New Years Eve body count... unfortunately

[scrat]

Sad Very Sad

 

[SamTuckerMTNMAN]

300 yards, through wall into head.....not fired "into air" unles aiming at populated area is considered "into air". Wreaks of sloppy, careless reporting. What a tragedy, God Bless those people, I cannot imagine, really.....

st

 

[Hardtarget]

I don't know how homes are built out there, but in middle Tn. there are plenty of houses built "frame, isulation, siding". Not much to slow a bullet. Almost any rifle cartridge will develop enough energy to punch right through a wall. Homes most certainly are not bunkers.

Makes me sick when I think about any person getting hit like that.

Mark.

 

[Flyboy]

Very unlike Fox.

Not really. They've turned into just another AP regurgitator. Take a look at their bylines sometime--the vast majority of their news stories come from the AP, not their own reporting.

 

[MechAg94]

I think Bogie nailed it. Someone thought a stand of trees would stop the bullet. Foolish.

I assume like everyone else that this gun was fired horizontally. The police probably recovered what appeared to be a pointed bullet that looks like a 30 cal or similar bullet. That would lead them to say "high powered rifle".

I figure it was one of these:
1. Some idiot fired and didn't care where the bullets went.
2. Someone was aiming at the house. Not that far. Only two bullets and through a wall so I am going to guess this wasn't it.
3. Someone thought they had a backstop or had one and shot over it. That is just plain stupid. Even .22 shorts can go a long ways. This is my guess also.

 

[arflattop]

We are our own worst enemy. Irresponsible use of firearms only incites the politicians and gives them the "mandate" they want to restrict/confiscate firearms. Don't mean to step on toes, but if we all, as gun owners, don't start thinking before we make irrational comments and commit careless acts with our firearms, we will only hasten this process.

 

[GILROY]

Very sad, even moreso that a child was killed / murdered. I hope they luck up and find the fool. I was a bit paranoid last night myself and insisted that the wife and I move from the den sofa in front of a large window, to horizontal in the bed, brick house, below window level. To much popping outside and I know the difference in fireworks and centerfire. More fun ringing in the new year in the bed anyway.

 

[DouglasW]

Just caught the tail end of a report about this on this evening's local news. Police now think the "high-powered rifle" shot came from a group of apartments across a gully from the house inside where the victims were. The news cameras from the front door of the house show it to be a pretty straight shot --- and only a few hundred yards. The terrain drops down from the apartments then rises back up to about the same elevation.

A further twist, the local PD executed a search warrant on one of the apartments and the 'person of interest' they are apparently interviewing for this has a felony conviction for robbery from 2000. Can you say: felon illegally possessing a firearm

If the evidence supports it, I hope he gets charged with murder for this stupidity.

edit: If it works...here's a snapshot from GoogleEarth showing the park/gully between the apartments (West Wells Place, in the foreground) and the victims' home (labeled by address).

The house where the victims were located is the first/second row of blocks and blocks of houses in the direction the shooter fired. I find the recklessness of randomly firing a rifle in that location appalling...

 

[TexasRifleman]

Police now think the "high-powered rifle" shot came from a group of apartments across a gully from the house inside where the victims were.

I've always wondered. If a murderer used a .22 would they say it was a "low powered rifle"?

Love the media.....

 

[cbsbyte]

Stupidity knows no bounds. What is it with some people that get a hold of a gun, then all common sense goes out the window. This is one major reason I stopped going to a local range because there where to many people there that did not practice any gun safety. All this does will make fence sitters side with the antis.

 

[Ragnar Danneskjold]

If it was .223 or 7.62x.39 they will jump to assault weapons conclusions.

Sorry to say, but they'll jump to assault rifle conclusions no matter what caliber it is. Everything is a supposed "cop killer" or terrorist weapon. If it was a .22lr you would see them telling us the victim was shot by a bullet popular with assassins. Spreading fear is their job.

 

[BobbyQuickdraw]

The shot could have been more or less straight up. An object fired upwards at any angle other than 90 degrees will have a parabolic decent. While I do not know, nor want to do the math to find out, the angle, I'm sure for a bullet of a certain weight fired upwards near 90 degrees could travel 300 yards and come down.

