Molon Labe
December 5, 2005, 09:24 AM
Here's the short version of the story: a kid in Saint Paris, Ohio (which is where I live!) held a "pen gun" to his temple and fired it after drinking a lot of alcohol. He thought the gun didn't work. :rolleyes:
Idiot.
Sounds like Darwin in action to me.
To top it off, Champaign County's illustrious sheriff thinks pen guns should be banned. Heck, he'd probably like to see all guns banned.
Rapper's family, friends stunned by death
http://www.daytondailynews.com/localnews/content/localnews/daily/1204zorn.html
Pen gun accident killed 22-year-old at launch of career
By Anthony Gottschlich (agottschlich@DaytonDailyNews.com) (click to email)
Dayton Daily News
ST. PARIS | Twelve hours before he was to wrap up a record deal with a national independent music company, Steven Zorn's life ended with the click of a pen.
Steven Zorn and his friends created a Web site, www.MrPit.net, where viewers can learn about the late rapper, his music and a planned online store for clothing and other merchandise. Proceeds from sales will help Zorn's mother spread the word on pen guns and gun tragedies.
Zorn, a 22-year-old rising rapper from this rural village of 2,000, about 50 miles northeast of Dayton, shot himself in the head late Nov. 18 — family, friends and law enforcement authorities believe accidentally — with a device whose appearance belied its deadliness — a pen gun.
Slender, silver and lightweight, this pen-like pistol packed a .25-caliber bullet Zorn believed to be jammed, rendering the weapon inoperable, according to friends and family interviewed for this story. But it worked on the third click when a drunken Zorn, celebrating his impending record deal, held it to the right side of his head and fired.
"I had never heard of them before," Zorn's mother, Lisa McCoy-Horn, said of pen guns just three days after she buried her first-born child. "Nobody I knew had, that's the thing."
Neither had Lemoyne Alexander, the veteran record producer working with Zorn and Koch Records to mass-produce Zorn's first CD, Raw Meat.
Nor had Atlanta-based hip hop artist Miracle, "the King of Crunk," a friend and mentor to Zorn over the last four years.
And they weren't high on the radar screen of the Champaign County sheriff's deputies who arrived at Zorn's home that night, where Zorn lay on the floor of a small barn he had converted into his living quarters and sound studio.
Asked what he knew about pen guns, Sheriff David Deskins replied, "That they exist and we don't like them because they're easily concealed."
The guns are legal in Ohio, but Deskins would like to see them outlawed.
"I guess my real concern is, Why would a person want to possess it?" Deskins said. "And when you peel that onion back, are they possessing it for their own safety or for some other reason in their mind?"
Pen guns are easily found on the Web for a few to a few hundred dollars. If that's too rich for you, some sites include instructions to build the single-shot weapons at home.
'I miss him to death'
All who knew Zorn are bewildered by his death, and they're angry, too — at the makers and sellers of pen guns, and, to some extent, at Steven Zorn himself.
"Steven had a career and his dreams all ahead of him," McCoy-Horn said, fighting back tears. "But messing with these pen guns, these kids need to know that life can be taken in a blink of an eye."
Steven Zorn stood 5-feet-11, weighed 138 pounds, and was finicky about his close-cropped dark brown hair. He wore a goatee, yet looked barely old enough to drive.
Family and friends tell a story of an exceedingly bright but moody youth who had a flash temper and hard-headed nature about him.
In recent years, Zorn, who would tell friends, " 'Can't' is not in my dictionary," complained of chest pains. Those close to him chalked it up to Zorn's punishing intensity, his drive to succeed in the music world.
Though raised mostly in New Carlisle and St. Paris, Zorn spent his formative years in North Carolina, where he befriended a man who rescued pit bulls. Next to music, the dogs became his passion, earning him the moniker, "Mr. Pit." He kept two males, Big Block and Hummerat his home in St. Paris.
"He had a way with these dogs," said Zorn's stepfather, Lee Horn. "He was kind of like a dog whisperer."
Zorn loved the Cincinnati Bengals, NASCAR and the University of North Carolina men's basketball team. He often wore the Tarheels' colors, sky blue and white.
