising people to stay inside. They also searched barns and other farm buildings in the area.

Vincent DellaPello, 34, whose family owns a 50-acre horse farm in the area of the search, said the area consisted of dense woods, bounded by pastures and horse farms. “You could get lost in there,” he said.

At the PNC Bank, the doors were locked — with employees and customers inside — for two and a half hours. It was a day of watchful waiting for many people in the area.

“At various times throughout the day, there has been a flood of marked cars, unmarked cars, state troopers, and you can hear the helicopters off and on,” said Penny Brown, 51, who was taking care of her mother at her home on Lamington Road, which was closed. By day’s end, officers were letting people return to their homes.

Reporting was contributed by Kareem Fahim, Richard G. Jones, Tina Kelley, Jennifer 8. Lee, Jonathan Miller, Andy Newman, William K. Rashbaum and Ronald Smothers.

    Gunshot Kills F.B.I. Agent in a Stakeout, NYT, 6.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/06/nyregion/06bank.html?hp

3 shot during attempted robbery at Atlanta mall

31.3.2007
AP
USA Today

ATLANTA (AP) — Three people were shot during an attempted robbery at a shopping mall Saturday, police said. One person was critically wounded.

Authorities were still piecing together what happened, but said that the shootings happened around 5:15 p.m. in a store at Greenbriar Mall. One of the injured people was a security guard, police said.

The suspects, three young men, got away in a sport-utility vehicle, police said.

"We have our own security cameras," said Mike Weinberger, manager of the mall. "The property had its own cameras we are reviewing. We feel good about what we are going to be able to look at and investigate."

All three of the injured were taken to a hospital, where two people were listed in stable condition, police said.

Police spokesman Steve Coleman said the northeast corner of the mall was closed after the incident, but Macy's, one of the largest stores in the mall, stayed open until closing time at 9 p.m.

"We have our own security cameras," said Mike Weinberger, manager of Greenbriar Mall. "The property had its own cameras and we are reviewing. We feel good about what we are going to be able to look at and investigate."

    3 shot during attempted robbery at Atlanta mall, UT, 31.3.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-03-31-atlanta-mall_N.htm

Body lies in driveway during standoff

31.3.2007
AP
USA Today

AUBURN, Maine (AP) — The body of a woman who was apparently shot to death lay in a driveway for hours Friday 31as officers exchanged fire with her son, who had holed up in her house, police said.
A state police spokesman said James "Mike" Peters, 42, stepped out of the house once but did not respond to repeated police telephone calls to the home or to attempts to talk to him through a bullhorn.

Police believed retrieving the body of Margaret Peters, 70, would be too risky during the standoff, said Stephen McCausland, a spokesman for the state Department of Public Safety. Officers were called to the scene before 11 a.m., and the body was still in the driveway around midnight.

A member of the state police tactical team was injured by flying glass when the gunman fired through the window of a vehicle, McCausland said.

Repeated gunbursts, dogs barking and police negotiating through a loudspeaker could be heard through much of the standoff.

    Body lies in driveway during standoff, UT, 31.3.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-03-31-body-driveway_N.htm

Shootings Add to Denver’s Anxiety, and Its Unsolved Crimes

March 30, 2007
The New York Times
By DAN FROSCH

DENVER, March 29 — A rash of seemingly random shootings last weekend has baffled the police here and added to the unease of a city that in recent months has experienced a series of unsolved violent crimes.

The same two men are believed to have shot six people in 48 hours starting March 23. The shootings included an attack on a group of college friends, most of whom had traveled from Kansas to see a concert.

“The men told them that this was a bad side of town and that they shouldn’t be there,” said David Hensley, whose 19-year-old son Dakota was one of seven friends robbed and attacked by the two men early Sunday. The group had left a concert in the historic Five Points neighborhood, a newly revitalized section of Denver where soul-food restaurants sit close to coffee shops and where colorfully renovated Victorian homes stand near subsidized housing complexes.

Mr. Hensley said the friends, mostly from Kansas State University and the University of Kansas, were at a light-rail station waiting to catch a downtown train when they were approached by the two men. The assailants, one brandishing a knife, the other a gun, demanded money, Mr. Hensley said his son told him. After the victims handed over their valuables, one of the robbers sprayed them with gunfire.

“The guy looked right at Dakota and just started shooting,” Mr. Hensley said.

Three of them were wounded. One of them, Ian Dumpert, 22, of Paola, Kan., remained in serious condition on Thursday at Denver Health Medical Center, said Dee Martinez, a hospital spokeswoman.

The police said they believed the college friends were not the suspects’ first victims. Early on the morning of March 23, two men in a blue Honda drove up beside Marcus Bryant, 27, who was walking in the Capitol Hill neighborhood near downtown. One of the men fired two shots from the passenger side window, striking Mr. Bryant in the left leg, the police said.

About 10 minutes later, Thilli Mathew, 26, was shot in the left leg after exchanging words with two men who had approached him on foot not far from where Mr. Bryant was shot, the police said.

Early Saturday morning, Jeff Prall, 35, was shot by two men while waiting for a cab on a corner near Colfax Avenue, a thoroughfare known for its lively nightlife. Mr. Prall, a Denver property manager, said the episode happened so quickly he had trouble recalling the details.

“I didn’t see the guys until they were right in front of me. They both had ski masks on,” Mr. Prall said. “They asked me for money. And just as I told them I didn’t have any, I noticed one of them had a gun. And then I remember hearing a popping noise.”

Mr. Prall said he was shot five times, including in the neck and back, and was recovering this week after being released from the hospital.

Denver has drawn attention recently for a number of other unsolved violent crimes, such as the slaying last month of Ken Gorman, a supplier of medical marijuana, and the killing of Darrent Williams, the Denver Broncos cornerback who was gunned down on New Year’s Day as he left a nightclub. The Rocky Mountain News reported Thursday that a grand jury was examining the possible involvement of the Crips street gang in Mr. Williams’s killing and a string of other unsolved homicides.

Lynn Kimbrough, a spokeswoman for the Denver district attorney’s office, said, “The resources of a grand jury are being utilized in a number of ongoing investigations related to unsolved homicides.” Ms. Kimbrough would not go into specifics.

Nearly all the shootings last weekend took place in neighborhoods whose demographics are shifting, none more so than Five Points.

Once hailed as the Harlem of the West for its jazz scene, the historic black business enclave and its surroundings have given way to an influx of professionals, most of them white, and Hispanic immigrants.

“You hear about the frustration from the black people who have lived here for a long time. They can’t afford to move, they also can’t afford to fix up their homes,” said Diane Mourning, executive director of the nearby Curtis Park Community Center. “This is a neighborhood where you have very poor, desperate people living side by side with people who are upper middle class.”

But Ms. Mourning said there had been a noticeable downturn in crime in Five Points, and she said she was shocked by the attack on the college students last weekend.

    Shootings Add to Denver’s Anxiety, and Its Unsolved Crimes, NYT, 30.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/30/us/30denver.html

Lawmaker charged with perjury over gun

27.3.2007
AP
USA Today

GREENSBURG, Pa. (AP) — A state senator was charged Tuesday with improperly storing a handgun and then lying about it to authorities after a 14-year-old neighbor used the gun to kill himself.

Louis Farrell was found shot to death with state Sen. Robert Regola's 9 mm handgun on July 22 near the two families' homes.

The teenager had a key to Regola's house so he could take care of the legislator's pets while Regola was at the Statehouse. Regola, his 17-year-old son Bobby, and their attorneys have repeatedly denied wrongdoing in connection with the boy's death.

Westmoreland County Coroner Ken Bacha earlier this month ruled Louis' death a suicide.

Regola was charged with three counts each of perjury and false swearing and one count each of reckless endangerment and illegal possession of a weapon by a minor. The perjury and weapons charges are felonies.

He declined to respond to questions except to say that he is waiting to talk to his attorney.

The criminal complaint accuses Regola of possession of a firearm by a minor for allegedly letting his son keep the gun in his room before the shooting.

At a coroner's inquest, the senator said the gun was never stored in Bobby's room.

But two state troopers testified that on the day Louis was found dead, the senator told them the gun had been kept in Bobby's room months before, but that it had been stored in his bedroom the night before Louis was found shot. A friend of both boys had testified that Bobby pulled the gun from a case beneath the nightstand in his bedroom a year or two before the shooting, and showed him and Louis how to load it.

Bobby Regola refused to testify after invoking his right against self-incrimination

    Lawmaker charged with perjury over gun, UT, 27.3.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-03-27-lawmaker-charged_N.htm

Boy Recalls Frightening Details of a Shooting at a Queens Deli

March 23, 2007
The New York Times
By CARA BUCKLEY and COLIN MOYNIHAN

In the instant before the gunman started shooting, the boy thought he was just another customer barreling through the deli’s front door. But then the boy saw the man’s eyes, wild behind a black ski mask. And he saw the gun in the man’s hand.

