Why Ban Guns When We've Already Banned Murder?

Carthage, N.C. — A lone gunman burst into a North Carolina nursing home Sunday morning and started "shooting everything," barging into the rooms of terrified patients, sparing some from his rampage without explanation while killing seven residents and a nurse caring for them.Authorities said Robert Stewart also wounded three others, including the Carthage police officer who confronted him in a hallway of Pinelake Health and Rehab and stopped the brutal attack."He acted in nothing short of a heroic way today, and but for his actions, we certainly could have had a worse tragedy," said Moore County District Attorney Maureen Krueger. "We had an officer, a well-trained officer, who performed his job the way he was supposed to and prevented this from getting even worse than it is now."By late Sunday afternoon, Krueger had charged Stewart, 45, of Moore County, with eight counts of first-degree murder and a single charge of felony assault of a law enforcement officer. Authorities offered few other details, allowing only that Stewart was not a patient or an employee at the nursing home and isn't believed to be related to any of the victims."I don't know if the emotion entirely has set in," said Police Chief Chris McKenzie, a Carthage native who said nothing in his nearly 20-year law enforcement career compared to Sunday's slaughter. "It's a small community built on faith, and faith will get us through."
Authorities searched Stewart's home, 2530 Glendon Carthage Road in Carthage, Sunday night. While they declined to comment on a possible motive, Stewart's ex-wife said he had violent tendencies. Sue Griffin said she was married to Stewart for 15 years.
“He would get mad because of things that didn't go his way. He never really hurt me, but he would get mad and blow up,” Griffin said.
Authorities said Stewart began his rampage around 10 a.m. at Pinelake Health and Rehab Center, 801 Pinehurst Ave., a 110-bed rehabilitation, nursing and Alzheimer's care facility in Carthage. It ended when 25-year-old Officer Justin Garner traded gunfire with Stewart in a hallway, wounding the suspect.
"He just comes in and just starts shooting everything around," said Sen. Harris Blake, of Moore County, relating the story told by sheriff's officials.Garner was wounded in his leg, and police said Stewart wounded two others. One person remained hospitalized Sunday night at FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital in nearby Pinehurst, and police would only say Stewart was in the custody of the Moore County Sheriff.Krueger said the victims were Pinelake residents Tessie Garner, 88; Lillian Dunn, 89; Jessie Musser, 88; Bessie Hendrick, 78; John Goldston, 78; Margaret Johnson, 89; Louise De Kler, 98; and nurse Jerry Avant Jr., 39.
“All I heard was just that someone went in there and started shooting,” said Jerry Avant, Jerry Avant Jr.’s father.
Jerry Avant said doctors called his son a hero.
“He saved a lot of lives before he went down,” Jerry Avant said.
Tammy Clark's mother was inside the nursing home when the rampage began.
"To my understanding, he was shooting at the residents and the workers,” Clark said. “He went into the room and shot some of the people right there in their beds."
Clark’s mother wasn't injured.
“I don't know if the emotion has entirely set in. This is a small community based on faith, and faith will see us through,” McKenzie said.
The facility was closed after the attack as authorities worked to gather evidence inside and out. Krueger declined to say if authorities had moved the surviving residents, including patients with Alzheimer's disease, saying only, "They're safe, which is the primary thing."
"It’s very difficult. We prepare for these types of situations all the time. No one ever expects it to happen,” said Emily Sloane, with FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital.
"We wish to express our sincere concern and condolences for the victims and their families of this tragedy. We are cooperating with the police investigation and will assist in any way that we can," Pinelake Health and Rehab said in a statement Sunday evening.
Pinelake Health and Rehab was last inspected in May, and the review resulted in an overall five-star - or "much above average" - rating from federal Medicaid officials. A nursing home Web site said the facility opened in 1993 and has 110 beds, including 20 for those with Alzheimer's disease.

Committing murder is illegal, yet it continues to happen. Guns are banned in Washington DC, New York etc, yet criminals still use them. Marijuana, it's illegal and everywhere. One more time: "Laws are obeyed by the law abiding, and I'm not too worried about them."

