USA > History > 2010 > Gun violence (I)

Incidents at Mosque in Tennessee

Spread Fear

August 30, 2010
The New York Times
By ROBBIE BROWN

ATLANTA — After a suspected arson and reports of gunshots at an Islamic center in Tennessee over the weekend, nearby mosques have hired security guards, installed surveillance cameras and requested the presence of federal agents at prayer services.

Muslim leaders in central Tennessee say that frightened worshipers are observing Ramadan in private and that some Muslim parents are wary of sending their children to school after a large fire on Saturday that destroyed property at the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro. Federal authorities suspect that the fire was arson.

The Islamic center has attracted national attention recently because its planned expansion into a larger building in some ways parallels a controversial proposal to build an Islamic center two blocks from the site of the Sept. 11 attacks in New York.

The Murfreesboro center, which has existed for nearly 30 years, suddenly found itself on front pages of newspapers this month and on “The Daily Show.” It became a hot topic in the local Congressional race, with one Republican candidate accusing the center of fostering terrorism and trying to link it to the militant Palestinian group Hamas.

Then, on Saturday, the police say, someone set fire to construction equipment at the site where the Islamic center is planning to move, destroying an earthmover and three other pieces of machinery. And on Sunday, as CNN was filming a news segment about the controversy, someone fired at least five shots near the property.

“We are very concerned about our safety,” said Essam Fathy, head of the center’s planning committee. “Whatever it takes, I’m not going to allow anybody to do something like this again.”

No people were injured in either incident. The cases are being investigated by the police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

In a statement on the center’s Web site, a spokeswoman called the fire an “arson attack” and an “atrocious act of terrorism.”

In Nashville, 30 miles northwest, local imams met with representatives of the United States attorney’s office on Monday to discuss the risk of further anti-Islamic violence. Several mosques have requested police surveillance, they said, especially with the end of Ramadan this year nearly coinciding with the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

“We’re worried that these attacks could spill over into Nashville,” said Mwafaq Mohammed, president of the Salahadeen Islamic Center there. “We don’t want people to misunderstand what we’re celebrating around Sept. 11. It would be better to take precautionary measures.”

Another mosque, the Islamic Center of Nashville, has installed indoor and outdoor surveillance cameras, hired round-the-clock security guards and requested that F.B.I. agents be on site during worship services, according to the imam, Mohamed Ahmed.

“Whoever did this, they are terrorists,” Mr. Ahmed said. “What’s the difference between them and Al Qaeda?”

But in other parts of Tennessee, including Chattanooga, Knoxville and Memphis, Muslim leaders reported that they had experienced no hostility and saw no reason to increase security.

    Incidents at Mosque in Tennessee Spread Fear, NYT, 30.8.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/31/us/31mosque.html

NY Man Dies

After Police Use Stun Gun on Him

March 11, 2010
Filed at 8:26 a.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

RHINEBECK, N.Y. (AP) -- Police say they're investigating the death of a 44-year-old New York man who died after a sheriff's deputy used a stun gun to subdue him.

Police responded to a domestic dispute and possible drug overdose early Wednesday morning in Rhinebeck, 50 miles south of Albany.

Authorities say they found James Healy Jr. behaving irrationally inside his girlfriend's house. Police say Healy became combative and resisted being removed from the home.

Officials say a deputy used a stun gun on Healy during the struggle. Police say he continued to struggle before officers were able to subdue him.

State police troopers say Healy then had trouble breathing and was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The cause of death was pending an autopsy.

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Information from: Poughkeepsie Journal, http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com 

    NY Man Dies After Police Use Stun Gun on Him, NYT, 11.3.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/03/11/us/AP-US-Police-Stun-Gun-Death.html

Man Holding Fake Gun Fatally Shot Near NYC School

March 9, 2010
Filed at 12:57 a.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK (AP) -- A police officer in Brooklyn has fatally shot a man who the NYPD says was brandishing a fake pistol near a school.

Police said they received a 911 call Monday afternoon from a parent reporting a man with a handgun near an elementary school.

They say that when officers arrived, the 22-year-old man pointed the phony gun at them during in a confrontation on the street outside the school. A uniformed officer responded by firing three shots.

The man was pronounced dead at the hospital. His name was not immediately released.