A heartbeat later, its muzzle flashed with a “pop! pop!” The boy’s friend, identified by his brother as Kamel Maharram, 28, who had started working at the deli three days before, staggered backward, his hands pressed against his throat, and fell to the floor.

Then the gunman came for the boy, pointed his gun at him, and fired.

Eighteen hours later, the boy, Luqman Sharhan, 11, quietly and evenly recounted the harrowing tale of what he saw on Wednesday night in his father’s deli in the Rockaways in Queens.

Last night, Mr. Maharram was in critical condition and the gunman had not been caught. And Luqman’s father, Saleh Sharhan, made the wrenching decision to allow his son to speak publicly about what happened in the hope, he said, of “flushing this guy out.”

Luqman is one of the youngest members of a proud, extended Yemeni-American family that sowed its future in a dozen or so delis and bodegas that it has owned over the years in Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx. His father is determined to instill a solid work ethic in each of his six children, and often has them pitch in with an hour or so of work after school. On Wednesday, another clerk who works for him at the deli was out celebrating, having passed his citizenship test.

That is how Luqman, a sixth grader at a Long Island middle school, found himself with Mr. Maharram at the Casa Blanca Deli Grocery on Beach Channel Drive, which his father co-owns, on Wednesday night.

He was dropped off by a relative at the deli about 8:30 p.m., and rang up customers at the cash register as Mr. Maharram made sandwiches behind the counter. Luqman and Mr. Maharram, who were alone at the time, were bantering back and forth when, about 9 p.m., a man in a blue hooded sweatshirt and ski mask ran in.

The gunman said nothing. There was a black semiautomatic pistol in his left hand, and, without a word, he held it out and pulled the trigger, Luqman recalled yesterday, speaking in a hushed voice. He heard two pops and saw Mr. Maharram get hit in the left eye and the throat. Luqman sank to the floor and curled into a ball, pressing his knees to his chest.

The gunman came behind the counter, pointed the gun at Luqman and fired. The bullet missed. Luqman drew his knees in tighter and tried not to move.

“If I panicked I knew I was going to die,” Luqman said.

He could hear Mr. Maharram’s ragged, deep breathing. He began trembling. He peeked at the gunman and saw him stuffing Dutch Masters cigars into a red and black duffel bag.

The gunman came closer to Luqman and fired at him again. Luqman’s body was cold with shock; he could not tell if he had been shot. Then the gunman began jabbing at the buttons on the cash register.

“He’s panicking,” Luqman thought.

The drawer would not open. Then Luqman felt a hand on his collar, and he was roughly yanked to his feet. He pressed a button on the register, and after its drawer sprang open, he dropped back to the floor.

A customer came into the deli and seemed wholly oblivious to what was going on. She picked up some grape juice and Cheetos and placed them on the counter, Luqman said. The gunman was still ramming bills from the cash register into his duffel bag. Then he ran out the door.

Luqman got to his feet. “We just got robbed,” he said to the woman. Then he called 911. And then he called his father.

Mr. Maharram was taken to Jamaica Hospital Medical Center, and the police took Luqman to a nearby precinct house and questioned him for hours. It was about 2 a.m. by the time he returned to his home in Inwood, on southwestern Long Island.

But Luqman could not fall asleep. “I kept seeing replays of Kamel getting shot,” he said.

His family took him to a doctor yesterday morning; sleeping pills were prescribed for Luqman. The doctor also urged family members to enroll Luqman in therapy, advice that his father said they planned to follow.

“We have to; the body hides fear,” Mr. Sharhan said. “You get cut today, you feel hurt tomorrow.”

The shooting sent shock waves through the city’s close-knit Yemeni community. During the day, stricken friends and family members, mostly men, gathered at the hospital. They filled the waiting room, their faces pinched. The only woman among them was Mr. Maharram’s mother, who was weeping, undone.

Mr. Maharram is Yemeni, too, and was drawn into Mr. Sharhan’s extended network of family and business associates after his distant cousin married one of Mr. Sharhan’s daughters. He had studied engineering at the University of Baghdad and moved to New York about five years ago, after finding few prospects in Yemen. He worked first at a gas station, and wired money to his family in Yemen, visiting when he could.

Two months ago, Mr. Maharram’s wife gave birth to a son in Yemen, their third child, and Mr. Sharhan gave a party in New York and served heaping plates of lamb.

“For us, this is the American dream,” said Mr. Sharhan, speaking yesterday of the life his family has forged, opening delis in New York. “It may look small to some people, but for us, it’s a very big thing, to open businesses in a foreign land.”

Tanzina Vega contributed reporting.

    Boy Recalls Frightening Details of a Shooting at a Queens Deli, NYT, 23.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/23/nyregion/23clerk.html

Affair with teacher leads to slaying

17.3.2007
USA Today
By Duncan Mansfield, Associated Press

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — In a tragic twist to a familiar story, a teenager who had sex with his married 30-year-old teacher was fatally shot outside the woman's home, and authorities have charged the woman's husband.
"You see all this stuff with teachers involved with their students. It just comes up time after time on the national news," said Norman McLean, father of suspect Eric McLean. But this time, he said, someone "actually died over it."

McLean's wife, Erin, had completed half of a one-year teaching internship at West High School, where she met the 18-year-old Sean Powell last fall.

Powell's mother, who gave him up for adoption a dozen years ago but re-established contact in 2005, said her son acknowledged having an affair with a teacher.

"He wouldn't let me answer my cellphone," Debra Flynn recalled. "I said, 'Why?' He said, 'Well, Mom, I'm going out with this girl.' I said, 'So what?' He said, 'She is a counselor at school.' I said, 'Oh, my God, Sean.'"

Flynn, whose son sometimes stayed at her home in Nashville, said she later found text messages on her phone. "Come home. Baby, I love you. You are beautiful," they said. She believes Erin McLean preyed on her son.

"These teachers are feasting on our children in school and something has to be done," Flynn said.

Powell "was a great kid, full of life," Flynn said. He had taught himself to play guitar and just received his driver's license. His adoptive parents, Scarlett and Jack Powell, had just bought him a car.

But he left school on Nov. 20 and did not return. School officials refuse to explain, citing privacy laws. Flynn said her son had a substance-abuse problem and went to rehab for less than a month.

Norman McLean described his son, one of his eight children, as "an excellent person," who was not violent, but he acknowledged that his son "had a lot of burden on him for months now," referring to his wife's affair.

"Now, I am only talking about myself. But I can personally only take so much," Norman McLean said. "Everybody has a breaking point and there is only so much you can endure before you get to that place ... where you lose control."

Norman McLean said his son, once a percussionist in the University of Tennessee marching band, put his own academic career on hold to support his family while his wife of 11 years pursued a graduate teaching degree from the University of Tennessee. He has worked as a pizza deliveryman while taking classes at the university.

Eric McLean is one semester short of completing a bachelor's degree in music education. A popular performer in local rock 'n' roll bands, he hoped to become a school band director.

On the evening of March 10, McLean called police to say an intruder was at the couple's home. About 7 minutes later, Erin McLean called back to say her husband had just shot Powell outside in the boy's car.

Eric McLean fled in his car, which was later found at the high school. McLean was arrested Sunday, walking along railroad tracks about 6 miles away, still carrying the suspected murder weapon, a shotgun.

Sean Powell was buried Thursday after a funeral attended by more than 150 friends and former classmates.

"I didn't color any rosy pictures," said the Rev. Lee Wallace, who officiated. "I said, Sean, like myself, is not perfect. He was a boy who had hopes and dreams and goals in life, like everybody else, and those were cut short."

Erin McLean has moved in with relatives in Nashville with the couple's two young sons, ages 11 and 7. She has not been charged with any wrongdoing. Police say she has hired a lawyer but could not provide a name.

The attorney for Eric McLean, 31, acknowledges that McLean killed Powell. "So this trial is going to be about what really did happen and why — not who," attorney Bruce Poston said.

Poston said McLean is in a "state of shock. Like watching a deer caught in the headlights. Literally wondering, 'Have I made a decision that will ruin the rest of my life as well as others?'"

    Affair with teacher leads to slaying, UT, 17.3.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-03-16-affair-slaying_N.htm

2 Auxiliary Officers Among 4 Killed in Village Gunfight

March 15, 2007
The New York Times
By ALAN FEUER and AL BAKER

Two unarmed auxiliary police officers were fatally shot last night during a chase with a gunman on a busy stretch of bars and restaurants in the heart of Greenwich Village, the authorities said.

The gunman was shot and killed about 9:30 p.m. by regular police officers who quickly responded to the scene, the authorities said.

The attack began after the gunman entered a pizzeria on Macdougal and West Houston Streets and shot a bartender who worked there, the authorities said. The two auxiliary officers — volunteers who dress in uniforms virtually indistinguishable from regular police officers — followed the gunman toward Sullivan Street, where he suddenly turned and shot them, the authorities said.