 

"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have."

 

 

 

Gang shooting leaves innocent man dead

by Michael Ferraresi - Mar. 24, 2009 12:34 PM
The Arizona Republic

Police on Tuesday said an innocent man suffered a fatal gunshot wound during a midday gang shooting in south Phoenix.

The 54-year-old victim was struck Monday by a rifle's bullet fired from a vehicle moving northbound on 16th Street near Elwood Street, according to Phoenix Detective Cindy Scott.

Gilbert Leon, who died later at an area hospital, was also driving northbound on 16th Street when someone in a group of unidentified men fired a rifle at a blue 1996 Chevrolet Caprice on 16th Street.

"Investigators believe the victim was an innocent bystander and not directly involved in an altercation with the suspect," Scott wrote in an e-mail, adding that little information on the suspect was immediately available.

Officers responded around 1 p.m. in the 3600 block of South 16th Street, just north of Broadway Road.

Four people were inside the Caprice when the suspect opened fire on the vehicle, striking it several times. A 31-year-old man suffered a gunshot wound to his lower back but was in stable condition at a local hospital, police said.

A 48-year-old woman was uninjured when her 2007 BMW SUV was also struck by random bullets.

No arrests have been made. Police are searching for three men involved in the shooting.

Anyone with information is asked to call Phoenix Police at (602) 262-6141 or Silent Witness at (480) WITNESS.

Situational awareness:  try to be aware of what’s happening around you.  Avoid confrontation as much as possible.  And still, you may die because of somebodies rotten crotchfruit with a gun.

 

 

 

 

 

Stupid + Gun = Dead Innocents

Arrest made in shooting death

GLENDALE- A man displaying a gun in a restaurant accidentally fired it early Saturday morning, killing an acquaintance, according to Phoenix police.
Velibor Milic, 19, had the gun out and was bumped, said Detective Cindy Scott, a Phoenix police spokeswoman. The gun discharged, killing a 22-year-old man at about 2:15 Saturday morning.


Milic left the Restaurant Nostalgia, at 4340 W. Thunderbird Road, in Glendale, and was later found and arrested.

Certainly you didn't think I'd only post stories where a gun in private hands would have been beneficial? This clown breaks laws and rules of gun safety, and here is the result.

Odd that they mention the 15 guns he didn't use.

15 guns found at German school killer's home

WINNENDEN, Germany (CNN) -- Police searching for a motive behind the shooting which left 15 people dead in Germany have found 15 guns at the killer's home and video games played by other mass killers.

German shooter Tim Kretschmer, 17, targeted females during his rampage.

Police said Thursday that the guns belonged to 17-year-old killer Tim Kretschmer's father, who was a gun club member.
Regional police director Ralf Michelfelder said that under German law legally purchased weapons had to be kept in places inaccessible to anyone who wasn't the license-holder.
Officials searching Kretschmer's home computer found several games that suspects in other mass school shootings also had on their terminals.

Kretschmer, dressed in military gear, began his rampage about 9:45 a.m. Wednesday at Albertville-Realschule school in Winnenden, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) northeast of Stuttgart.
Most of the victims at the school were female -- eight female students, three female teachers and one male student, said Heribert Rech, interior minister for Baden Wuerttemberg region.

Kretschmer did not shoot wildly, Rech said, hitting most of his victims in the head.
The gunman killed three others -- one at a nearby psychiatric clinic, and two at a car dealership -- before he was spotted by police about three hours and a half hours later.
Michelfelder said it was still not clear whether the gunman then committed suicide or was shot by officers.

He said prompt action from teachers at the school had saved lives. They knew to barricade themselves inside classrooms, keep students away from windows and get everyone to lie on the floor.
Michelfelder said Kretschmer may have planned to confine his attack to the school but the prompt action of teachers locking down their classrooms and the arrival of police -- who exhanged fire with him -- forced him to flee.