Note the wound path. Two people sitting next to each other, one is hit in the head, the other the side. The second victim was a child, so likely her side would be about 2 feet below head level if they were seated normally.

So to me, shots fired into the air, not horizontally, would be the likely culprit.

A horizontal shot would probably have resulted in two head shots or one hit and one miss.

Regardless, its a horrible thing that happened.

 

[loop]

Two comments.
First, don't be so quick to blame the journalist. On holidays the only working journalists are the ones with the least seniority (just graduated and only too happy to be working) or the ones they can't do without (usually an editor or two that have no family in the area and have so much seniority they can't get in trouble and were lucky to find their desk after the holiday party).
Journalists typically have no idea what the difference is between a hand gun and rifle. They are, after all,educated in liberal arts institutions.

I have a lengthy dissertation along these lines, but suffice to say you cannot expect the ignorant to be led by the uneducated and become experts. As a newspaper editor that has worked many a holiday I can say with authority it is simply ignorance - no malice is intended. FOX will be better on any given non-holiday Wednesday.

On the other side my next door neighbor was shot and killed through the wall on New Year's Eve some years ago. She was pregnant and the fetus was also lost. It happens.

As long as there are idiots out there and we don't give an IQ test for firearms ownership it will continue to happen. The "final solution" is to "eliminate" all idiots as soon as we determine their IQ is below "pick a number." A step I'm not willing to subscribe to.

Or, take it like a crusty old editor and think "I'd rather read that, than how some Halloween a****** put razor blades in candy and gave it to kids."

BTW, when 10 people die in an AmTrack crash its a tragedy. When 100 people die in a bus crash in Bangladesh its a terrible accident.

Send $10 to the NRA and let it go. Just another random act of stupidity. There will be another one today or tomorrow that is more interesting. (30 years of writing headlines takes its toll.)

 

[woodybrighton]

unfortunatly idiots are not all dumb know some very smart people do things that would boggle the mind

 

[MASTEROFMALICE]

I had the misfortune of working New Years Eve. Some freakshow let off four full magazines into the air in "celebration." Now that's a bullet storm.

 

[highorder]

First, don't be so quick to blame the journalist. On holidays the only working journalists are the ones with the least seniority (just graduated and only too happy to be working) or the ones they can't do without (usually an editor or two that have no family in the area and have so much seniority they can't get in trouble and were lucky to find their desk after the holiday party).
Journalists typically have no idea what the difference is between a hand gun and rifle. They are, after all,educated in liberal arts institutions.

what?

when I dont do my job, I have to face the reprocussions. The journalist isnt at fault because of their education? Are you saying that people cant be held responsible because the're a product of their enviornment? That sounds a little like a tacitc used by the anti's...

Journalism is supposed to be about finding and reporting the truth. If that is too much for a "fresh graduate" they need to quickly find a new profession.

 

[DouglasW]

Suspect charged

Update from this morning's news:

The new year was only a few minutes old Tuesday when a bullet - possibly fired by a reveler - tore into a West Denver home and killed two people at a family gathering, one of them an 11-year-old girl.

Police later arrested Pedro Cortez, 25, of Denver, on two counts of first-degree murder.

The bullet, fired from a high-powered rifle perhaps 300 yards away, pierced the front wall of the home at 4708 W. 11th Ave. between the front door and a window, hit a woman in the head, killing her instantly, and then cut down the child.

Full article

So the news is reporting the shot came through the front wall, not the roof/ceiling, from approx. 300 yards away and then killed the two victims inside the room -- hmmm...flatter trajectory?

 

[Spyvie]

The shooter claims he was shooting at a street light with his .44 revolver

http://www.denverpost.com/ci_7862590

With regards to how dangerous it is to fire in the air, it obviously depends on the angle that the weapon is fired at. People in Denver are a little sensitive on this subject, we've had a number of victims hit by random gunfire with no known shooter. About 10 years ago, an infant in a stroller visiting the zoo with her family was struck in the side of the head by a small caliber handgun bullet fired from a great distance away. The baby wasnt badly hurt bacause the bullet had spent most of it's energy, but there was some bleeding and a lot of screaming and crying by the press for months afterwards.