The identities of the two slain officers and the gunman were unavailable early this morning. The bartender, whose name was also unavailable, was killed as well, the authorities said.

It was the second time in two nights that city officers were attacked in the line of duty. On Tuesday night, one police officer was shot in a Harlem restaurant only 90 minutes before another was stabbed in the head at a Brooklyn subway station. Both survived.

Witnesses to last night’s shooting described a wild scene in which as many as 30 shots were fired, creating pandemonium as patrons spilled out from Village watering holes like the Lion’s Den and the Back Fence. In one case, a comedy act in a basement club on Bleecker Street was briefly interrupted — although the show in fact went on.

“I was in the middle of my set and I heard a series of pops and someone came running downstairs and said, ‘A person is being shot outside,’ ” said Hassan Madry, 28, who was performing on stage at the Village Lantern. “I tried to calm everybody down. I told some of my jokes. You know, you got to go on with it.”

It was unclear last night what lay behind the first shooting at the pizzeria, DeMarco’s at 146 Macdougal Street. The authorities said the auxiliary officers followed the gunman as he left the place and minutes later were shot outside 208 Sullivan Street, which once housed the former Triangle Social Club, the mob redoubt of Vincent (The Chin) Gigante.

Hilary Elkins, 28, who lives on Sullivan and Bleecker Streets, said she saw a man in civilian clothes running south on Sullivan about 9:30 p.m. with a gun in his hand. Five police officers were giving chase, she said, then suddenly opened fire on the man.

“There was fire coming from everywhere,” Ms. Elkins said. “There was a cop who was shooting and then took cover behind a pole.”

Stephen Smitty, 48, a bar bouncer from Staten Island, was standing outside the Back Fence talking with a friend when the gunfire erupted.

“I was chit-chatting and all of a sudden it sounded like fireworks,” Mr. Smitty said. “I saw a cop on his knees with no hat on and soon people started talking about a dead cop.”

About 4,800 unarmed auxiliary officers work on a volunteer basis with the New York Police Department. They wear a blue uniform much like regular officers but instead of a silver badge wear a seven-pointed star that resembles a sheriff’s shield. The last time an auxiliary officer was killed in the line of duty was 14 years ago.

Seventh Avenue outside St. Vincent’s Hospital Manhattan had been cordoned off by yellow police tape after Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly arrived. The officers had been taken to the hospital before they died. Several officers in uniforms lingered near the entryway last night.

Even as police helicopters whipped in the sky above and squad cars by the dozen converged on the scene of the shootings, witnesses spoke of separate bursts on gunfire that split the night.

Ray Cline, 56, was at his mother-in-law’s apartment on LaGuardia Place when the gunfire interrupted their dessert.

“I was eating cherry pie with my mother-in-law on the 26th floor and then what sounded like a string of firecrackers rang out,” he said. “There were at least a dozen shots within four or five seconds and then sirens came within a minute or two.”

Jonas Skybakmoem, a 26-year-old musician visiting New York from Norway with his girlfriend, was having dinner at an Italian restaurant near Sullivan and Bleecker when the shots rang out.

“We heard the shots and I saw people in the restaurant across the street getting under the tables,” he said. “People were also running into the restaurant.”

Mr. Skybakmoem said that two dozen or so people in the restaurant he was in immediately sought cover in the bathrooms in back.

Mr. Madry, the comedian, said the police and the club’s management kept patrons safely inside the bar.

“At first people panicked,” he said. “People started freaking. One girl started crying. I kept telling everyone to stay calm.”

Cassi Feldman, Serge F. Kovaleski, Colin Moynihan and Conrad Mulcahy contributed reporting.

    2 Auxiliary Officers Among 4 Killed in Village Gunfight, NYT, 15.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/15/nyregion/15cops.html?hp

Court Rejects Strict Gun Law as Unconstitutional

March 10, 2007
The New York Times
By ADAM LIPTAK

Interpreting the Second Amendment broadly, a federal appeals court in Washington yesterday struck down a gun control law in the District of Columbia that bars residents from keeping handguns in their homes.

The decision was the first from a federal appeals court to hold a gun control law unconstitutional on the ground that the Second Amendment protects the rights of individuals, as opposed to the collective rights of state militias. Nine other federal appeals courts around the nation have rejected that interpretation.

Linda Singer, the District’s acting attorney general, said the decision was “a huge setback.”

“We’ve been making progress on bringing down crime and gun violence,” Ms. Singer said, “and this sends us in a different direction.”

By contrast, advocates of gun rights praised the decision, by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, saying it raised the prospect of a national re-evaluation of the meaning of the Second Amendment and the rights of gun owners. They said the District of Columbia would have to begin procedures to allow handgun possession in private homes unless yesterday’s decision was stayed.

Lawyers on both sides of the case said it had created a conflict among the federal courts of appeal on a significant constitutional issue, making review by the Supreme Court likely. The Supreme Court last considered the issue in 1939, and there are only scattered hints about how the current justices might rule.

The majority in yesterday’s decision pointed to a 1998 dissent in which “at least three current members (and one former member) of the Supreme Court have read ‘bear arms’ in the Second Amendment to have meaning beyond mere soldiering.” They were former Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who died in 2005, and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Antonin Scalia and David H. Souter.

In a 1996 dissent while serving on the federal appeals court in Philadelphia, Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., now a justice of the Supreme Court, wrote that he would have struck down a federal law regulating the possession of machine guns under the commerce clause of the Constitution.

If the Supreme Court were to adopt the District of Columbia Circuit’s interpretation of the Second Amendment, gun control laws and gun prosecutions around the country could be endangered.

The case decided yesterday was brought by Dick Heller, a guard at the Federal Judicial Center who was permitted to carry a gun on duty and wanted to keep one at home. His application was denied by officials in the District of Columbia.

Mr. Heller challenged provisions of the District’s law, one of the most restrictive in the nation, that almost always banned the registration of handguns, that prohibited carrying handguns without a license even from one room of a home to another and that required lawfully owned firearms to be kept unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock.

In a 2-to-1 decision, a panel of the District of Columbia Circuit court ruled those provisions unconstitutional.

The decision relied on what has so far been a minority interpretation of the Second Amendment, though one that has been embraced by the Justice Department in the current administration and by some constitutional scholars.

The Second Amendment says, “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

The basic question in the case was whether the first clause in the amendment limits the last one. Most federal appeals courts have said that the amendment read as a whole protects only a collective right of the states to maintain militias.

In yesterday’s decision, the majority focused on the final clause, saying that the amendment broadly protects the rights of individuals to own guns.

“It seems passing strange,” Judge Laurence H. Silberman wrote for the majority, “that the able lawyers and statesmen in the First Congress (including James Madison) would have expressed a sole concern for state militias with the language of the Second Amendment. Surely there was a more direct locution, such as ‘Congress shall make no law disarming the state militias’ or ‘states have a right to a well-regulated militia.’ ”

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which hears appeals from Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, also embraced the individual-rights view of the Second Amendment in 2001. But it did so in an aside in a ruling that allowed a gun prosecution to go forward.

By contrast, said Robert A. Levy, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and one of Mr. Heller’s lawyers, “the D.C. opinion is unequivocal.”

In a statement on its Web site, the National Rifle Association called the decision a significant victory that “affirmed that the Second Amendment of the Constitution protects an inherent, individual right to bear arms.”

The immediate consequence of the decision, Mr. Levy said, is that “D.C. will have to implement a process for enabling people to keep handguns in their houses.”

Speaking to reporters yesterday, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty said the District was reviewing both the impact of the decision and the next steps it would take in the litigation. “Today’s decision flies in the face of laws that have helped decrease gun violence in the District of Columbia,” Mr. Fenty said at a news conference. “We intend to do everything in our power to get this decision overturned.”

Ms. Singer said it was small comfort that the decision, if not the potential sweep of its reasoning, was limited to guns in the home. “They’re often dangerous in the home,” she said. “Kids can be injured. And they often don’t stay at home.”

Judge Silberman, writing for the majority yesterday, said the decision’s reasoning still allowed “reasonable restrictions” on the ownership and use of guns, and he gave some examples. It is “presumably reasonable,” he wrote, to prohibit drunks from carrying weapons and to ban guns in churches and polling places. Judge Thomas B. Griffith joined the majority decision.

Judge Silberman concluded that the Second Amendment protects an individual right just as the First Amendment protects free speech and the Fourth Amendment bars unreasonable searches.

The majority rejected the District’s argument that the Second Amendment should apply only to the kinds of guns in use at the end of the 18th century.

Lawyers on both sides of the issue say the Supreme Court’s 1939 decision on the Second Amendment supports their views.

Judge Silberman wrote that the decision, United States v. Miller, “did not explicitly accept the individual-right position” but did implicitly assume it.