He said police found more than 60 spent rounds from the gunman's 9 mm Beretta pistol, indicating that he must have fired at least five dozen times.

They also found a "large number" of bullets that the gunman either dropped or tossed as he fled the campus.

Rech said the dead were taken completely by surprise.
"Some of the victims still had their pens in their hands."

Kretschmer opened fire in three first floor classrooms, including a physics lab where a teacher was found dead behind her desk, Rech told a news conference.

Student Louis Schweizer was in class when he heard the gunshots. "When I came out, I saw the shell casings lying around everywhere," he said.
His sister, Lisa Schweizer, also heard the shots. "It is a tragedy," she said. "One of my teachers was killed."

Another student told CNN: "We heard that someone was inside shooting. Then we also saw a teacher who had blood on his hands because he wanted to help a female teacher who sacrificed herself for a student -- she stood in front of a student to protect her."

Fifteen-year-old Natta lost a long-time friend. "She was a very good friend of mine from soccer, and I knew her since we were four years old and it's very hard," she said.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said it was "inconceivable that within seconds school students and teachers have been put to death by this terrible crime."

"It is a day of mourning for the whole of Germany," she said.
About 1,000 students attend the school where the killings began.

"It (Winnenden) is a small town, an idyllic town," said Frank Nipkau, the editor in chief of Winnenden Zeitung newspaper. "The town people are devastated and they can't understand why this is happening in this town."
Security at German schools has been an issue in the past.
In November 2006, an 18-year-old former student strapped explosives to his body and went on a rampage at a middle school in western Germany, shooting and wounding six people -- most of them students -- before killing himself.
In July 2003, a 16-year-old student shot a teacher before taking his own life at a school in the southern German town of Coburg.

A year earlier, 18 people were killed when an expelled student went on a shooting spree at his school in eastern Germany.

So... daddy was a wealthy businessman who legally owned 16 guns, one of which he didn't keep locked up from his spoiled brat, out of touch and largely ignored wretched little crotchfruit. Yet I'm certain those of us who own guns and properly store them away, are now being eyeballed as potential lunatics. If this nutcase had obeyed the law and did not illegally shoot these people, this would not have happened either. Sounds like a dumb thing to say? Laws are for those who abide by them.... your troubles are with criminals who break them. Why should I be punished when a drunk runs over a four year old?

Fwd: One Gun.

Shooting Spree Terrifies Small Ala. Towns

At least 10 people were killed Tuesday afternoon in a shooting rampage in southern Alabama by a lone gunman, according to the FBI.

Jim Stromenger of the Samson, Ala., police department said the shootings occurred in at least four separate locations in two towns. No motive is known at this time, he said.

It is believed that the gunman, who was not immediately identified by police, shot a man and a woman at a gas station. Their condition was not immediately known.

He then went to a private home where he killed at least five people on the porch, Stromenger said.

Stromenger said the shooter drove the 12 miles from Samson east to Geneva "and apparently he shot some people there and he made it to Reliable Metal and that's where the incident ended."

After he fired at a state trooper, police pursued the gunman to Reliable Metal, where he fired an estimated 30 rounds. One of the bullets hit the Geneva police chief, who was saved by his bullet proof vest, the Alabama safety department said in a statement.

The gunman then went into the plant and shot himself, the AP reported.

Reliable Metal Products makes grills and vents for heating and AC systems, mainly for hotels. A call to a person who answered the phone at the plant said no one could talk about the shooting, according to the AP.

The towns of Geneva and Samson are roughly 30 miles south of Fort Rucker, near the Florida border in southeast Alabama. Geneva's population is about 4,400 and Samson, 2,000.

Geneva County coroner Max Motley said he was called to the Big Little Store on West Main Street in Samson, where he found the body of a woman between the gas pump and the front door, the Dothan, Ala., Eagle's Web site reported. She was found face up with at least one fatal gunshot wound.