He also loved hip hop, and his talent soon showed. In time, he wrote his own songs — songs about life, filled with raw emotion, pain and anger — and he taught himself to play the keyboard and record tracts using inexpensive software on his home computer.
"He could make a song out of anything ... passing a deer, passing a car," friend Shane Hanes, who was with Zorn the night he died, said.
While living in the South, Zorn tracked down rap artist Miracle in Georgia and urged the crunk artist (think adrenaline-rushing, hyperactive rap) to listen to a CD of his original recordings.
"He was very persistent, but, you know, I try to listen to everybody," Miracle said from Atlanta last week. "I listened to his CD and I thought it was real nice. The lyrical content was awesome. He had a lot of skill. I took a liking to him, took him under my wing."
The two, both raised in the country, became fast friends, talking nearly every day. After Zorn moved back to Ohio, they would travel back and forth visiting each other. When Miracle visited St. Paris he'd bunk with Zorn's family in the brick ranch home along Woodville Pike nestled near a farm laden with oxen, sheep and exotic farm animals. They recorded songs together in Zorn's studio.
"He was really, really dedicated to doing this," Miracle said. "A lot of other people say they want to do this, but after a month or so they drop it. Whatever I'd tell him to do he'd do it that way, he'd take it to heart, and I'd say, 'Just be yourself and do it naturally.' "
"He would drive from Ohio to Augusta (Ga.) just to drive a CD up to a deejay. And we're talking a 12-, 13-hour drive. He was just that into it."
In no time Zorn changed from the inquisitive sort to "just knowing it," Miracle said.
"Pit was real hip hop," he said. "He was a multi-artist, he could do it all. If you wanted crunk, he could do crunk ... He had the whole package."
Make no mistake, Zorn was no saint, his mother said. He was prone to tirades, goofing up and quarreling with parents, just like any kid, she said.
But Zorn put his mother and family above himself, and he had big dreams for when (not if) he made it in the music world, Miracle said.
"He used to say. 'I want to buy my mom a house to thank her for all her support, and I'm going to take care of the rest of my family and I'll stay right here (in St. Paris).'"
And during a rough patch in the 27-year-old Miracle's career two years ago, Zorn was there to inspire and get his friend back on track.
"I owe him a great gratitude for that," Miracle said.
"I miss him to death, man."
'Don't you leave your momma'
In the summer of 2004, Zorn attended a conference in Chicago where aspiring musical talents could learn about the business and test their mettle in front of producers in the industry.
Lemoyne Alexander holds two to four of these conferences each year, screening hundreds of artists at each conference. The veteran record producer has worked with the likes of Aaliyah, Twista, Will Smith and Layzie Bone, as well as record labels such as Motown, Rap-A-Lot and Jive Records, he said.
"(Zorn) came to my table and my head was down and I heard his voice and it overpowered me," Alexander recalled over the phone last week. "His voice was remarkable. I looked up and I saw this little scrawny kid and I said, 'We need to talk.'"
Alexander was struck by the texture of Zorn's low voice, the lyrical content and flow of his songs.
"This dude had a big voice," Alexander said, comparing Zorn to Eminem and Pitbull. "I got with him and said, 'Let's make this happen. We're going to make you a star."
Back home, Zorn and his mother formed their own record label, Straight Game Records, and kept working with Miracle and Alexander.
Zorn had nowhere to go but up, or so it seemed.
About a week before he died, a friend gave Zorn a pen gun and told him where he could get more if he or anyone else wanted. The pen was jammed, though.
Zorn grew up a hunter, and he understood guns. But not this one, his family says.
On Friday evening, Nov. 18, Zorn celebrated his impending record deal at home with friends Shane Hanes and Cody Cornette, two seniors from nearby Graham High School.
After Hanes and Cornette left the house sometime after 11 p.m., McCoy-Horn confronted her son.
"He was stumbling around and I got on him, I said, 'Steven, you know I don't like your drinking, why don't you just go out to your room and go to bed.' I didn't know these boys were coming back."
Hanes and Cornette arrived and followed Zorn into his room in the barn.
"He walked up to his computer and pulled the pen gun out of his pocket and started playing with it," Hanes recalled. "I looked at him and said, 'Steve, you shouldn't be playing with that, that's a loaded gun."
