Remember this story the next time you think you're ready for anything because you've got weapons and a little bit of training (hopefully you have training) Amnesty International will probably condemn the use of the Taser. But I don't want to deal with that issue here.
I'm posting this to remind everyone that no amount of training, no superhot OC, no Taser is going to work on every subject, every time. This subject wasn't shot, but I have to wonder how many rounds he'd have absorbed before he stopped fighting? I think a CNS shot would have been almost impossible to make it that fight. People can be hard to stop, no matter what you've got to stop them with.
Jeff
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/ne...Headline=Violent+day+leaves+neighbors+stunned
Violent day leaves neighbors stunned
By Heather Ratcliffe
Of the Post-Dispatch
08/12/2004
Ernest Blackwell
Police know where onetime Mizzou football star Ernest Blackwell got the strength to nearly kill three people in Glasgow Village and toss aside up to 10 police officers who tried to stop him. But they have no idea where he got the will.
The rampage - with blows punctuated by shouts of "Touchdown! Touchdown!" - may have been fueled by some kind of drug, investigators said. That also might explain Blackwell's sudden death, at age 29, in an ambulance on the way to a hospital.
Whatever the reason, it was a bloody Wednesday evening in a north St. Louis County neighborhood still reeling from the apparently unrelated murder of two young children whose father is accused of smothering them in mud Monday afternoon along the Mississippi River.
Blackwell shot his 9-year-old stepdaughter with a shotgun, then turned on a 14-year-old neighbor with his fists and feet and was attacking that girl's stepmother in her home when the first county police officer arrived.
"We suspect that a narcotic of some kind, such as PCP or another drug, may be involved," police Lt. Jon Belmar said Thursday. "But that is just speculation at this time."
Autopsy results were pending.
Police and neighbors marveled at Blackwell's raw strength.
Patricia Bristow, a neighbor, watched as police struggled for up to 10 minutes with him, twice trying to subdue him with electric jolts from a Taser.
"He towered above them about a head and a half," Bristow said. "He was huge, like a brick house. And they couldn't get him down."
Interviews with witnesses and police provided this picture:
At dinnertime, children played in yards along the street while Blackwell and several family members talked on the steps of his home in the 10800 block of Spring Garden Drive.
An hour later, neighbors heard an explosion from inside Blackwell's home. Police said he shot his 9-year-old stepdaughter in the chest with a 12-gauge shotgun, then ran outside and rushed bare-handed toward three teenage girls standing in a driveway several doors down.
The girls ran, and two jumped a fence to escape. Blackwell caught the third, Ashley Davis, 14, who said in an interview Thursday that she had stayed back, thinking she could release her dog to protect them.
She recalled hearing him say, "Lord forgive me for what I'm fixing to do." Then he bashed his fist into her face and kept hitting and kicking her, yelling "Touchdown!" with each blow.
She said he also yelled that he hated women and repeated the number "Six, six, six."
Ashley said she pretended to be unconscious. When he walked away, she got up and ran, but he caught her and beat her some more. She finally passed out.
"I was just praying for Jesus that I'd make it through it alive," she said from her bed at St. Louis Children's Hospital.
Then Blackwell broke into Angela's home, leaving bloody handprints on the front door, and began beating the girl's stepmother, Trina Hicks.
A rookie county police officer, in the area on another call, arrived alone and interrupted that assault. Blackwell tackled the officer, who police said was nearly 100 pounds lighter.
During the struggle, Blackwell tried to grab the officer's pistol. The officer managed to eject the ammunition magazine to keep Blackwell from firing it, Belmar said, and hit a panic button on his belt radio.
More officers arrived, and one shocked Blackwell with a Taser. "To some extent, it worked," Belmar said. "But not ideally."
The officers managed to handcuff Blackwell, but he continued to struggle and ran outside. Police used the Taser again, and arriving paramedics gave him two injections of a sedative.
"Eventually he started to settle down," Belmar said.
Officers put Blackwell into an ambulance but he died before reaching the hospital.
Meanwhile, Bristow, who lives two houses from Blackwell, rushed to aid the wounded 9-year-old, lying on her front steps with a gaping chest wound.