Geneva County deputies rammed the suspect's Mitsubishi Eclipse in front of Alabama Title Loans on Highway 52, near Wal-Mart according to the Eagle.

With reporting by Erin Donovan of ABC News.

One man with a gun can do all this, one man (or woman) with a gun could have stopped all this. Laws that restrict weapons will only affect the law abiding. And frankly, I don't worry too much about them.

We've got big balls, mighty big balls....

Children of older fathers do less well in IQ tests
Mon Mar 9, 2009 8:14am EDT

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Children of older fathers appear to perform less well in intelligence tests during infancy and childhood, a study by researchers in Australia shows.
In contrast, the study found that children with older mothers tended to gain higher scores in the same tests designed to measure the ability to think and reason, including concentration, learning, memory, speaking and reading skills.
Men and women are having children later particularly in developed countries. But while the effects of having children later for women are widely discussed, consequences of increased paternal age are not as well known.
Recent studies have drawn links between older fathers and specific health problems in their children, including birth deformities and cancer, as well as neuropsychiatric conditions such as autism and schizophrenia.
In the study, the researchers analyzed data from intelligence tests taken by 33,437 children who were born between 1959 and 1965 in the United States.
The children were tested at 8 months, 4 years and 7 years and were assessed for their sensory discrimination, hand-eye coordination, reading, spelling and arithmetic ability.
They found that the older the father, the more likely the child would have lower scores on the various tests.
In contrast, the older the mother, the higher the scores of the child in the cognitive tests.
"Previous researchers have suggested that the children of older mothers may perform better because they experience a more nurturing home environment; if this is the case, this study suggests that children of older fathers do not necessarily experience the same benefit," the researchers wrote in a statement.
The researchers said the lower scores obtained by offspring of older men may have to do with mutation.
"Unlike a woman's eggs which are formed when she herself is in the womb, a man's sperm accumulates over his lifetime, which previous studies have suggested can mean increased incidence of mutations in the sperm at an older age," they wrote.

That has to be a typo. Can you imagine if it accumulated? Where would the swimmers go? Of course, it would explain why men spit so much....

And why did they use data that was over 43 years old? Children born in that timeframe were probably conceived by older guys who lived through the most industrially polluted time in American history.

Gotta love those Fark headlines.

I just thought this was funny.

 

 

In celebration of his 69th birthday tomorrow, Chuck Norris will randomly select one lucky child to be thrown into the sun.

Come to Acapulco, where you can get the weight off your shoulders....

12 decapitated bodies found in southern Mexico

Dec. 22, 2008 08:28 AM
Associated Press

ACAPULCO, Mexico - Authorities found the decapitated bodies of 12 men in the southern state of Guerrero on Sunday, and some of the victims have been identified as soldiers.

State Public Safety Secretary Juan Salinas Altes said nine bodies were found on a major boulevard in the state capital, Chilpancingo, just a few hundred yards (meters) from where the state governor participated in a traditional religious procession later in the day amid heavy security.

Mexico has been hit by a rising wave of drug-fueled violence, and officials estimate that more than 5,300 people have died in organized crime-related slayings so far in 2008.

Mexican drug cartels have increasingly taken to chopping the heads off their victims, who include rival traffickers and lawmen. On Aug. 28, a dozen decapitated bodies were found outside Merida, the capital of Yucatan state.

Experts are still trying to identify the bodies found Sunday, but a still-undetermined number of them are soldiers, Salinas Altes said. An army base is located nearby.

The bodies were found spread along the length of the boulevard, and nearby a sign was found that read "for every one of mine that you kill, I will kill 10."

Nine heads, some gagged with tape, were found in a bag nearby.

Local prosecutors said three more decapitated bodies were found Sunday in a village on the outskirts of Chilpancingo.

Two other severed heads were found on the same boulevard in Chilpancingo on Dec. 7 alongside a sign reading: "Soldiers who are supposedly fighting crime, and they turn out to be kidnappers. This is going to happen to you."