Zorn didn't listen. He held the gun to the right side of his head and clicked three times. With the third click, the gun fired. Zorn slumped to the floor, landing in a seated position, his back to his couch.
Cornette ran for Zorn's mother, who found Hanes shaking, screaming and crying, "My best friend, my best friend!"
"I had to get Shane out of the way, and we got him down from the sitting position he was in, and I just kept telling him, 'Don't you leave your momma, don't you leave your momma!
"He had tried to come up and he come up about three or four inches, raising his head, and then he went back down on the blanket that Cody had under his head. And that was the last movement from him."
With all the possibilities ahead for Zorn, the shooting had to be an accident, a foolish mistake, his family said.
"He knew better than that," stepdad Lee Horn said. "He was just being stupid."
Zorn was flown by helicopter to Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton, where he was declared brain-dead but kept alive long enough donate his organs. His heart, though, could not be taken. McCoy-Horn said she was told her son's heart showed damage from stress and previous infarctions.
Zorn, wearing his North Carolina colors, was buried Nov. 26 in St. Paris after a funeral service attended by several hundred, including Lemoyne Alexander. (Miracle was stuck at a previous engagement.)
Alexander said he still plans to release Zorn's CD, as well as others from the hundreds of tracks Zorn left behind. Video tributes and other promotions will be in the mix, and a memorial concert featuring Miracle is planned for the near future in this area.
Meanwhile, McCoy-Horn is planning a tour of her own. She wants to share the story of her son and the dangers of pen guns to parents, school children and lawmakers alike, anyone who will listen.
"I want to take these guns off the street and off the market," she said, her voice growing angry. "A mother shouldn't have to bury their kids," she said. "It's supposed to be the opposite way around."
Contact Anthony Gottschlich (agottschlich@DaytonDailyNews.com) at (937) 225-7408.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
More about Steven Zorn
You can listen to a song by Steven Zorn, or read a review of his unreleased album. See photos of Zorn, his friends and family. Send your condolences to the family by signing the guest book. Read Steven Zorn's obituary as it appeared in the Dayton Daily News.
Steven Zorn and his friends created a Web site, www.MrPit.net, where viewers can learn about the late rapper, his music and a planned online store for clothing and other merchandise. Proceeds from sales will help Zorn's mother spread the word on pen guns and gun tragedies.
Idiot.
Sounds like Darwin in action to me.
To top it off, Champaign County's illustrious sheriff thinks pen guns should be banned. Heck, he'd probably like to see all guns banned.
Rapper's family, friends stunned by death
http://www.daytondailynews.com/localnews/content/localnews/daily/1204zorn.html
Pen gun accident killed 22-year-old at launch of career
By Anthony Gottschlich (agottschlich@DaytonDailyNews.com) (click to email)
Dayton Daily News
ST. PARIS | Twelve hours before he was to wrap up a record deal with a national independent music company, Steven Zorn's life ended with the click of a pen.
Steven Zorn and his friends created a Web site, www.MrPit.net, where viewers can learn about the late rapper, his music and a planned online store for clothing and other merchandise. Proceeds from sales will help Zorn's mother spread the word on pen guns and gun tragedies.
Zorn, a 22-year-old rising rapper from this rural village of 2,000, about 50 miles northeast of Dayton, shot himself in the head late Nov. 18 — family, friends and law enforcement authorities believe accidentally — with a device whose appearance belied its deadliness — a pen gun.
Slender, silver and lightweight, this pen-like pistol packed a .25-caliber bullet Zorn believed to be jammed, rendering the weapon inoperable, according to friends and family interviewed for this story. But it worked on the third click when a drunken Zorn, celebrating his impending record deal, held it to the right side of his head and fired.
"I had never heard of them before," Zorn's mother, Lisa McCoy-Horn, said of pen guns just three days after she buried her first-born child. "Nobody I knew had, that's the thing."
Neither had Lemoyne Alexander, the veteran record producer working with Zorn and Koch Records to mass-produce Zorn's first CD, Raw Meat.
Nor had Atlanta-based hip hop artist Miracle, "the King of Crunk," a friend and mentor to Zorn over the last four years.
And they weren't high on the radar screen of the Champaign County sheriff's deputies who arrived at Zorn's home that night, where Zorn lay on the floor of a small barn he had converted into his living quarters and sound studio.