 

[HankB]

In Hatcher's Notebook, it was reported that machine gun bullets fired straight up came back at around 300 ft/sec, fast enough to leave a 1/16" deep dent in soft pine.

For a bullet to penetrate a ceiling, it was not fired straight up - I'd guess it was fired far closer to a 45 degree angle rather than 90 degrees (straight up) relative to the earth.

For a deadly bullet to be fired from 300 yards away . . . the muzzle was probably pointed within a couple of feet of the impact site, and wasn't "fired into the air" at all.

Only criminally irresponsible idiots randomly shoot without knowing or caring where their bullets will impact.

 

[Spyvie]

Police initially speculated that the dumbass was aiming at a lighted snowman in the front yard, the bullet did not go through the roof, it went through the front of the house

EDIT: I cant post the pic, its in some kind of java script. This link has a pic of the front of the house, the bullet hole and the snowman
http://www.denverpost.com/ci_7858769

 

[lacoochee]

Police later arrested Pedro Cortez, 25, of Denver, on two counts of first-degree murder.

This just in gun control doesn't work....

Rocky Mountain News Article

He by the way is a felon...and wait for it...

Cortez, who is father to a 9-month-old, has been in trouble with the law before.

In 1999, he and four others were arrested in Denver on aggravated robbery and felony menacing charges. Cortez, 17 at the time, pleaded guilty to the charges and received a 10-year suspended sentence in 2000.

a racist...

Cortez was later interviewed by detectives with his parents present and said they had planned to rob the "white dudes."

Bye Bye Moron...

 

[highorder]

Questions:

why was this scumbag not in prision for earlier crimes?

where did he get his handgun (funny, I thought it was an assault rifle... )

someone please explain to me how the poilce found another bullet in a snowbank! those are lottery odds...

and how is stupidity now pre-meditated murder?

 

[lacoochee]

and how is stupidity now pre-meditated murder?

I wondered about that as well, I thought this would qualify as 2nd degree murder based on the initial report.

After reading the article I linked above though, I think there is way more too this story, given that the people at the party weren't some random group but instead his family. (Theory only) Could it be he was on the outs with them and in a fit of drunken range "accidentally" discharged his revolver into the home hoping that someone would be injured or even killed?

10-year suspended sentence in 2000.

He received a ten year suspended sentence for his crimes, had he actually been punished two people in Denver would be alive still this night. In Florida he would still be in jail,

10-20-Life
* Mandates a minimum 10 year prison term for certain felonies, or attempted felonies in which the offender possesses a firearm or destructive device
* Mandates a minimum 20 year prison term when the firearm is discharged
* Mandates a minimum 25 years to LIFE if someone is injured or killed
* Mandates a minimum 3 year prison term for possession of a firearm by a felon
* Mandates that the minimum prison term is to be served consecutively to any other term of imprisonment imposed

 

[DouglasW]

and how is stupidity now pre-meditated murder?

I wondered about that as well, I thought this would qualify as 2nd degree murder based on the initial report.

After reading the article I linked above though, I think there is way more too this story, given that the people at the party weren't some random group but instead his family.

1. Lacoochee, I think you misunderstood the rather poorly written article you linked (which would be quite easy to do!). From my take, there was
a. a large group of family gathered in the victims' home, and
b. there was a large group of family in the courtroom to 'support' the accused

but they weren't the same large groups of family. i.e. other than through a sister's husband's cousin's friend of a friend of a friend or somesuch the perp and the victims were not related.

2. When I read the article and saw the pic showing the location of the bullet entry into the house, I was thinking the perp probably was aiming at the lighted snowman on the victims' porch (not the streetlight). But if he really was shooting a .44 revolver (BTW, why hasn't the actual weapon been identified -- don't you think it would have been seized when they arrested Mr. Cortez), then the shooter did one heck of a job guesstimating the hold-over required for a .44 bullet at 300 yards -- since it looks like he was only off by 12" or so...

 

[Flyboy]

and how is stupidity now pre-meditated murder?

Probably via the felony murder rule.