Scores of police and soldiers have been killed since President Felipe Calderon launched an offensive against the cartels in late 2006. While Mexican criminal gangs once appeared to avoid confrontations with the army, they now often openly attack soldiers.

In May 2007, gunmen linked to a drug gang killed five soldiers in an ambush in the neighboring state of Michoacan.

Also Sunday, federal police reported they had captured three suspected cartel hit men in the border city of Tijuana, across from San Diego, California. The suspects allegedly had six assault rifles and about 3,500 rounds of ammunition at the home where they were caught.

Indeed, the Mexican Government is Fully in Control of the Violence.

Mexican President rejects 'failed state' label

Feb. 26, 2009 04:10 PM
Associated Press

MEXICO CITY - President Felipe Calderon on Thursday rejected U.S. concerns that Mexico is losing control of its territory to drug cartels and allowing violence to spiral out of control.

In an interview with the Associated Press, Calderon said Mexico is making progress in its war against the cartels. He said he hopes to withdraw the army and turn the fight over to local police before he leaves office in 2012.

“To say that Mexico is a failed state is absolutely false,” Calderon said. “I have not lost any part — any single part— of the Mexican territory.” (Nobody really wants it though, do they?)

The “failed state” concern has been a major topic of discussion since the U.S. military raised it in a Nov. 25 report on potential global security risks. The report singled out Mexico and Pakistan as countries whose governments are at risk of a “rapid and sudden collapse.”

Calderon also expressed optimism that President Barack Obama will improve relations in the region.

“President Barack Obama has a tremendous opportunity to recover the leadership of the U.S.,” he said. “Latin American leaders were inspired by him as part of the new leftist revolution.” (WTF?? Excuse me??? Leftist Revolution??!!!)

He said he knows Obama is committed to immigration reform, but said the best thing he can do is “solve the country's economic problems.” (So Mexico can begin shipping it’s poor hardworking slobs back up North? My lawn is soooo overgrown and my toilet needs cleaning….)

Calderon also said Mexico will win the war on drugs, despite many difficulties along the way.

“Yes, we will win and of course there will be many problems meanwhile,” he said.

Innocent without Trial.

3 arrested in connection with home-invasion murder

by Channing Turner - Mar. 4, 2009 10:53 PM
The Arizona Republic

Phoenix police arrested three suspects Wednesday in connection with a homicide during a home invasion in January.

Bilal Russell, 24, was shot and killed Jan. 14 after several men invaded his home in the area of 500 E. Euclid Street. He was the only person home at the time.

Police believe the Russell was an innocent victim and not involved in any criminal activity.

Officers arrested Cameron Braxton, 25; Dewone Hurd, 23; and Khalid Nasr, 19, in connection with the crime. The three each face one count of first-degree murder.

Police said they hope Russell's family can find some comfort in the apprehension.

Another Fine Import from Our Neighbor to the South, Undocumentia.