Asked what he knew about pen guns, Sheriff David Deskins replied, "That they exist and we don't like them because they're easily concealed."
The guns are legal in Ohio, but Deskins would like to see them outlawed.
"I guess my real concern is, Why would a person want to possess it?" Deskins said. "And when you peel that onion back, are they possessing it for their own safety or for some other reason in their mind?"
Pen guns are easily found on the Web for a few to a few hundred dollars. If that's too rich for you, some sites include instructions to build the single-shot weapons at home.
'I miss him to death'
All who knew Zorn are bewildered by his death, and they're angry, too — at the makers and sellers of pen guns, and, to some extent, at Steven Zorn himself.
"Steven had a career and his dreams all ahead of him," McCoy-Horn said, fighting back tears. "But messing with these pen guns, these kids need to know that life can be taken in a blink of an eye."
Steven Zorn stood 5-feet-11, weighed 138 pounds, and was finicky about his close-cropped dark brown hair. He wore a goatee, yet looked barely old enough to drive.
Family and friends tell a story of an exceedingly bright but moody youth who had a flash temper and hard-headed nature about him.
In recent years, Zorn, who would tell friends, " 'Can't' is not in my dictionary," complained of chest pains. Those close to him chalked it up to Zorn's punishing intensity, his drive to succeed in the music world.
Though raised mostly in New Carlisle and St. Paris, Zorn spent his formative years in North Carolina, where he befriended a man who rescued pit bulls. Next to music, the dogs became his passion, earning him the moniker, "Mr. Pit." He kept two males, Big Block and Hummerat his home in St. Paris.
"He had a way with these dogs," said Zorn's stepfather, Lee Horn. "He was kind of like a dog whisperer."
Zorn loved the Cincinnati Bengals, NASCAR and the University of North Carolina men's basketball team. He often wore the Tarheels' colors, sky blue and white.
He also loved hip hop, and his talent soon showed. In time, he wrote his own songs — songs about life, filled with raw emotion, pain and anger — and he taught himself to play the keyboard and record tracts using inexpensive software on his home computer.
"He could make a song out of anything ... passing a deer, passing a car," friend Shane Hanes, who was with Zorn the night he died, said.
While living in the South, Zorn tracked down rap artist Miracle in Georgia and urged the crunk artist (think adrenaline-rushing, hyperactive rap) to listen to a CD of his original recordings.
"He was very persistent, but, you know, I try to listen to everybody," Miracle said from Atlanta last week. "I listened to his CD and I thought it was real nice. The lyrical content was awesome. He had a lot of skill. I took a liking to him, took him under my wing."
The two, both raised in the country, became fast friends, talking nearly every day. After Zorn moved back to Ohio, they would travel back and forth visiting each other. When Miracle visited St. Paris he'd bunk with Zorn's family in the brick ranch home along Woodville Pike nestled near a farm laden with oxen, sheep and exotic farm animals. They recorded songs together in Zorn's studio.
"He was really, really dedicated to doing this," Miracle said. "A lot of other people say they want to do this, but after a month or so they drop it. Whatever I'd tell him to do he'd do it that way, he'd take it to heart, and I'd say, 'Just be yourself and do it naturally.' "
"He would drive from Ohio to Augusta (Ga.) just to drive a CD up to a deejay. And we're talking a 12-, 13-hour drive. He was just that into it."
In no time Zorn changed from the inquisitive sort to "just knowing it," Miracle said.
"Pit was real hip hop," he said. "He was a multi-artist, he could do it all. If you wanted crunk, he could do crunk ... He had the whole package."
Make no mistake, Zorn was no saint, his mother said. He was prone to tirades, goofing up and quarreling with parents, just like any kid, she said.
But Zorn put his mother and family above himself, and he had big dreams for when (not if) he made it in the music world, Miracle said.
"He used to say. 'I want to buy my mom a house to thank her for all her support, and I'm going to take care of the rest of my family and I'll stay right here (in St. Paris).'"
And during a rough patch in the 27-year-old Miracle's career two years ago, Zorn was there to inspire and get his friend back on track.
"I owe him a great gratitude for that," Miracle said.
"I miss him to death, man."