"She kept saying, 'Why did he shoot me?' and 'I'm going to die,'" Bristow recalled.
The 9-year-old was reported to be in critical condition at a hospital. Angela remained hospitalized Thursday night, and her stepmother was treated and released.
Angela said she did not know Blackwell, except to exchange greetings on the street. There was no animosity between them, she said.
Blackwell's estranged wife was not at their home during the incident. But all four of her daughters were there. Only the one shot was injured.
Four police officers were treated for injuries. The first one in suffered a separated shoulder and cuts. "I commend these officers," Belmar said. "They ran into a very difficult situation with an unbelievably violent person."
Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch and Medical Examiner Dr. Mary Case will review the episode.
Police said Blackwell worked for the Judevine Center for Autism. No one could be reached there for comment.
Blackwell, 6-foot-3 and weighing 235 pounds, had been recruited by Missouri out of Eureka High School, where he had rushed for more than 3,000 yards, scored 50 touchdowns and was named to the Post-Dispatch All-Metro team.
Coach Larry Smith suspended him for the last two games of the 1995 season for violating team rules, and Blackwell announced that he wanted to leave school and return to St. Louis. But Smith wouldn't release him from his scholarship, explaining in an interview, "I wouldn't give him a release because he had no place to go. I felt that his only chance in football and in school was to stay right here."
Blackwell eventually returned to Mizzou, and as a senior fullback in 1997 he was a key contributor as the Tigers ended 13 years of losing seasons and earned a berth in the Holiday Bowl.
He showed enough potential that he was picked in the seventh round of the 1998 NFL draft by the Kansas City Chiefs. Blackwell left the Chiefs' training camp unexpectedly in July 1998.
"Ernest came to me and said that he had some issues that he was trying to deal with and wanted to go home," Chiefs coach Marty Schottenheimer said at the time. Blackwell eventually was allowed to return to camp but was cut by the Chiefs before the season started.
Mike Smith of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.
Reporter Heather Ratcliffe:
E-mail: [email protected]
Phone: 314-863-2821
I'm posting this to remind everyone that no amount of training, no superhot OC, no Taser is going to work on every subject, every time. This subject wasn't shot, but I have to wonder how many rounds he'd have absorbed before he stopped fighting? I think a CNS shot would have been almost impossible to make it that fight. People can be hard to stop, no matter what you've got to stop them with.
Jeff
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/ne...Headline=Violent+day+leaves+neighbors+stunned
Violent day leaves neighbors stunned
By Heather Ratcliffe
Of the Post-Dispatch
08/12/2004
Ernest Blackwell
Police know where onetime Mizzou football star Ernest Blackwell got the strength to nearly kill three people in Glasgow Village and toss aside up to 10 police officers who tried to stop him. But they have no idea where he got the will.
The rampage - with blows punctuated by shouts of "Touchdown! Touchdown!" - may have been fueled by some kind of drug, investigators said. That also might explain Blackwell's sudden death, at age 29, in an ambulance on the way to a hospital.
Whatever the reason, it was a bloody Wednesday evening in a north St. Louis County neighborhood still reeling from the apparently unrelated murder of two young children whose father is accused of smothering them in mud Monday afternoon along the Mississippi River.
Blackwell shot his 9-year-old stepdaughter with a shotgun, then turned on a 14-year-old neighbor with his fists and feet and was attacking that girl's stepmother in her home when the first county police officer arrived.
"We suspect that a narcotic of some kind, such as PCP or another drug, may be involved," police Lt. Jon Belmar said Thursday. "But that is just speculation at this time."
Autopsy results were pending.
Police and neighbors marveled at Blackwell's raw strength.
Patricia Bristow, a neighbor, watched as police struggled for up to 10 minutes with him, twice trying to subdue him with electric jolts from a Taser.
"He towered above them about a head and a half," Bristow said. "He was huge, like a brick house. And they couldn't get him down."
Interviews with witnesses and police provided this picture:
At dinnertime, children played in yards along the street while Blackwell and several family members talked on the steps of his home in the 10800 block of Spring Garden Drive.