    Man Holding Fake Gun Fatally Shot Near NYC School, NYT, 9.3.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/03/09/us/AP-US-Shooting-Near-School.html

Supreme Court Still Divided on Guns

March 2, 2010
The New York Times
By ADAM LIPTAK

WASHINGTON — At least five justices appeared poised to expand the scope of the Second Amendment’s protection of the right to bear arms on Tuesday, judging from comments at an unusually intense Supreme Court argument.

By its conclusion, it seemed plain that the court would extend a 2008 decision that first identified an individual right to own guns to strike down Chicago’s gun control law, widely considered the most restrictive in the nation.

While such a ruling would represent an enormous symbolic victory for supporters of gun rights, its short-term practical impact would almost certainly be limited. Just how much strength the Second Amendment has in places that regulate but do not ban guns outright will be worked out in additional cases.

The new case, McDonald v. Chicago, No. 08-1521, was a sequel to the 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, which placed limits on what the federal government may do to regulate guns. The issue before the court in the new case was whether the Second Amendment also applied to state and local laws. It appeared that at least the justices in the Heller majority would say yes without reservation because they considered the rights protected in the Second Amendment as basic as those in other provisions of the Bill of Rights.

“If it’s not fundamental, then Heller is wrong,” said Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who was in the majority in Heller.

Justice John Paul Stevens, who wrote a dissent in Heller, suggested Tuesday that important questions remain unresolved.

“I’m asking you what is the scope of the right to own a gun?” he said. “Is it just the right to have it at home, or is the right to parade around the streets with guns?”

Heller itself struck down parts of the gun control law in the District of Columbia, then the strictest in the nation. But the majority opinion, by Justice Antonin Scalia, suggested that all sorts of restrictions on gun ownership might pass Second Amendment muster.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who also wrote a dissent in Heller, peppered the lawyers with questions about how the court might apply the Second Amendment to the states in a limited way. The Second Amendment says, “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

Drawing on the first clause of the amendment, Justice Breyer said that a right tied to state militias might be worthy of protection, while the right to bear arms “to shoot burglars” might not be.

The lead plaintiff in the case, Otis McDonald, has said he wants to keep a handgun in his home for protection from drug gangs. Justice Breyer asked Alan Gura, a lawyer for residents of Chicago challenging its gun control law, whether the city should remain free to ban guns if it could show that hundreds of lives would be saved. Mr. Gura said no.

Justice Scalia objected to the inquiry. A constitutional right, he said, cannot be overcome because it may have negative consequences.

But Justice Scalia was less receptive to an idea that has excited constitutional scholars in recent months. “What you argue,” he told Mr. Gura, “is the darling of the professoriate, for sure, but it’s also contrary to 140 years of our jurisprudence.”

Justice Scalia was referring to Mr. Gura’s assertion that the court has been making parts of the Bill of Rights applicable to the states in the wrong way.

The Second Amendment, like the rest of the Bill of Rights, originally restricted only the power of the federal government. The Supreme Court later ruled that most but not all of the protections of the Bill of Rights applied to the states under the due process clause of the 14th Amendment, one of the post-Civil War amendments.

Many judges and scholars, including Justice Scalia, have never found that methodology intellectually satisfactory. “Due process,” after all, would seem to protect only procedures and not substance. The very name given to the methodology — substantive due process — sounds like an oxymoron.

Mr. Gura, supported by scholars all along the political spectrum, argued that the court should instead rely on the 14th Amendment’s “privileges or immunities” clause, which says that “no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” There is evidence that the authors of the clause specifically wanted it to apply to allow freed slaves to have guns to defend themselves.

Justice Scalia was unimpressed. He said Mr. Gura should focus on winning his case rather than remaking constitutional law.

“Why do you want to undertake that burden,” Justice Scalia asked, “instead of just arguing substantive due process, which as much as I think it’s wrong, even I have acquiesced in it?”

Unless, the justice added, Mr. Gura was “bucking for a place on some law school faculty.”

James A. Feldman, a lawyer for the City of Chicago, urged the justices to treat the Second Amendment differently from its cousins because it concerns a lethal product. “Firearms, unlike anything else that is the subject of a provision of the Bill of Rights, are designed to injure and kill,” Mr. Feldman said.

Now it was the chief justice’s turn to give advice to the lawyer before him.

“All the arguments you make against” applying the Second Amendment to the states, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said, “it seems to me are arguments you should make in favor of regulation under the Second Amendment. We haven’t said anything about what the content of the Second Amendment is beyond what was said in Heller.”