In dissent, Judge Karen L. Henderson said the Miller decision unambiguously declared, in her words, that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms relates to those militia whose continued vitality is required to safeguard the individual states.” Judge Henderson added that the District of Columbia is not a state, meaning that the Second Amendment does not apply to it.

Judge Silberman was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, Judge Henderson by the first President George Bush and Judge Griffith by the current President Bush.

For many decades and under both Democratic and Republican administrations, the Justice Department said the Second Amendment protected only collective rights. The Bush administration reversed that longstanding position, saying the amendment protects the gun ownership rights of individuals, subject to a few restrictions.

Patricia Riley, a Justice Department official in the office of the United States attorney in the District, said yesterday that her office was “studying the decision and analyzing its effect on gun prosecutions.”

    Court Rejects Strict Gun Law as Unconstitutional, NYT, 10.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/10/washington/10gun.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Man Shoots Ex - Girlfriend at Fla. Office

March 9, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:15 p.m. ET
The New York Times

POMPANO BEACH, Fla. (AP) -- A gunman chased his ex-girlfriend through her office Friday morning, shooting at her over the cubicles and leaving her in critical before fleeing, authorities said.

Police quickly tracked down the car they believe Roger Murray fled in, but it was empty, Broward County sheriff's spokesman Elliott Cohen said.

The victim was working at Florida Builder Appliances when she was attacked. She was shot more than once and was taken to North Broward Medical Center in critical condition, Pompano Beach city spokeswoman Sandra King said.

Cohen said a second man, whose identity was not released, was in the car with Murray, 27, and went into the building with him. He said both show up on surveillance video, which was not immediately released.

''Both of them may have entered the business, but Murray was the gunman,'' Cohen said.

Deputies found the car outside a nearby grocery store, sheriff's spokeswoman Keyla Concepcion said. They charged at the vehicle with gun drawn, but officers opening its doors and trunk found no one.

Florida Builder Appliances sells kitchen appliances, according to its Web site. Manny Lavernia, the branch manager at another store in Miami, said the company did not want to comment.

    Man Shoots Ex - Girlfriend at Fla. Office, NYT, 9.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Business-Shooting.html

Suicide Shootings at Schools in Michigan and Texas

March 8, 2007
The New York Times
By LIBBY SANDER

CHICAGO, March 7 — A 17-year-old shot his ex-girlfriend four times Wednesday as they talked in the parking lot of her central Michigan high school and then fatally shot himself in the head, the authorities said.

The incident was one of two suicides at an American high school on Wednesday. Earlier in the morning, a 16-year-old boy shot himself at his high school in Texas and later died at a hospital.

The police in Midland, Mich., identified the gunman there as David Turner and the victim as Jessica Forsyth, also 17. Ms. Forsyth was flown to a hospital in Flint, 50 miles south, where she was in serious but stable condition, a hospital spokeswoman said.

Nancy Cook of Cadillac, a great-aunt of the victim, who was at Ms. Forsyth’s bedside in Flint, said the teenager had gunshot wounds to the arm, chest and back, but was “alert and oriented.”

“She’s doing quite well considering all she’s been through,” said Ms. Cook, who is also a registered nurse. She declined to comment further about the nature of Ms. Forsyth’s relationship with Mr. Turner.

The police said Mr. Turner arrived at her high school on Wednesday morning asking to speak with Ms. Forsyth. When school officials turned him away because Ms. Forsyth was not in school, he contacted her at home, and the two arranged to meet in the school parking lot, said Chief Deputy Robert Lane of the Midland Police Department.

Ms. Forsyth’s mother drove her to the parking lot, Chief Deputy Lane said. As the teenagers talked, Mr. Turner, who was wearing a backpack, reached inside and pulled out a gun, the deputy said. He shot Ms. Forsyth four times before shooting himself in the head.

Mr. Turner, who lived in nearby Coleman and did not attend H. H. Dow High School, where the shooting occurred, was pronounced dead at the scene.

The police said they did not know what had motivated Mr. Turner.

“We’re still working on the investigation and are trying to discover why this whole thing happened,” Chief Deputy Lane said. “Obviously there won’t be a prosecution now. Now it’s just a matter of lessons learned.”

The shooting in Midland occurred hours after a 16-year-old boy in Greenville, Tex., fatally shot himself shortly after 7 a.m. in the band hall of Greenville High School, according to a statement by the Greenville Independent School District. He died at a local hospital, said Lori Philyaw, a spokeswoman for the city, which is about 50 miles northeast of Dallas.

The student, whose name was withheld, was taken to the Dallas County medical examiner’s office for an autopsy, Ms. Philyaw said.

    Suicide Shootings at Schools in Michigan and Texas, NYT, 8.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/08/us/08school.html

Police: 4 fatally shot in Conn. condo

Posted 2/25/2007 2:13 AM ET
AP
USA Today

ENFIELD, Conn. (AP) — Four people were found shot to death Saturday night in a condominium, and police said the shootings were not a random act of violence.

No suspects were being sought, Police Chief Carl Sferrazza said.

"There's absolutely no need for anybody to fear that there's somebody dangerous running around with a firearm. We have a pretty good idea of what transpired," Sferrazza said, without elaborating.

Officers found the bodies after being called to The Laurels complex around 8:30 p.m. and forcing their way into the unit, he said. Two bodies were discovered together in one room, and the other two were in separate rooms.

The victims' named were not immediately released. They appeared to be an elderly man and woman, and a middle-aged man and woman, Sferrazza said.

Autopsies were planned for Sunday.

    Police: 4 fatally shot in Conn. condo, UT, 25.2.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-02-25-condo-killings_x.htm

Sense of Loss and Unease After Salt Lake Slayings

February 14, 2007
The New York Times
By KIRK JOHNSON

SALT LAKE CITY, Feb. 13 — The shots that echoed inside the Trolley Square mall on Monday night around dinnertime were evenly spaced, perhaps a second or two apart — a pump of the shotgun, the selection of a victim, another blast.

And it was the bottomless silence between shots that many witnesses talked about on Tuesday as the city reeled from one of the worst shooting rampages in its history. Six people were left dead, including the gunman, who was identified by the police as an 18-year-old Salt Lake City resident with a nonviolent juvenile criminal record.

Four people were seriously wounded, and one of the worst-hit places was a greeting card shop, full of people looking for Valentine’s Day cards. Five people were shot there, a witness said, as the killer fired through the store’s front window.

“It was the eeriest feeling,” said Jose Brito, a 21-year-old waiter who was working at Rodizio Grill, a Brazilian restaurant in the mall. “You’d wait for the shot, and wait, and think somebody is dying each time.”

Police Chief Chris Burbank said at a news conference that little was known about the gunman, Sulejmen Talovic. A local group that works with immigrant communities in Utah said the Talovic family had come to the area as war refugees from Bosnia.

No motive has been established, Chief Burbank said, and no connection has been found between Mr. Talovic and the site of the killings. Police officials said they did not know whether Mr. Talovic was employed or where he had gone to school. His mother was being interviewed, they said.

Mr. Talovic parked his car just before 7 p.m., Chief Burbank said, and put on a backpack full of ammunition and a bandoleer of shotgun shells. He killed the first two people he encountered in the parking lot, the chief said, and he was apparently intent on killing as he proceeded through the mall.

“It appears, at this point, to be very random,” Chief Burbank said.

Mr. Talovic was killed in a gunfight with the police in the middle of the mall, the chief said.

Ken Hammond, an off-duty police officer from Ogden, about 30 miles north of Salt Lake City, was eating dinner with his wife when the shots started. He responded first, opening fire and keeping the gunman occupied until Salt Lake City police officers arrived a few minutes later. Chief Burbank said that the firefight was still being analyzed, but that it appeared a Salt Lake City police officer had fired the shot that killed Mr. Talovic.

Part of the shattering impact of the shootings, many residents said, was the setting. Mass murders and terrorist attacks have long since robbed other places of their sense of sanctuary. Schools, factories and office buildings carry their security consciousness like a badge these days, as reassurance.

But for millions of people, the mall has become the American Main Street, a thoroughfare of pedestrian commerce that echoes many of the old values and perceptions that car culture and sprawl have supplanted.

“It feels like somebody has invaded our small, safe community,” said Ann Jensen, the manager of the Desert Edge Brewery Pub at Trolley Square.

Police officials identified the victims as Jeffrey Walker, 52; Vanessa Quinn, 29; Kirsten Hinkley, 15; Teresa Ellis, 29; and Brad Frantz, 24. Three men and one woman remained hospitalized, including Mr. Walker’s son, Alan Jeffrey Walker, 16. The other three are Carolyn Tuft, 44; Shawn Munns, 34; and Stacy Hansen, 53.

For many of the hundreds of people who dived for cover, ran from restaurants or, in a few instances, stepped out hoping somehow to help stop the killing, the memories were raw.