U.S. rattled as Mexico drug war bleeds over border

By Tim Gaynor Tim Gaynor – Sun Mar 1, 10:37 am ET

PHOENIX (Reuters) – Hit men dressed in fake police tactical gear burst into a home in Phoenix, rake it with gunfire and execute a man.
Armed kidnappers snatch victims from cars and even a local shopping mall across the Phoenix valley for ransom, turning the sun-baked city into the "kidnap capital" of the United States.
Violence of this kind is common in Mexico where drug cartel abductions and executions are a daily feature of a raging drug war that claimed 6,000 lives south of the border last year.
But U.S. authorities now fear that violent crime is beginning to bleed over the porous Mexico border and take hold here.
"The fight in Mexico is about domination of the smuggling corridors and those corridors don't stop at the border," Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard said.
Execution style murders, violent home invasions, and a spiraling kidnap rate in Phoenix -- where police reported an average of one abduction a day last year linked to Mexican crime -- are not the only examples along the border.
In southern California, police have investigated cases of Americans abducted by armed groups tied to the Tijuana drug trade. One involved a businesswoman and her teenage daughter snatched in San Diego last year and held to ransom south of the border.
In south Texas, a live hand grenade traced back to a Mexican cartel stash was tossed onto the pool table of a bar frequented by off-duty police officers in January. The pin was left in it and the assailant fled.
COPING WITH SPILLOVER
Mexican traffickers have always been violent, but the death toll has soared since President Felipe Calderon took office in late 2006 and sent tens of thousands of troops to fight the country's powerful cocaine cartels.
Soldiers have fought pitched battles with drug gangs in several Mexican towns and overwhelmed police officers have fled municipal forces the length of the border. In many cases, police officers have been paid off by the drug gangs or even joined them.
In a sign of an increasingly desperate struggle to rein in the violence, Calderon this week ordered 5,000 more troops and federal police to Ciudad Juarez, just across the border from El Paso, Texas.
The cartels have killed 250 people in Ciudad Juarez in the past month, forced the police chief to resign, and shut down the airport with bomb threats.
The struggle by outgunned Mexican authorities to contain the violence was highlighted for Arizona state police last November, when Mexican police officers pinned down in a raging gun battle in Nogales, Sonora, reached out to them with an urgent request for more bullets.
While U.S. authorities stress they have not seen anything like the kind of street battles and horrific beheadings that are now common in Mexico, they are already taking action to curb was has become known as "overspill".
Texas Gov. Rick Perry says he wants 1,000 troops to guard the border. The state's Attorney General Greg Abbott is backing legislation to crack down on money laundering and human, drug and weapons trafficking through the state by the warring Gulf and Sinaloa cartels.
Lawmakers in Arizona heard testimony on border violence last week from police and prosecutors, who are seeking more robust measures to seize smugglers' assets, as well as cracking down harder on gunrunning to Mexico.
PLANNING FOR THE WORST
Washington has stepped up support for Calderon, pledging to give Mexico helicopters, surveillance aircraft, inspection equipment and police training under a $1.4 billion plan to beat the cartels in Mexico and Central America.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano -- a former Arizona governor -- told a Congressional hearing last week she was focused on curbing the southbound traffic in guns that are being used to arm the violent cartels.
In a measure of that commitment, a Phoenix gun dealer goes on trial next week on charges he sold hundreds of weapons, including AK-47 assault rifles, to smugglers knowing they would send them to a powerful cartel in Sinaloa state on Mexico's Pacific coast.
As the spiraling drug violence shakes Mexican cities and towns along the U.S. border, U.S. Senate lawmakers announced last week they would hold two hearings to assess the ability of U.S. security forces to deal with the rise in crime on the U.S. side.
Senator Joseph Lieberman, chairman of the homeland security governmental affairs committee, said the panel would assess border security programs already in place and review whether federal, state and local authorities are ready to respond to any serious spillover of the Mexican drugs war.
For the sheriff of Hidalgo County, in south Texas, where the live grenade was thrown into a bar in Pharr, possibly by street gang members armed by a Mexican cartel, that renewed attention to the war on his doorstep can only be welcome.
"It's the first time we've had a hand grenade attack," Guadalupe Trevino told Reuters. "I believe there's more out there that we need to find."

First the smoke of their burning tires and trash smothers and poisons our border towns. Then the Santa Cruz River catches fire and burns with their chemical swill, flowing north of course. Now this. If our appetite for drugs wasn't so huge, would this competition and slaughter be happening?

I said it before, I'll say it again... Mexico needs a revolution.

Why We Carry

I don't carry a gun to kill people. I carry a gun to keep from being killed.

I don't carry a gun to scare people. I carry a gun because sometimes this world can be a scary place.

I don't carry a gun because I'm paranoid. I carry a gun because there are real threats in the world.

I don't carry a gun because I'm evil. I carry a gun because I have lived long enough to see the evil in the world.

I don't carry a gun because I hate the government. I carry a gun because I understand the limitations of government.

I don't carry a gun because I'm angry. I carry a gun so that I don't have to spend the rest of my life hating myself for failing to be prepared.