    Supreme Court Still Divided on Guns, NYT, 3.3.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/us/03scotus.html

Buzz and Bullets: Gun Fans Cheer Starbucks' Policy

February 28, 2010
Filed at 1:58 p.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Dale Welch recently walked into a Starbucks in Virginia, handgun strapped to his waist, and ordered a banana Frappuccino with a cinnamon bun. He says the firearm drew a double-take from at least one customer, but not a peep from the baristas.

Welch's foray into the coffeehouse was part of an effort by some gun owners to exercise and advertise their rights in states that allow people to openly carry firearms.

Even in some ''open carry'' states, businesses are allowed to ban guns in their stores. And some have, creating political confrontations with gun owners. But Starbucks, the largest chain targeted, has refused to take the bait, saying in a statement this month that it follows state and local laws and has its own safety measures in its stores.

''Starbucks is a special target because it's from the hippie West Coast, and a lot of dedicated consumers who pay $4 for coffee have expectations that Starbucks would ban guns. And here they aren't,'' said John Bruce, a political science professor at the University of Mississippi who is an expert in gun policy.

Welch, a 71-year-old retired property manager who lives in Richmond, Va., doesn't see any reason why he shouldn't bear arms while he gets caffeinated.

''I don't know of anybody who would provide me with defense other than myself, so I routinely as a way of life carry a weapon -- and that extends to my coffee shops,'' he said.

The fight for retailers heated up in early January when gun enthusiasts in northern California began walking into Starbucks and other businesses to test state laws that allow gun owners to carry weapons openly in public places. As it spread to other states, gun control groups quickly complained about the parade of firearms in local stores.

Some were spontaneous, with just one or two gun owners walking into a store. Others were organized parades of dozens of gun owners walking into restaurants with their firearms proudly at their sides.

In one case, about 100 activists bearing arms had planned to go to a California Pizza Kitchen in Walnut Creek, Calif., but after it became clear they weren't welcome they went to another restaurant. That chain and Peet's Coffee & Tea are among the businesses that have banned customers with guns.

Just as shops can deny service to barefoot customers, restaurants and stores in some states can declare their premises gun-free zones.

The advocacy group OpenCarry.org, a leading group encouraging the demonstrations, applauded Starbucks in a statement for ''deciding not to discriminate against lawful gun carriers.''

''Starbucks is seen as a responsible corporation and they're seen as a very progressive corporation, and this policy is very much in keeping with that,'' said John Pierce, co-founder of OpenCarry.org. ''If you're going to support individual rights, you have to support them all. I applaud them, and I've gone out of my way personally to let every manager of every Starbucks I pass know that.''

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence has responded by circulating a petition that soon attracted 26,000 signatures demanding that Starbucks ''offer espresso shots, not gunshots'' and declare its coffeehouses ''gun-free zones.''

Gun control advocates hope the coffeehouse firearms displays end up aggravating more people than they inspire.

''If you want to dress up and go out and make a little political theater by frightening children in the local Starbucks, if that's what you want to spend your energy on, go right ahead,'' said Peter Hamm, a spokesman for the Brady campaign. ''But going out and wearing a gun on your belt to show the world you're allowed to is a little juvenile.''

The coffeehouse debate has been particularly poignant for gun-control advocates in Washington state, where four uniformed police officers were shot and killed while working on their laptops at a suburban coffeehouse. The shooter later died in a gun battle with police.

Ralph Fascitelli of Washington Ceasefire, an advocacy group that seeks to reduce gun violence, said allowing guns in coffeehouses robs residents of ''societal sanctuaries.''

''People go to Starbucks for an escape, just so they can get peace,'' Fascitelli said. ''But people walk in with open-carry guns and it destroys the tranquility.''

Gun control advocates have been on the defensive. Their opponents have trumpeted fears that gun rights would erode under a Democrat-led White House and Congress, but President Barack Obama and his top allies have largely been silent on issues such as reviving an assault weapons ban or strengthening background checks at gun shows.

Gun rights groups are looking to build on a 2008 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down Washington, D.C.'s handgun ban, and cheered legislation that took effect Monday allowing licensed gun owners to bring firearms into national parks. Obama signed that legislation as part of a broader bill.

Legislators in Montana and Tennessee, meanwhile, have passed measures seeking to exempt guns made and kept in-state from national gun control laws. And state lawmakers elsewhere are considering legislation that would give residents more leeway to carry concealed weapons without permits.