David Dean, co-owner of two stores in the mall, Cabin Fever and TabulaRasa, was eating dinner with his business partner at their home, a few blocks from Trolley Square. Mr. Dean, 61, happened to call the assistant manager of Cabin Fever, a card and gift shop, just as the gunman shot out the store’s front window and began firing at customers.

“I could hear the gunfire,” Mr. Dean said. “I asked my employee what was happening. He said that someone was in the store killing people, and I told him to take cover.”

Mr. Dean said he called back two or three minutes later and the gunman had left the store. “I could still hear the gunshots in the mall,” he said.

Barrett Dodds, owner of the Brass Key, an art and antiques boutique, had just bought his girlfriend a bracelet at Haroons, on the second floor near a balcony above where Mr. Talovic was eventually killed.

Mr. Dodds grabbed a bar stool, intending to throw it at Mr. Talovic from the balcony. “I thought, somebody’s got to step up,” Mr. Dodds said. “He’s just reloading and shooting, reloading and shooting.”

Mr. Dodds said he ducked when he saw Mr. Talovic aim his rifle toward the balcony; chunks of the ceiling fell after Mr. Talovic fired upward.

At Rodizio, the Brazilian steakhouse, three meat-cutters ran into the mall corridor armed with knives, said Mr. Brito, the waiter. They ran back seconds later, Mr. Brito said, after drawing the gunman’s fire. One of the men had blood running down his face, having been grazed by a shotgun pellet or hit by flying glass. He was treated outside the mall and sent home, Mr. Brito said.

Scott Hale, owner of the Desert Edge pub, left his restaurant just minutes before the gunfire began. Shortly afterward, Mr. Hale’s sister called him with news of the shooting.

Later that night, Mr. Hale returned to the business to find a ghostly scene: meals had been left half-eaten, chairs kicked over and coats tossed about the floor as diners rushed to flee the restaurant after the shooting started.

Sally McKean, who lives north of Salt Lake City in Farmington, had been sitting with four friends at the pub. They hid under the table and heard 10 shots, she said, then fled through a back exit. They could not tell how close the killer was, she said, because of the way the shots echoed in the cavernous old building.

Dan Frosch contributed reporting from Denver, and Martin Stolz from Salt Lake City.

    Sense of Loss and Unease After Salt Lake Slayings, NYT, 14.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/14/us/14mall.html

Police Kill Man Who Shot Grandchildren

Tuesday February 13, 2007 2:16 AM
AP
The Guardian


PHOENIX (AP) - Police killed an 84-year-old man Monday after he fatally shot his granddaughter and a teenage friend who was staying with the family, authorities said.

The shooting began after the suspect got into an argument with his 20-year-old grandson about the grandson's teenage friend, police said.

The gunman shot his grandson in the leg and fatally wounded the 16-year-old friend, according to investigators. He then shot and killed his 18-year-old granddaughter after she confronted him about the attack.

Police surrounded the suspect in the home where the shootings occurred. An officer opened fire after the man raised his gun, Detective Bob Ragsdale said.

The identities of the gunman and the victims were not immediately released.

In Los Angeles, police shot and killed a mentally ill man after he tried to stab an officer in the chest during a disturbance at a group home for the disabled, authorities said.

Officers were called to the home early Sunday when Francisco Mondragon, 24, became violent and threatened two residents and a staff member.

Mondragon lunged at one of the officers with a screwdriver-like object and tried to stab him in the chest, police spokesman Lt. Paul Vernon said. The officer's bulletproof vest prevented the weapon from going through.

Mondragon had been diagnosed with depression and schizophrenia.

    Police Kill Man Who Shot Grandchildren, G, 13.2.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6411954,00.html

4 Dead at Philadelphia Marketing Company

February 13, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:15 a.m. ET
The New York Times

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- Three men were shot to death in a marketing company conference room and another was critically injured by a gunman who killed himself as police closed in, authorities said.

Police found a scene of ''utter chaos'' Monday night at the offices of Zigzag Net Inc., city police Deputy Commissioner Richard Ross said.

Two victims were on the floor and another was in a chair, all with ''wounds to various parts of the body,'' Ross said. He said two other men had been bound with duct tape but not attacked. One of those men told officers the gunman had shot himself after exchanging fire with police officer, Ross said.

''The officer mentioned to me that he had to take a knife out to cut this person loose,'' Ross said. None of the police officers was hurt.

Police identified the victims as Robert Norris, 41, of Newark, Del.; Mark Norris, 46, of Piles Grove, N.J.; and James Reif, 42, of Endicott, N.Y. The injured victim, whose name was not released, was taken to Thomas Jefferson Hospital, where he was listed in critical condition Tuesday morning.

Zigzag's Web site lists Mark Norris as president and CEO. Mark Norris and Robert Norris are brothers, said Aaron Haydn McLean, Zigzag's senior art director, but McLean said he had not been told that the company CEO was among the dead.

Reif worked with another company, Watson International, McLean said. Watson International's Web site lists a Robert Norris as vice president of business development. A phone number listed on the Web site was disconnected.

Zigzag has about 15 employees, said McLean, who has worked there for about five years.

The gunman's role in the company was not immediately clear, but Ross said police believed he might have been an investor.

Police scheduled an early afternoon news conference to discuss the shooting.

The shootings took place in the Philadelphia Naval Business Center, an office park that is part of the old Philadelphia Navy Yard.

It was one of the Navy's busiest shipbuilders during World War II but closed in 1995. Two years later, a private company, Kvaerner, resumed commercial shipbuilding in a portion of the shipyard, which is now known as Aker Shipyard. Other areas of the Navy facility have been converted to business and office use.

    4 Dead at Philadelphia Marketing Company, NYT, 13.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Philadelphia-Shooting.html

Armed Man Kills 5 at Mall in Utah

February 13, 2007
The New York Times
By MARTIN STOLZ and JENNIFER 8. LEE

SALT LAKE CITY, Feb. 12 — A lone gunman went on a shooting rampage in a Salt Lake City mall last night, killing five and wounding numerous others, before he was shot to death by police, the Salt Lake City police said.

Witnesses told of the sounds of gunfire, screaming, and crying, creating havoc for almost an hour during the busy dinnertime in the Trolley Square mall, after the gunman, who was carrying a rifle, entered and began shooting around 6:45 p.m. As the shots rang out, merchants and customers throughout the mall dove under tables and barricaded themselves in the stores.

The police arrived at the mall around 7 p.m., which is located just east of downtown, according to Detective Robin Snyder of the Salt Lake City police. As people streamed out of the store, the police surrounded the gunman, whose identity and motive was still under investigation last night. The authorities offered few details about the shootings except to say that the victims were found scattered throughout the two-story mall.

Matt Lund, whose wife manages a children’s apparel store called The Secret Garden, said he was barricaded in the store when he heard the police confront the gunman. Mr. Lund said he heard a single police officer shout "Police! Drop your weapon!" twice before a barrage of fire rang out.

Marie Smith, a manager at the Bath and Body Works store, described the gunman as a white man in his late 20s or early 30s with a rifle. Ms. Smith, 23, said she made eye contact with the gunman just before he fired his rifle at a young woman who was standing in front of the Bath and Body Works. The woman then slumped to the ground, she said. "Time — it was standing still and going fast," said Ms. Smith, 23, who then barricaded herself inside the store bathroom with another fellow employee.

The shots echoed loudly throughout the open cavernous mall, which was formerly a trolley barn. "You couldn’t tell where the shots were coming from," said Camille Jenkins, 19, who had driven down from Logan with her husband to have dinner at the mall. Her husband, Dustin Jenkins, 19, said when he first heard the shots ring out, he thought to himself, "This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening."

Last night, the floor of the mall was covered with gun casings, broken glass and dead bodies. One of the victims, a man wearing light khaki-colored pants, died in the center of the mall, his uncovered body still visible from the street through the glass doors several hours later. Witnesses said a young woman’s body was lying face down at the Pottery Barn store.

The surviving victims were taken to area hospitals, Detective Snyder said. As news of the shooting spread throughout Salt Lake City, residents gathered at the mall in fear that their loved ones were among the shooting victims. In one case, a man who had been searching for his wife for several hours collapsed on the sidewalk after he looked into a photographer’s telephoto lens and saw the carnage in the mall.

Martin Stolz reported from Salt Lake City, and Jennifer 8. Lee from New York.

Other Fatal Shootings

Earlier Monday the police in Phoenix killed an 84-year-old man who had fatally shot his granddaughter and a gunman in Philadelphia killed three men at a business meeting, The Associated Press reported.

The police in Phoenix said the man they had shot also killed a 16-year-old friend of his grandson who was staying with the family, the authorities said. The shooting began after the man got into an argument with his grandson, 20, about the friend, the police said.

The gunman shot his grandson in the leg and killed the friend, investigators said. He shot and killed his 18-year-old granddaughter after she confronted him about the attack.