An hour later, neighbors heard an explosion from inside Blackwell's home. Police said he shot his 9-year-old stepdaughter in the chest with a 12-gauge shotgun, then ran outside and rushed bare-handed toward three teenage girls standing in a driveway several doors down.
The girls ran, and two jumped a fence to escape. Blackwell caught the third, Ashley Davis, 14, who said in an interview Thursday that she had stayed back, thinking she could release her dog to protect them.
She recalled hearing him say, "Lord forgive me for what I'm fixing to do." Then he bashed his fist into her face and kept hitting and kicking her, yelling "Touchdown!" with each blow.
She said he also yelled that he hated women and repeated the number "Six, six, six."
Ashley said she pretended to be unconscious. When he walked away, she got up and ran, but he caught her and beat her some more. She finally passed out.
"I was just praying for Jesus that I'd make it through it alive," she said from her bed at St. Louis Children's Hospital.
Then Blackwell broke into Angela's home, leaving bloody handprints on the front door, and began beating the girl's stepmother, Trina Hicks.
A rookie county police officer, in the area on another call, arrived alone and interrupted that assault. Blackwell tackled the officer, who police said was nearly 100 pounds lighter.
During the struggle, Blackwell tried to grab the officer's pistol. The officer managed to eject the ammunition magazine to keep Blackwell from firing it, Belmar said, and hit a panic button on his belt radio.
More officers arrived, and one shocked Blackwell with a Taser. "To some extent, it worked," Belmar said. "But not ideally."
The officers managed to handcuff Blackwell, but he continued to struggle and ran outside. Police used the Taser again, and arriving paramedics gave him two injections of a sedative.
"Eventually he started to settle down," Belmar said.
Officers put Blackwell into an ambulance but he died before reaching the hospital.
Meanwhile, Bristow, who lives two houses from Blackwell, rushed to aid the wounded 9-year-old, lying on her front steps with a gaping chest wound.
"She kept saying, 'Why did he shoot me?' and 'I'm going to die,'" Bristow recalled.
The 9-year-old was reported to be in critical condition at a hospital. Angela remained hospitalized Thursday night, and her stepmother was treated and released.
Angela said she did not know Blackwell, except to exchange greetings on the street. There was no animosity between them, she said.
Blackwell's estranged wife was not at their home during the incident. But all four of her daughters were there. Only the one shot was injured.
Four police officers were treated for injuries. The first one in suffered a separated shoulder and cuts. "I commend these officers," Belmar said. "They ran into a very difficult situation with an unbelievably violent person."
Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch and Medical Examiner Dr. Mary Case will review the episode.
Police said Blackwell worked for the Judevine Center for Autism. No one could be reached there for comment.
Blackwell, 6-foot-3 and weighing 235 pounds, had been recruited by Missouri out of Eureka High School, where he had rushed for more than 3,000 yards, scored 50 touchdowns and was named to the Post-Dispatch All-Metro team.
Coach Larry Smith suspended him for the last two games of the 1995 season for violating team rules, and Blackwell announced that he wanted to leave school and return to St. Louis. But Smith wouldn't release him from his scholarship, explaining in an interview, "I wouldn't give him a release because he had no place to go. I felt that his only chance in football and in school was to stay right here."
Blackwell eventually returned to Mizzou, and as a senior fullback in 1997 he was a key contributor as the Tigers ended 13 years of losing seasons and earned a berth in the Holiday Bowl.
He showed enough potential that he was picked in the seventh round of the 1998 NFL draft by the Kansas City Chiefs. Blackwell left the Chiefs' training camp unexpectedly in July 1998.
"Ernest came to me and said that he had some issues that he was trying to deal with and wanted to go home," Chiefs coach Marty Schottenheimer said at the time. Blackwell eventually was allowed to return to camp but was cut by the Chiefs before the season started.
Mike Smith of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.
Reporter Heather Ratcliffe:
E-mail: [email protected]
Phone: 314-863-2821
. Dude managed to turn himself into a rabid animal, he should be put down like one.