Observers say the gun rights movement is using the Starbucks campaign to add momentum and energize its supporters.

''They're trying to change the culture with this broader notion of gun rights,'' said Clyde Wilcox, a Georgetown University government professor who has written a book on the politics of gun control. ''I think they are pressing the notion that they've got a rout going, so why not just get what they can while they're ahead?''

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On the Net:

http://www.bradycampaign.org/ 

http://www.opencarry.org/

    Buzz and Bullets: Gun Fans Cheer Starbucks' Policy, NYT, 28.2.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/02/28/us/AP-US-Guns-Coffee.html

Fearing Obama Agenda, States Push to Loosen Gun Laws

February 23, 2010
The New York Times
By IAN URBINA

When President Obama took office, gun rights advocates sounded the alarm, warning that he intended to strip them of their arms and ammunition.

And yet the opposite is happening. Mr. Obama has been largely silent on the issue while states are engaged in a new and largely successful push for expanded gun rights, even passing measures that have been rejected in the past.

In Virginia, the General Assembly approved a bill last week that allows people to carry concealed weapons in bars and restaurants that serve alcohol, and the House of Delegates voted to repeal a 17-year-old ban on buying more than one handgun a month. The actions came less than three years after the shootings at Virginia Tech that claimed 33 lives and prompted a major national push for increased gun control.

Arizona and Wyoming lawmakers are considering nearly a half dozen pro-gun measures, including one that would allow residents to carry concealed weapons without a permit. And lawmakers in Montana and Tennessee passed measures last year — the first of their kind — to exempt their states from federal regulation of firearms and ammunition that are made, sold and used in state. Similar bills have been proposed in at least three other states.

In the meantime, gun control advocates say, Mr. Obama has failed to deliver on campaign promises to close a loophole that allows unlicensed dealers at gun shows to sell firearms without background checks; to revive the assault weapons ban; and to push states to release data about guns used in crimes.

He also signed bills last year allowing guns to be carried in national parks and in luggage on Amtrak trains.

“We expected a very different picture at this stage,” said Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, a gun control group that last month issued a report card failing the administration in all seven of the group’s major indicators.

Gun control advocates have had some successes recently, Mr. Helmke said. Proposed bills to allow students to carry guns on college campuses have been blocked in the 20 or so states where they have been proposed since the Virginia Tech shootings. Last year, New Jersey limited gun purchases to one a month, a law similar to the one Virginia may revoke.

But recent setbacks to gun control have been many.

Last month, the Indiana legislature passed bills that block private employers from forbidding workers to keep firearms in their vehicles on company property.

Gun rights supporters also showed their strength last year by blocking legislation to give District of Columbia residents a full vote in Congress by attaching an amendment to repeal Washington’s ban on handguns.

Asked by reporters about the Brady group’s critical report on the Obama administration, a White House spokesman, Ben LaBolt, pointed out that the latest F.B.I. statistics showed that violent crime dropped in the first half of 2009 to its lowest levels since the 1960s.

“The president supports and respects the Second Amendment,” Mr. LaBolt said, “and he believes we can take common-sense steps to keep our streets safe and to stem the flow of illegal guns to criminals.”

Still, gun rights groups remain skeptical of the administration.

“The watchword for gun owners is stay ready,” said Wayne LaPierre, chief executive of the National Rifle Association. “We have had some successes, but we know that the first chance Obama gets, he will pounce on us.”

That Mr. Obama signed legislation allowing guns in national parks and on Amtrak trains should not be seen as respect for the Second Amendment, Mr. LaPierre said. The two measures had been attached as amendments to larger pieces of legislation — a bill cracking down on credit card companies and a transportation appropriations bill, respectively — that the president wanted passed, Mr. LaPierre said.

Regardless of Mr. Obama’s agenda, gun dealers seem to be reaping the benefits of fears surrounding it.

Federal background checks for gun purchases rose to 14 million in 2009, up from 12.7 million in 2008 and 11.2 million in 2007. But from November 2009 to January 2010, the number of background checks fell 12 percent, compared with the same months a year earlier.

In Virginia, the success of new pro-gun laws is partly a result of the Republican Party’s taking the governor’s office after eight years of Democratic control.

A major setback for state gun control advocates was this week’s House vote repealing the one-gun-per-month law, which was passed in 1993 under Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, a Democrat, and has long been upheld as the state’s signature gun control restriction.