Police officers surrounded the man in the home where the shootings occurred. An officer opened fire after the man raised his gun, Detective Bob Ragsdale said. The identities of the gunman and the victims were not immediately released.

The shootings in Philadelphia took place Monday night in an office building at the old Philadelphia Navy Yard, the police said. Afterward, the gunman killed himself, they said.

The gunman appeared to have become upset at a board of directors meeting for a company that might have been an investment firm, Deputy Commissioner Richard Ross said. The police were unsure of the name of the company.

The gunman, who had a semiautomatic handgun, got into an argument about “some issue about money” with others at the board meeting, the police said.

After he shot the men in the conference room, killing three and critically injuring another, he shot at the police, who returned fire, the authorities said. The gunman then went behind a door and shot himself, they said.

Two men who were in the room but not shot had been bound with duct tape, officials said.

    Armed Man Kills 5 at Mall in Utah, NYT, 13.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/13/us/14slaycnd.html?hp&ex=1171429200&en=a02a76aaee554a79&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Illegal Immigrants Slain in an Attack in Arizona

February 9, 2007
The New York Times
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 8 — Three illegal immigrants were shot to death, three were wounded and others were missing Thursday near Tucson after gunmen accosted them as they traveled north from the Mexican border, the authorities said.

The shootings came a day after gunmen in ski masks and carrying assault-style rifles robbed 18 people who had illegally crossed the border 70 miles to the south, near Sasabe. On Jan. 28 a man driving illegal immigrants from the border several miles from the scene of Thursday’s killings was ambushed and shot to death as the immigrants fled.

The federal and local authorities were investigating whether the spate of shootings was related.

Illegal immigrants crossing the Mexican border often encounter bandits, armed civilian patrols and rival smugglers bent on robbing or stopping them.

The violence has been particularly acute in Arizona, which in recent years has become the busiest crossing area for illegal immigrants.

The latest shooting appeared to be the work of bandits, law enforcement officials said, though they said they had not ruled anything out.

Investigators were still piecing together what had happened, but they said they believed that the gunmen had opened fire on the travelers, apparently all from Guatemala, about 7 a.m. along a known smuggling route in a remote area near a mine 20 miles northwest of Tucson.

Their pickup truck crashed, and two of the immigrants, a young man and a teen-age girl, were found inside, dead from gunshot wounds, said Alonzo Peña, the agent in charge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Arizona.

The gunmen forced the other immigrants into another vehicle and left, dropping off the wounded, including one person found dead later, along their way, Mr. Peña said. The others who were left were a woman with a gunshot wound in the neck, a 15-year-old girl and a man shot in the fingers.

The man with the hand wound hiked to a nearby mine, and workers there helped him call the police.

Mr. Peña said the authorities were trying to determine how many had been in the group of immigrants and how many were still missing. He said it appeared the smuggler driving the illegal immigrants and a guide had either escaped or were among the group taken captive.

The Associated Press, quoting officials of the Pima County Sheriff’s Department, said six or seven immigrants had left with the gunmen.

“There have been similar cases where undocumented migrants have been taken to a location and relatives in Mexico contacted and extortion took place,” Rick Kastigar, the criminal investigations chief for the sheriff’s department, told The A.P.

Mr. Peña said the increase in border security in the past year, including scores of additional Border Patrol agents assisted by National Guard troops, had prompted more immigrants to employ smugglers commanding ever higher prices.

The going rate is about $3,000, or higher for trips from Central America, for a guide to lead immigrants by foot across the Mexican border or in a vehicle, usually through treacherous terrain.

Some smuggling rings, rather than risk capture at the border, have chosen to rob rivals, leading to violence.

“Smugglers look at them as a commodity, a product, and in some cases they would rather rip off a load and try to extort money instead of taking the risk to smuggle,” Mr. Peña said.

The Border Patrol’s Tucson sector has reported that arrests of illegal aliens dropped 11 percent last year and is down 9 percent since October compared with the previous year. Officials at the agency have attributed the decline to additional manpower and newly installed fencing, cameras and sensors deterring crossers, though advocates for immigrants suggest that traffic may have shifted elsewhere.

    Illegal Immigrants Slain in an Attack in Arizona, NYT, 9.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/09/us/09immig.html

Felons in Florida Are Getting Permits for Guns, Report Says

January 29, 2007
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., Jan. 28 (AP) — Hundreds of criminals have been able to get permits for concealed weapons in Florida because of loopholes, errors and miscommunication, The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported Sunday.

An analysis of state records showed that the roughly 410,000 Floridians licensed to carry hidden guns included 1,400 who had pleaded guilty or no contest to felonies, 216 with outstanding warrants, 128 named in active domestic violence injunctions and 6 registered sex offenders, The Sun-Sentinel reported.

“The system, somewhere down the line, is broken,” said Sheriff Joey B. Dobson of Baker County, who sits on an advisory panel for the State Division of Licensing, which issues permits for carrying weapons.

The newspaper got the names of people on the concealed-weapons permit list shortly before lawmakers sealed it from public scrutiny last July. It said it found that the number of permits had soared to roughly 410,000 now from 25,000 in 1987, the first year carrying a concealed gun was legal in Florida.

Marion P. Hammer, a lobbyist for the National Rifle Association, blamed law enforcement gaps, judges and prosecutors for missteps that put guns in criminals’ hands.

But some say the N.R.A. pressures lawmakers to ignore the problem. “The people at the N.R.A., they know exactly what’s going on,” said Kristen Rand, legislative director of the nonprofit Violence Policy Center.

    Felons in Florida Are Getting Permits for Guns, Report Says, NYT, 29.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/29/us/29florida.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

How Real Is Too Real?

Thursday, January 18, 2007; D01
The Washington Post
By Mike Musgrove

A controversial computer game based on the Columbine High School shootings of 1999, called Super Columbine Massacre RPG, has nearly upended a game-design competition that kicks off today in Salt Lake City.

The game, available online as a free download, was a finalist in the Slamdance Guerrilla Gamemaker Competition until the festival's president yanked it this month for being a little too radioactive for the lawyers. Now, nearly half of the competition's 14 finalists have withdrawn their entries, calling the organizers' move an insult to their medium. The festival has also lost one sponsor, the Interactive Media Division of the University of Southern California.

A homebrew creation of filmmaker Danny Ledonne, the game examines the lives of shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold as they prepare for and carry out their killing spree. In flashbacks throughout the game, players learn about the killers' backgrounds, including their obsessions and their friendship. The game has been controversial for its very existence, as well as for the fact that Kimveer Gill, a Montreal gunman who went on a shooting rampage last year before killing himself, was a fan.

It's a disturbing piece of software but is considered by some in the tiny, indie gamemaker scene to be important as a work that explores the boundaries of what a game is, or can be.

Ledonne says he hopes his title, which he considers to be an "electronic documentary," will inspire others to base games on topics they find important.

Ledonne, who turns 25 today, says he was bullied as a kid and might have headed down a road in life similar to Harris and Klebold's had he not found other outlets. "I wanted to explore who they really were, and I didn't have the funding to make a film," he said.

Slamdance co-founder Peter Baxter says he decided to pull the game from the competition because he was afraid the festival might get sued out of existence for having it on the program. The game competition, a spinoff side event at the 13-year-old film festival of the same name, is in its third year.

"I was told in no uncertain terms that there was a lot of legal exposure because of its subject matter," Baxter said. "It was a very, very hard choice."

Baxter's critics in the indie-game design community say the move shows there's a "double standard" between what topics films can explore and what games can address.

Game designer Jenova Chen took his title out of the competition even though he hasn't played -- and has already decided he doesn't like -- the Columbine game.

"This is degrading to what video games are as a media and as an art form," he said of the Slamdance move. "Even though this game has nothing to do with the positive aspects of humanity, it is a game that uses the medium as journalism, letting the player experience the tragic event through a unique perspective."

Chen won the competition last year for a tranquil game that had players floating in the clouds. This year's equally meditative entry, called flOw, follows the evolution of a sea creature that swims around and swallows up other creatures to survive. A downloadable version for PlayStation 3 is on the way.

Ledonne doesn't express much hostility toward Slamdance. "I don't agree with the choices they made, but they aren't easy choices to make," he said.

I downloaded Ledonne's game recently and was surprised by the amount of work that had gone into it. Ledonne relied on transcripts of the two shooters, witness reports and other sources to create the dialogue for a game that is loaded with information.

But when it came time to start creating mayhem in the school's halls, I couldn't bring myself to push the buttons to continue. Odd, I suppose, because I have "killed" thousands of video game characters over the years. And though the game's chunky graphics are primitive, compared with nearly any new title, no game has ever made me feel nearly as queasy. I didn't want to be responsible for the real-world violence that happened that day, even in a game.

Ledonne figures that games will either grow into a medium in which it is acceptable to confront and challenge an audience with titles like his, or will devolve into a stagnant, failed format.

