did anybody happen to hear about the gunman that killed 5 people before being taken down by police in the trolley square mall here in salt lake city? here is a link
click me . we're good friends with the off duty officer involved. Chloe was in his wedding! anyway, its been all over the news here.
crazy stuff
-ryan
7 comments:
Claudia said,
Dad figured Casey would know him. We read all about it here. Isn't it so sad? Dad said he heard the fifteen year old was related to President Hinckley.
So they know why the kid did it? What would make an 18 year old want to go and kill innocent people? It's a good thing that Ogden city officer was there to stop him, otherwise more people would have died. They said he was armed to the teeth!
well, i don't know about armed to the teeth, but the kid was ready to do some damage.
he was a bosnian (sp?) refugee that moved here in 2000. he escaped the the massacres that were taking place there in the mid 90's. the whole thing is pretty confusing. ken's (the OPD officer) son stayed the night with us last night so they could be at a press conference at 5 this morning (7 eastern). there was a father and son walking out of the mall that were the 1st to be hit. i think a 15 year old kid and his dad.
-ryan
Meridth has a close friend whose parent's are in the same ward with that 15 year old and his dad. The father died on the scene, I think, and the son is in critical, not doing well.
When I read it was an OPD off-duty officer I instantly thought of Casey. He's lucky he didn't get killed, but it speaks highly of him that he engaged. As for the boy, he had a shotgun and a .38 in his backpack that went unused. Not to the teeth exactly, but I wouldn't want to face-off with a kid with a pump-acton if I just had a handgun.
I heard that the Salt Lake police wrapped up the firefight quite quickly. Post-Columbine, departments are much more proactive in these situations.
Finally, I have a hard time believing that a Bosniak would be related to GBH, but stranger things. The brunt of the fighting in Bosnia-Herzgovinia would have happened when he was between the ages of three and five. I dare not speculate if that was a motivator in the incident, but he may not even have many clear memories of what happened. Still, you never know.
Oh sorry Mom, I read your comment wrong. Thought you said the shooter was related. Scratch that.
-Rusty
I just read that the gunman barely escaped the massacres in Srebrenica in 1995. It was a really bad situation. The UN established what they described as a "safe zone" near the village of Srebrenica and the Serbs seiged the city. The UN force, with its weak chapter six mandate, didn't have the will, supplies or troop strenth to engage. 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were rounded up in the forests outside the village and killed. Really bad stuff. The kid could have been seven when this went down. That could really screw a kid up. Really sad.
-Rusty
Ken spoke of some of the training that has come out because of incidents like colombine. their current strategy in situations like this is to basically clear the area as fast as possible up to the shooter as to minimize further deaths. this is similar to the strategy i used to use when playing paintball. when we played against other schools, we would start on opposite ends of the playing field and our team would just rush the other team. this worked great for people trying to play a safer game and move from cover point to cover point because we would usually catch them unprepared.
i know reality is quite different than a game, but the point i'm trying to make is when you have a localized pocket of activity you want to move to that area as quickly as possible.
i'm sure rusty could speak volumes more accurately on the subject. i'm just relating my own limited experience.
good day.
-ryan
I actually just found out that my aunt was there at the shooting. She was at a restaurant, at a bar closer to the inside and the kid shot someone on the outside of the restaurant. Everybody on the inside of the restaurant, including my Aunt Sally, ran to the other side of the bar to hide. The shooter didn't notice and kept on shooting in the strip mall. Aunt Sally said that it was horrifying listening to all the gun shot noises, realizing that someone had just been killed or severely wounded...
Crazy.
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