Supporters of limiting gun purchases to one a month said the law was important to avoid Virginia’s becoming the East Coast’s top gun-running hub. Opponents dismissed the concern.

“We shouldn’t get rid of our Second Amendment rights because some people in New York City want to abuse theirs,” Robert G. Marshall, a Republican delegate from Manassas who supported repeal of the one-gun-a-month limit, told reporters.

Gun control advocates hoped to win new restrictions after the Virginia Tech massacre on April 16, 2007, in which a student, Seung-Hui Cho, shot and killed 32 people before turning a gun on himself.

After the shooting, Gov. Tim Kaine, a Democrat, pushed for stronger gun control measures. But last year the legislature rejected a bill requiring background checks for private sales at gun shows and repealed a law that Mr. Kaine had supported to prohibit anyone from carrying concealed weapons into a club or restaurant where alcohol is served.

In previous years, the guns-in-bars bill cleared both chambers but was vetoed by Mr. Kaine. But the new governor, Robert F. McDonnell, has said he supports the measure.

Virginia is also considering a measure adopted in Montana and Tennessee that declares that firearms made and retained in-state are beyond the authority of Congress. The measure is primarily a challenge to Congress’s power to regulate commerce among the states.

The Montana law is being challenged in federal court, and the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has sent a letter to Tennessee and Montana gun dealers stating that federal law supersedes the state measure.

    Fearing Obama Agenda, States Push to Loosen Gun Laws, NYT, 24.2.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/24/us/24guns.html

For Professor, Fury Just Beneath the Surface

February 21, 2010
The New York Times
By SHAILA DEWAN, STEPHANIE SAUL and KATIE ZEZIMA

This article is by Shaila Dewan, Stephanie Saul and Katie Zezima.

Not long after Amy Bishop was identified as the professor who had been arrested in the shooting of six faculty members at the University of Alabama in Huntsville on Feb. 12, the campus police received a series of reports even stranger than the shooting itself.

Several people with connections to the university’s biology department warned that Dr. Bishop, a neuroscientist with a Harvard Ph.D., might have booby-trapped the science building with some sort of “herpes bomb,” police officials said, designed to spread the dangerous virus.

Only people who had worked with Dr. Bishop would know that she had done work with the herpes virus as a post-doctoral student and had talked about how it could cause encephalitis. She had also written an unpublished novel in which a herpes-like virus spreads throughout the world, causing pregnant women to miscarry.

By the time of the reports, the police had already swept every room of the science building, finding nothing but a 9-millimeter handgun in the second-floor restroom.

But the anxious warnings reflected the fears of those who know Dr. Bishop that she could go to great lengths to retaliate against those she felt had wronged her.

Over the years, Dr. Bishop had shown evidence that the smallest of slights could set off a disproportionate and occasionally violent reaction, according to numerous interviews with colleagues and others who know her. Her life seemed to veer wildly between moments of cold fury and scientific brilliance, between rage at perceived slights and empathy for her students.

Her academic career slammed to a halt with the shooting rampage nine days ago against her colleagues. Dr. Bishop, 45, is accused of killing three fellow biology professors, including the department’s chairman, at a faculty meeting. Three others were wounded.

Her lawyer says she remembers nothing of the shootings and that he plans to have her evaluated by psychiatrists.

The shootings took place after Dr. Bishop learned that she had lost her long battle to gain academic tenure at the university. But they were hardly the first time that she had come to the attention of law enforcement because of an outburst or violent act.

In 2002, she was charged with assault after punching a woman in the head at an International House of Pancakes in Peabody, Mass. The woman had taken the last booster seat, and, according to the police report, Dr. Bishop demanded it for one of her children, shouting, “I am Dr. Amy Bishop!”

In 1986, not long after a family argument, Amy Bishop shot and killed her brother, Seth, 18, with her father’s 12-gauge shotgun, putting a gaping hole in his left chest and tearing open his aorta, according to the police report. She was 21 years old and, like her brother, a student at Northeastern University.

But Amy Bishop was not charged with a crime, and the shooting was never fully investigated by the police. She and her family said it was an accident, and the authorities accepted their version.

And in 1994, she and her husband were questioned in a mail bomb plot against a doctor at Harvard, where she obtained her Ph.D. and remained on and off for nearly a decade to conduct postdoctoral research.