I'll probably be uninstalling Super Columbine Massacre tonight -- even though I think he's probably right.

    How Real Is Too Real?, WP, 18.1.2007, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/17/AR2007011702051.html

Racial Hate Feeds a Gang War’s Senseless Killing

January 17, 2007
The New York Times
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 16 — The Latino gang members were looking for a black person, any black person, to shoot, the police said, and they found one. Cheryl Green, perched near her scooter chatting with friends, was shot dead in a spray of bullets that left several other young people injured.

She was 14, an eighth grader who loved junk food and watching Court TV with her mother and had recently written a poem beginning: “I am black and beautiful. I wonder how I will be living in the future.”

“I never thought something like this could happen here in L.A.,” said her mother, Charlene Lovett, fighting tears.

Cheryl’s killing last month, which the police said followed a confrontation between the gang members and a black man, stands out in a wave of bias-related attacks and incidents in a city that promotes its diversity as much as frets over it.

Ethnic and racial tension comes to Los Angeles as regularly as the Santa Ana winds. Race-related fights afflict school campuses and jails, and two major riots, in 1965 and 1992, are hardly forgotten. But civil rights advocates say that the violence grew at an alarming rate last year, continuing a trend of more Latino versus black confrontations and prompting street demonstrations and long discussions on talk-radio programs and in community meetings.

Much of the violence springs from rivalries between black and Latino gangs, especially in neighborhoods where the black population has been declining and the Latino population surging. A 14 percent increase in gang crime last year, at a time when overall violent crime was down, has been attributed in good measure to the interracial conflict.

This month, the authorities reported that crimes in the city motivated by racial, religious or sexual orientation discrimination had increased 34 percent in 2005 over the previous year. Statistics for 2006 have not yet been compiled.

Rabbi Allen Freehling, executive director of the Los Angeles Human Relations Commission, a group created after the 1965 riots, said the recent growth in hate crimes reflected a failure by government and community leaders to prepare residents for socioeconomic changes in many neighborhoods, “and therefore people have a tendency to lash out, out of desperation.”

In November, three Latino gang members received sentences of life in federal prison for crimes that included the murder of two black men — one waiting for a bus, another searching for a parking spot — and assaults on others in a conspiracy to intimidate black residents of a northeast Los Angeles neighborhood.

In another case, a twist on past racial dramas, 10 black youths, some of whom prosecutors say had connections to a gang, are on trial for what prosecutors contend was a racially motivated attack in neighboring Long Beach on three young white women who were visiting a haunted house on Halloween. Long Beach also experienced an increase in hate crimes in 2005.

But even with the alarm caused by the recent increase in bias crimes, Constance L. Rice, a veteran civil rights lawyer, said that, considering Los Angeles’s diversity, race relations remained relatively calm and were even marked by many examples of groups getting along.

Still, in several corners of the city, particularly where poverty is high and demographics are shifting, tensions have been flaring.

“You don’t find entire segments of the city against one another,” Ms. Rice said, “but in the hot spots and areas of friction you find it is because the demographics are in transition and there is an assertion of power by one group or the other and you get friction.”

In Harbor Gateway, the neighborhood where Cheryl Green was killed, tension had grown so severe that blacks and Latinos formed a dividing line on a street that both sides understood never to cross and a small market was unofficially declared off-limits to blacks. Ms. Lovett had warned her children not to go near the line, 206th Street, but Cheryl had ridden her scooter near it to talk to friends when she was shot.

Neighbors said the dominant 204th Street gang, which is Latino, had harassed blacks and Latinos alike and effectively kept the groups divided, though language and cultural differences also have contributed to segregation.

“We wave hello, but I cannot really talk to blacks because my English is limited and I don’t want to mess with the gang,” said Armando Lopez, speaking in Spanish, who lives near where Cheryl was shot.

A man who described himself as a former member of the 204th Street gang said black gang members had shot or assaulted Latinos, too, and explained the violence as a deadly tit-for-tat.

“They shot a Mexican guy right around the corner from here and nobody protested or said anything,” said the man, who asked that his name not be used for fear of retaliation. He referred to neighborhood speculation that Cheryl’s killing was in retaliation for the killing of Arturo Mercado, a Latino shot to death in the neighborhood a week before Cheryl in what the police call an unexplained shooting.

The violence in that neighborhood and others has prompted a flurry of announcements by Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa and police officials promising a renewed crackdown on gangs, particularly those responsible for hate-related crimes. Mr. Villaraigosa plans to meet Friday with Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, about expanding its assistance in investigating gang and hate-related violence; the agency has been working with the police on such investigations in the San Fernando Valley, where gang violence has increased the most.

Chief William J. Bratton has said the Police Department would soon issue a most-wanted list of the city’s 10 to 20 worst gangs, with those most active in hate crimes likely to land on it.

“It’s to say, ‘We’re coming after you,’ ” Mr. Bratton said.

A city-financed report by Ms. Rice released Friday said Los Angeles needed a “Marshall plan” to address gang violence in light of a growth in gang membership and a lack of a comprehensive strategy to curb the problem.

Despite the spike in hate crimes in 2005, the total number of bias-related incidents in Los Angeles, 333 in a city of 3.8 million people, was down from peaks in violent crime in the mid-1990s and just after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Cheryl Green’s killing particularly alarmed community and civil rights advocates because of her age and the indication that the neighborhood’s long history of racial violence was continuing. Two Latino gang members have been charged with murder in the case. With the district attorney having filed a formal allegation that the men were motivated by hate, they could be eligible for the death penalty or life in prison without parole if convicted.

Mr. Villaraigosa, the city’s first Latino mayor in over a century, was elected in 2005 in part on a promise of keeping peace among racial and ethnic groups. He attended a rally in the Harbor Gateway neighborhood Saturday, one of a few demonstrations calling for unity. He hugged Ms. Lovett and Beatriz Villa, the sister-in-law of Mr. Mercado, the Latino killed earlier.

“Our cultural and ethnic diversity are cornerstones of a strong L.A.,” the mayor said Friday, “and violent crime motivated by the victim’s skin color will not be tolerated.”

Earl Ofari Hutchinson, an African-American syndicated columnist who plays host to the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable, a weekly gathering in the Leimert Park neighborhood of South Los Angeles, said blacks complained that illegal Latin American immigrants were stealing jobs. Latinos, particularly newcomers unaccustomed to living among large numbers of African-Americans, in turn accuse blacks of criminal activity and harassing them.

“I think L.A. is a microcosm of what could happen in big cities in the future,” Mr. Hutchinson said. “When we have the kind of tension you see in L.A. in the schools, the workplace and now hate-crime violence, my great concern is this is a horrific view of what could happen in other cities.”

Ms. Lovett, Cheryl’s mother, said the family moved to Harbor Gateway six years ago to get away from a high-crime neighborhood in another part of Los Angeles. A relative of a black neighbor was shot by the gang a few years ago, she said, and recently she had begun looking for a safer area.

“I feel it is unfortunate my daughter had to be the sacrificial lamb,” she said. “But I just hope there is a change in this neighborhood.”

    Racial Hate Feeds a Gang War’s Senseless Killing, NYT, 17.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/17/us/17race.html?hp&ex=1169096400&en=20e6b200bebccf4f&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Man Arrested in Killing of Police Officer in N.J.

January 16, 2007
The New York Times
By JOHN HOLL

Following an intense weeklong manhunt, authorities arrested a man on this morning and charged him with the shooting death of an off-duty police officer from Paterson, N.J.

About 6:30 a.m. a multi-agency task force stormed an apartment building in Irvington, N.J., based on information from a tipster, said Lt. Anthony Traina of the Paterson Police Department.

The police said they had Teddy Charlemagne, 23, in custody and were interrogating him.

Details of the arrest were not immediately available but officials planned to provide more specifics in a news conference scheduled for this afternoon.

On Jan. 7, Officer Tyron D. Franklin, 23, was inside the Broadway Fried Chicken restaurant in Paterson around 1 a.m. when a gunman entered the store and demanded money. Following a brief scuffle, the man shot Officer Franklin, a rookie on the force who was unarmed at the time.

Officer Franklin, the father of a 16-month-old son, was buried on Saturday with full honors.

The authorities had offered a $60,000 reward for the arrest of Officer Franklin’s killer and Lieutenant Traina said a scholarship fund for the officer’s son had been established at a local bank.

Paterson police along with county, state and Federal officials had released a composite sketch of the suspect based on accounts from witnesses and said the suspect appeared to be driving a light colored minivan. Twice, officers believed they had captured the suspect. Once following a car chase in East Orange and last week after surrounding an apartment building in Jersey City. Both incidents were cases of mistaken identity, Lieutenant Traina said.

    Man Arrested in Killing of Police Officer in N.J., NYT, 16.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/16/nyregion/16cnd-paterson.html

More guns equal more murders in U.S. states: study

Thu Jan 11, 2007 9:58 PM ET
Reuters



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - American states where more people own guns have higher murder rates, including murders of children, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health reported on Thursday.