'Don't you leave your momma'
In the summer of 2004, Zorn attended a conference in Chicago where aspiring musical talents could learn about the business and test their mettle in front of producers in the industry.
Lemoyne Alexander holds two to four of these conferences each year, screening hundreds of artists at each conference. The veteran record producer has worked with the likes of Aaliyah, Twista, Will Smith and Layzie Bone, as well as record labels such as Motown, Rap-A-Lot and Jive Records, he said.
"(Zorn) came to my table and my head was down and I heard his voice and it overpowered me," Alexander recalled over the phone last week. "His voice was remarkable. I looked up and I saw this little scrawny kid and I said, 'We need to talk.'"
Alexander was struck by the texture of Zorn's low voice, the lyrical content and flow of his songs.
"This dude had a big voice," Alexander said, comparing Zorn to Eminem and Pitbull. "I got with him and said, 'Let's make this happen. We're going to make you a star."
Back home, Zorn and his mother formed their own record label, Straight Game Records, and kept working with Miracle and Alexander.
Zorn had nowhere to go but up, or so it seemed.
About a week before he died, a friend gave Zorn a pen gun and told him where he could get more if he or anyone else wanted. The pen was jammed, though.
Zorn grew up a hunter, and he understood guns. But not this one, his family says.
On Friday evening, Nov. 18, Zorn celebrated his impending record deal at home with friends Shane Hanes and Cody Cornette, two seniors from nearby Graham High School.
After Hanes and Cornette left the house sometime after 11 p.m., McCoy-Horn confronted her son.
"He was stumbling around and I got on him, I said, 'Steven, you know I don't like your drinking, why don't you just go out to your room and go to bed.' I didn't know these boys were coming back."
Hanes and Cornette arrived and followed Zorn into his room in the barn.
"He walked up to his computer and pulled the pen gun out of his pocket and started playing with it," Hanes recalled. "I looked at him and said, 'Steve, you shouldn't be playing with that, that's a loaded gun."
Zorn didn't listen. He held the gun to the right side of his head and clicked three times. With the third click, the gun fired. Zorn slumped to the floor, landing in a seated position, his back to his couch.
Cornette ran for Zorn's mother, who found Hanes shaking, screaming and crying, "My best friend, my best friend!"
"I had to get Shane out of the way, and we got him down from the sitting position he was in, and I just kept telling him, 'Don't you leave your momma, don't you leave your momma!
"He had tried to come up and he come up about three or four inches, raising his head, and then he went back down on the blanket that Cody had under his head. And that was the last movement from him."
With all the possibilities ahead for Zorn, the shooting had to be an accident, a foolish mistake, his family said.
"He knew better than that," stepdad Lee Horn said. "He was just being stupid."
Zorn was flown by helicopter to Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton, where he was declared brain-dead but kept alive long enough donate his organs. His heart, though, could not be taken. McCoy-Horn said she was told her son's heart showed damage from stress and previous infarctions.
Zorn, wearing his North Carolina colors, was buried Nov. 26 in St. Paris after a funeral service attended by several hundred, including Lemoyne Alexander. (Miracle was stuck at a previous engagement.)
Alexander said he still plans to release Zorn's CD, as well as others from the hundreds of tracks Zorn left behind. Video tributes and other promotions will be in the mix, and a memorial concert featuring Miracle is planned for the near future in this area.
Meanwhile, McCoy-Horn is planning a tour of her own. She wants to share the story of her son and the dangers of pen guns to parents, school children and lawmakers alike, anyone who will listen.
"I want to take these guns off the street and off the market," she said, her voice growing angry. "A mother shouldn't have to bury their kids," she said. "It's supposed to be the opposite way around."
Contact Anthony Gottschlich (agottschlich@DaytonDailyNews.com) at (937) 225-7408.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
More about Steven Zorn
You can listen to a song by Steven Zorn, or read a review of his unreleased album. See photos of Zorn, his friends and family. Send your condolences to the family by signing the guest book. Read Steven Zorn's obituary as it appeared in the Dayton Daily News.
Steven Zorn and his friends created a Web site, www.MrPit.net, where viewers can learn about the late rapper, his music and a planned online store for clothing and other merchandise. Proceeds from sales will help Zorn's mother spread the word on pen guns and gun tragedies.