In each brush with the law until this month, Dr. Bishop emerged unscathed, and the University of Alabama in Huntsville never knew of them. But she left behind a trail of neighbors, colleagues and acquaintances who were mystified by her mood swings and volatility.

She yelled at playing children, neighbors said, and rarely kept her opinions to herself. She rejected criticism and fudged her résumé. Her scientific work was not as impressive as she made it seem, according to independent neurobiologists, some of whom said she would have been unlikely to even get the opportunity to try for tenure at major universities.

She was known to have cyclical “flip-outs,” as one former student described them, that pushed one graduate student after another out of her laboratory. On the day she shot and killed her brother, she ran out into the street with the shotgun and demanded a car at a local dealership.

Dr. Hugo Gonzalez-Serratos, now a professor of physiology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, collaborated with Dr. Bishop on a 1996 paper while both were working in the cardiology department at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, affiliated with Harvard. When the paper was completed, Dr. Gonzalez-Serratos said, Dr. Bishop flew into a rage.

“She was very angry because she was not the first author,” he recalled, referring to the more prominent position. “She broke down. She was extremely angry with all of us. She exploded into something emotional that we never saw before in our careers.”

Her contract in the department was not renewed.

Even those who worked with her on fiction writing in Massachusetts described the experience as painful and said they always had a feeling she was about to explode.

“When I worked with her, I found she was always within striking distance of the edge,” said Lenny Cavallaro, a writer who said he collaborated with Dr. Bishop on “Amazon Fever,” the unpublished novel about the virus.

A Shell in Her Pocket

On the morning of Dec. 6, 1986, there was an argument at the home of Judith and Samuel Bishop, a Victorian house among the grandest in Braintree, Mass., a middle-class suburb of Boston.

Judy, active in local politics and well known around town, was out horseback riding. Seth was outside washing his car. Sam Bishop, a film professor at Northeastern, was heading to the mall before lunch to do some Christmas shopping. But before he left, he and his daughter, Amy, had some kind of dispute, according to police records. It was over something Amy had said.

Amy went upstairs to her room and would later tell the police that she had decided to load her father’s shotgun. She wanted to learn how it worked, she said, because there had been a break-in at the house not long before.

Sam Bishop had bought the gun a year earlier in Canton, Mass., and he and his son joined the local Braintree rifle club. He had left the gun, unloaded, on the top of a trunk in his bedroom, enclosed in a case. The shells were in a nearby bureau.

Amy had never used the shotgun before.

She loaded it and a blast went off in her room. Police later found evidence that she had tried to conceal the results of that blast, using a Band-Aid tin and a book cover to hide holes in the wall.

Carrying the shotgun, she descended the stairs to the kitchen, where her brother and mother were standing.

“I was at the kitchen sink and Seth was standing by the stove,” Mrs. Bishop told the police. “Amy said, ‘I have a shell in the gun, and I don’t know how to unload it.’ I told Amy not to point the gun at anybody. Amy turned toward her brother and the gun fired, hitting him. Amy then ran out of the house with the shotgun.”

Mrs. Bishop said the shooting had been an accident.

As police officers and emergency medical technicians tended to Seth, who was bleeding to death on the floor, another group of officers went in search of Amy, who had headed toward Braintree’s commercial district.

Tom Pettigrew, who was working in the body shop of a Ford dealership, said he and his friends saw a young woman walking around, looking into cars, carrying a shotgun.

“I kind of stepped back and said, ‘What’s going on, what are you doing here?’ ” Mr. Pettigrew said in an interview. “She said, ‘Put your hands up.’ I put my hands up and repeated the question.”

He continued: “She was distraught. She was hyperaware of everything that was going on. She said: ‘I need a car. I just got into a fight with my husband. He’s looking for me, and he’s going to kill me.’ ”

Minutes later, the police found Amy Bishop, still holding the gun, near a village newspaper distribution agency, where workers were busy unloading Sunday papers. According to Officer Ronald Solimini’s report, she appeared frightened, disoriented and confused, but she refused his orders to drop the gun until another officer approached her from the other side.

When the police took her into custody they found one shell in the shotgun and another in her pocket.

As Officer Solimini and a partner drove Amy Bishop to the police station, she made a remark that surprised him, according to the report. “She stated that she had an argument with her father earlier,” Officer Solimini wrote. “(Prior to the shooting, she stated!)”