The study, certain to provoke arguments in a country where gun ownership is an important political issue, found that about one in three U.S. households reported firearm ownership.

"Our findings suggest that in the United States, household firearms may be an important source of guns used to kill children, women and men, both on the street and in their homes," said Matthew Miller, assistant professor of health policy and injury prevention, who led the study.

His team used data from a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey of 200,000 people in all 50 states.

After dividing the states into four groups based on how many households had guns, the researchers found the states in the highest quartile of firearm ownership had overall homicide rates 60 percent higher than states in the lowest quartile.

In states with the most guns, firearm homicide rates were 114 percent higher, the researchers reported in the February issue of Social Science and Medicine.

More than 200 million guns are privately owned in the United States, according to the Justice Department.

In September, the FBI released 2005 figures showing violent crime had risen 2.3 percent nationally -- the first increase in four years.

    More guns equal more murders in U.S. states: study, R, 11.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2007-01-12T025831Z_01_N11177009_RTRUKOC_0_US-GUNS-MURDERS.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-domesticNews-2

Two shot as Vegas road rage shooting ends at school

Tue Jan 9, 2007 1:34 PM ET
Reuters

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Two students were wounded in a Las Vegas road rage incident on Tuesday that ended in gunfire at a high school parking lot, police said.

A male student was shot in the ankle and a girl was hit in the stomach by a bullet that ricocheted, Las Vegas police spokesman Joe Montoya said. Neither of the injuries was life threatening.

"This was not a school shooting. It was a road rage incident that occurred a couple of blocks from the school and just happened to end at the high school," Montoya said.

Montoya said the shooter and a student at the school nearly collided at a nearby gas station and the two drivers exchanged angry words. The shooter then followed the student to Western High School, outside downtown Las Vegas.

"The suspect followed the car as it went into the high school parking lot and fired 4-7 shots, hitting one of the student passengers and an unrelated female who happened to be in the parking lot at the time," Montoya said.

The high school campus was not shut down. Police were looking for the shooter, who drove off after the incident.

    Two shot as Vegas road rage shooting ends at school, R, 9.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2007-01-09T183351Z_01_N09482710_RTRUKOC_0_US-USA-SHOOTING.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-domesticNews-2

Taser sells small version for wider use

Updated 1/8/2007 7:44 AM ET
USA Today
By Robert Davis

Taser International today unveils a new model of its controversial stun gun designed for widespread use by regular folks. It's more affordable and small enough to be stashed in a purse or backpack.

Critics and supporters have a lot to say about the sleek device unveiled at the 2007 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The size of a TV remote control, the Taser C2 goes on sale in April for about $300 and comes in the metallic pink, electric blue and titanium silver of popular cellphones.

Opponents say Tasers can be used for torture; supporters say the devices are safe when used appropriately.

Taser has sold about 120,000 civilian versions since 1994, a model that is larger than the latest incarnation and shaped like a gun. Since 1991, Taser has sold more than 200,000 devices to law enforcement. Both shoot barbs that pierce the skin and deliver an incapacitating jolt of electricity. Current civilian models cost about $1,000.

Taser says the C2, less powerful than the police version, is designed to stun for 30 seconds, providing enough time for the shooter to flee from danger.

"It's a terrible idea. It's a dangerous idea," says Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA, which says there have been 200 Taser-related deaths. "I can't think of any reason you would want these out in public."

Daniel Garza, 42, was glad he bought the civilian Taser when a man climbed in the back seat of his truck Dec. 17 at a Yuba City, Calif., Wal-Mart. Garza zapped the intruder, who was arrested. "The Taser did the job," Garza says.

Private citizens are not allowed to own Tasers in the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Michigan, New Jersey, New York and Wisconsin.

Taser C2 "is a device (owners) can keep in their nightstand," says Taser president Tom Smith. Safeguards include:

•It's sold "inert" and can be activated by the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based company only after a background check by SureCheck, which costs $10.

•When the device is fired, it sprays about 30 tiny pieces of confetti encoded with the serial number of the cartridge. The tags allow police to trace the device back to the registered owner.

The Taser C2 has some police worried. "There are concerns in law enforcement about the public having access to these types of weapons," says Wendy Balazik, spokeswoman for the International Association of Chiefs of Police. "Those concerns include: Who is buying them? How are they going to be used? What are they going to be used for?"

    Taser sells small version for wider use, UT, 8.1.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-01-08-little-taser_x.htm

Student Shot at School in Tacoma

January 3, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:49 p.m. ET

TACOMA, Wash. (AP) -- A student was shot to death at his high school as classes about to start Wednesday morning, and police were searching for the gunman, officials said.

The student's age and details of the 7:30 a.m. shooting at Foss High School were not immediately released, but police spokesman Mark Fulghum said no one else was believed to be injured. He said police were trying to determine what prompted the attack.

The suspect was believed to be another student, and school district spokeswoman Peggy Holmgren said there were witnesses to the attack.

According to Holmgren, the student was shot just outside a school door, though several students told televisions stations that the shooting was actually in a hallway.

''I thought it was fireworks, but it was probably three shots,'' Jacki Phongsavath, a junior at Foss, told KOMO-TV of Seattle. ''I looked around the corner and saw someone laying on the ground and blood on the lockers.''

Phongsavath said he didn't know who the shooter was.

The school was locked down after the shooting. By about 8:30, police had secured the building and students were being sent home, Tacoma School District spokeswoman Pam Thompson said. Classes were canceled for the rest of the day.

Wednesday had been the first day back for Foss students after the winter break.

    Student Shot at School in Tacoma, NYT, 3.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-School-Shooting.html?hp&ex=1167886800&en=ba9c16f27eb56e83&ei=5094&partner=homepage

La. Town's First Black Mayor - Elect Slain

January 2, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:55 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WESTLAKE, La. (AP) -- The city council scheduled an emergency meeting Tuesday after the mayor-elect, the first black man elected to lead the largely white town, was found shot to death.

The body of Gerald Washington, 57, was found Saturday night in the parking lot of a former school. He had been shot once in the chest, investigators said. Officials said a pistol was found nearby.

The killing is being investigated as a homicide, but Calcasieu Parish sheriff's spokeswoman Kim Myers said Tuesday morning that no arrests had been made and the department had no suspects.

Washington, who served three terms as a city councilman, was supposed to have taken office Tuesday as Westlake's first new mayor in 24 years.

The city council has 10 days to appoint an interim mayor. If it fails to meet that deadline, the governor could appoint someone to lead the town, according to Mayor Dudley Dixon, who is retiring.

Although the southwest Louisiana town of 4,500 is 80 percent white, Washington had no trouble winning election in September.

The retired refinery worker had 696 votes -- nearly 69 percent of the vote -- to 318 for social worker Paula Johnson.

''Mr. Washington is going to be missed by all the people of Westlake,'' Dixon said. ''It's one of the most tragic things I've heard in a long time. He would be a good mayor.''

Longtime Councilman Dan Cupit said he had been looking forward to working with Washington as mayor. ''Westlake lost a good friend,'' he said.

    La. Town's First Black Mayor - Elect Slain, NYT, 2.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Mayor-Killed.html

Denver Broncos football player

shot, killed

Mon Jan 1, 2007 2:06 PM ET
Reuters
By Keith Coffman

DENVER (Reuters) - Denver Broncos football player Darrent Williams was killed early Monday morning in a drive-by shooting, according to a statement on the team's Web site.

Williams, 24, was riding in a limousine in downtown Denver after 2 a.m. (4 a.m. EST/0900 GMT) when shots fired from another vehicle hit him and a man and woman also riding in his car, said Denver Police spokesman Sonny Jackson.

"Multiple shots were fired into the vehicle, striking three people and one male party was transported to a hospital and was pronounced dead," Jackson said.

The team said in a statement that "Denver Broncos cornerback Darrent Williams was shot and killed early Monday morning."

Jackson said the two wounded people were also taken to a local hospital with "non-life threatening injuries." Police have no suspects and were interviewing eyewitnesses, he said.

"It is a terrible tragedy," National Football League spokesman Greg Aiello told Reuters. "We don't know all the details yet, but we are reaching out to the Broncos to offer our support."

The shooting occurred just hours after the Broncos were eliminated from the playoffs with a 26-23 overtime loss to the San Francisco 49ers.

Williams was in his second season with the Broncos coming out of Oklahoma State University as a second-round draft choice.

The 5-foot-8 (1.7-meter), 188-pound (85.4 kg) cornerback started 9 games in 2005, the most by a rookie at that position since 1975. He had two interceptions in 2005 and four this season.

Denver Broncos football player shot, killed, R, 1.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2007-01-01T190635Z_01_N01295563_RTRUKOC_0_US-BRONCOS-WILLIAMS.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C2-TopNews-newsOne-2