I don't carry a gun because I want to shoot someone. I carry a gun because I want to die at a ripe old age in my bed, and not on a sidewalk somewhere tomorrow afternoon.

I don't carry a gun because I'm a cowboy. I carry a gun because, when I die and go to Heaven, I want to be a cowboy.

I don't carry a gun to make me feel like a man. I carry a gun because men know how to take care of themselves and the ones they love.

I don't carry a gun because I feel inadequate. I carry a gun because unarmed and facing three armed thugs, I am inadequate.

I don't carry a gun because I love it. I carry a gun because I love life and the people who make it meaningful to me.

"Police Protection" is an oxymoron. Free citizens must protect themselves.

Police do not protect you from crime; they usually just investigate the crime after it happens and then call someone in to clean up the mess.

Personally, I carry a gun because I'm too young to die and too old to take an ass whoopin'.

..author unknown (but obviously brilliant) Remember the average response time to a 911 call is over 4 minutes. The average response time of a 357 magnum is 1400 FPS.

But it was really good jerky....

Gunshot by officer, not rollover, cited for teen's death

by Michael Ferraresi - Feb. 26, 2009 11:18 AM
The Arizona Republic

A teen who wrecked his car after a police officer shot him in self-defense died of the gunshot, not as a result of the vehicle rollover, according to the Maricopa County Medical Examiner's Office.

Gonzalo Cordova, 17, suffered a fatal gunshot wound when a group of teenagers stole beer and beef jerky from a Maryvale convenience store.

Police records released this week detail how one of two responding officers "felt in fear for his life" as the boy accelerated in the direction of one officer who was trapped between his parked patrol vehicle and the boy's Chevrolet Cavalier positioned in the parking lot at Indian School Road and 59th Avenue.

Phoenix Officer Robert Sauceda fired twice at Cordova, striking the boy twice as he sat behind the wheel of the getaway car during the Dec. 19 incident, two days before Cordova's 18th birthday.

As Sauceda's partner, Officer Warren Tittlemier, chased some of the teens on foot out of the parking lot, Sauceda said he could have been struck by the boy's vehicle.

"As Officer Sauceda started to run around the front of his police vehicle he heard the squealing of tires. . . . Sauceda backed up and was prevented from backing because of his police vehicle," investigators wrote in the police report.

Phoenix Police Professional Standards Bureau investigators are still reviewing the case, officials said. Officer-involved shooting reviews can take up to six months for police departments to complete internally.

Well, Gonzalo... I wonder if this beer and jerky tastes better than turning 18, because now you got neither. Was this a righteous shooting by the officer, or should he have gotten injured or killed because he didn't have all the facts before shooting? We, the common citizens, are told the best way to react to a robbery is to just give them what they want. Monday morning quarterbacks, I'm sure, will have something to say.

Fatally killed? Is that like murdered to death?

2 fatally killed after fight near house party

by Ofelia Madrid - Feb. 28, 2009 07:51 PM
The Arizona Republic

Two men are dead after an early morning shooting in south Phoenix, police said.

Officers responded to a shooting near 36th Avenue and Broadway Road a little after midnight Friday, police said.

Officers arrived to find numerous people fleeing and were directed to a 27-year-oldman who was dead in the alley from gunshot wounds, police said.

Police later learned that another victim, a 20-year-old man, died as he was being driven to St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center.

Investigators received initial reports of a party in the area and a fight nearby.

No further information was available.

Anyone with information is asked to call the Phoenix Police Department Violent Crimes Bureau at (602) 262-6141, Silent Witness at 480-948-6377 or in Spanish at 480-837-8446.

Granted these people were hanging with a party crowd, and people get stupid and violent when drunk/stoned. Hang with snakes and you'll get bitten eventually. But suppose you were the neighbors... or just driving by... and the violence spills into your lap? What would you use to prevent these or your own deaths? 911? 3-5 five minute response time; too late. Harsh words and your imposing adult presence? Yeah, give it a shot... see what happens.