Police officers began to question Amy, but her mother arrived and told her not to answer any more questions. Paul Frazier, the current police chief of Braintree, said that Amy Bishop’s release “did not sit well with these officers,” and that the lieutenant in charge of booking that night told him a higher-up had given instructions to stop the booking process.

In an interview Wednesday, the area’s current prosecutor, William R. Keating, district attorney of Norfolk County, was highly critical of the handling of the shooting 24 years ago, particularly because it appears that Amy Bishop’s actions after her brother’s shooting — demanding a car at gunpoint and refusing an officer’s orders to drop the gun — were not conveyed to state authorities who investigated the case.

“It’s not a minor thing that would be omitted,” Mr. Keating said.

Mr. Keating said Amy Bishop could have been charged with weapons and assault felonies, which would probably have prompted a psychiatric evaluation. Had such a charge, or any of the others that followed, been on her record, it could have changed the course of Dr. Bishop’s career, and the fate of those who died in Huntsville.

Instead, the investigation was stopped.

Did someone intervene to save Amy Bishop from prosecution? Her mother served on the town committee, an elected legislative panel of 240 members that set the town’s spending. Or was Amy’s release merely a town’s way of caring for its own, the way small towns do?

That night, after the gory mess in the kitchen had been cleaned up by helpful neighbors, one of the investigating officers, Billy Finn, stopped by to see if the family needed food.

“You cannot imagine how kind the Braintree police were to us,” Judy Bishop told The Braintree Forum and Observer a week later.

Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts has ordered the State Police to review its role in the case, and the district attorney is also conducting an inquiry.

Grievances and Appeals

The job application for the University of Alabama in Huntsville asked, “Have you ever been convicted of an offense other than a minor traffic violation?” Amy Bishop, who took a tenure-track job there in 2003, answered the question with a simple “no.”

Technically, she was correct. She was never charged with her brother’s death, and though she was sentenced to probation in the IHOP incident, she was never officially found guilty. She and her husband, James E. Anderson, were questioned in connection with the mail bomb sent in 1993 to one of her mentors at Harvard, Dr. Paul A. Rosenberg, a professor of neurology, but nothing came of it. A law enforcement official has said federal agents are now going back over the case.

Mr. Anderson initially insisted to The New York Times that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had sent him and his wife a letter clearing them in the pipe bomb case, but the law enforcement official said it was extremely unlikely the bureau had sent such a letter. Mr. Anderson later produced a letter from his lawyer, Robert Harrison, dated June 2000, saying that the United States Postal Service was “closing the file” on its separate investigation.

Dr. Bishop also arrived in Huntsville with a padded résumé, giving the impression that she had worked at Harvard two years longer than the university’s records indicate.

Still, as a new professor with recommendations from Harvard and two other universities, Dr. Bishop did not attract scrutiny. She, her husband, a computer engineer who now works at a start-up company, and their four children settled into a house in a quiet subdivision, and she began her new job in the biology department.

At first, colleagues and students said, she came across as funny and extroverted, enthusiastic and knowledgeable about campus issues. She became the biology department’s representative to the Faculty Senate — not necessarily a coveted job, but one she seemed to enjoy.

She was, however, not universally liked. Some students say they found her so unresponsive that they signed a petition complaining that, among other things, her test questions went beyond what was covered in class. Dr. Bishop would say, “Well, my daughter took it and she got an A, so you should be able to do it,” said Caitlin Phillips, a junior studying nursing.

Graduate students did not last long in her laboratory, and those familiar with the department said that most transferred to a different one before completing their degree. In May 2006, she dismissed a graduate student from her lab. The student promised to return some notebooks and a set of keys the next day, a person familiar with the incident said, but Dr. Bishop called the campus police that night, according to a campus police report. The student filed a grievance against her.

But in 2008, Dr. Bishop seemed to be riding high. She and her husband had developed an automated cell incubator that was supposed to keep finicky cells, like nerve cells, alive longer and make experiments easier. The university, which would share in any proceeds, was trying to market the device, and the university president, David B. Williams, predicted that it would “change the way biological and medical research is conducted,” according to The Huntsville Times. In the winter of 2009, a smiling Dr. Bishop was shown on the cover of The Huntsville R & D Report.

Prodigy Biosystems, where Mr. Anderson now works, ultimately raised $1.25 million to develop the product.

In March 2009, however, Dr. Bishop received word that her bid for tenure had been denied because her research and publication record were not strong, colleagues said. Such denials are rare, faculty members said, because the university reviews tenure-track professors annually, alerting them to areas that need improvement.

Even though faculty members, including her department chairman, counseled her to look for another job, Dr. Bishop appealed the decision.

“Her attitude was not, ‘I’m going to have to go find another job,’ ” said Eric Seemann, an assistant professor of psychology. “It was more like, ‘When are these idiots going to clear this up?’ ”

She lobbied for a revote in the department, badgering people for support, her colleagues said. They disputed an assertion by her husband after the shooting that Dr. Bishop had won the appeals process and the provost had overruled the decision. The appeals process identified only a minor procedural problem, which was remedied, they said. Last November, a university spokesman said, her appeal was finally denied.

Increasingly expressing concern about her family’s finances, Dr. Bishop hired a lawyer, her husband said, and filed a discrimination complaint against the university. He said she also began going to a firing range. In the weeks leading up to the shooting, he told reporters, he had gone with her to the range once. He said she claimed to have borrowed the gun she used.

Her lawyer said Friday that she did not remember what happened next. But the police and witnesses say that on Feb. 12, Dr. Bishop went to a routine faculty meeting with a plan. And a loaded handgun.

William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting.

    For Professor, Fury Just Beneath the Surface, NYT, 21.2.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/us/21bishop.html

Lawyer Says Client Has No Memory of Alabama Shootings

February 20, 2010
The New York Times
By SHAILA DEWAN

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The neuroscientist charged in the shooting deaths a week ago of three of her colleagues at the University of Alabama in Huntsville does not remember what happened, her lawyer said Friday.

“She just doesn’t remember shooting these folks,” said the lawyer, Roy W. Miller, of his client, Amy Bishop. “She’s very sorry for what she’s done.”

Though he seemed to be preparing an insanity defense for his client, Mr. Miller backed away from an earlier statement to The Associated Press that his client was a “paranoid schizophrenic” who “gets at issue with people that she doesn’t need to and obsesses on it,” saying he had spoken out of turn.

But, he said, he would be engaging one or more psychiatrists to examine Dr. Bishop.

“This is not a whodunit,” Mr. Miller said. “This lady has committed this offense or offenses in front of the world. It gets to be a question in my mind of her mental capacity at the time, or her mental state at the time that these acts were committed.” He said his client had told him it was not the first time she could not remember what had happened.

James E. Anderson, Dr. Bishop’s husband, said he could not comment before speaking with the lawyer.

Dr. Bishop, who the university has said is 44, has been charged with capital murder in the deaths of Gopi Podila, Maria Ragland Davis and Adriel Johnson, all fellow biology professors, and with three counts of attempted murder. Two of those wounded in the shootings on Feb. 12 remain in the hospital in critical condition.

Mr. Miller was appointed by the court. A court official said it was routine to appoint counsel in all capital cases. But on Wednesday, Dr. Bishop also filed an Affidavit of Indigency saying that she had no job, no money in the bank and no home.

Property records list her and her husband, James E. Anderson, as owners of a $230,000 house, and a university official said she is still employed with an annual salary of $66,000, though the university is reviewing her status.

Mr. Miller said he did not know anything about his client’s assets, but that she had asked him if she was still employed and said she assumed she was not. She told him that biologists do not make very much money in academia, he said, adding that she and her husband both have I.Q.’s of 180.

Mr. Miller had visited his client, he said, but have yet to discuss the case in detail.

“My impression of this client is that she’s one of the nicest persons you’d ever want to meet,” he said. “She is highly concerned with being charged with this. She’s concerned about her children most of all.”

Dr. Bishop and Mr. Anderson have four children, ranging in age from 9 to 18. “She wants to see them, she wants to be with them, she wants to touch them,” Mr. Miller said.

Pressed on the question of whether or not his client was insane, he said: “I don’t know — that’s what a psychiatrist is going to tell me whether she knew right from wrong. She knows right from wrong now.”

    Lawyer Says Client Has No Memory of Alabama Shootings, NYT, 20.2.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/20/us/20alabama.html

A Muslim Son, a Murder Trial and Many Questions

February 17, 2010
The New York Times
By JAMES DAO

MEMPHIS — When Monica Bledsoe spoke to her younger brother late last May, he seemed his old upbeat self. He had just led his first sightseeing tour of Little Rock, Ark., for their father’s new tour bus company and all went well. The tips had flowed.

A week later, her brother, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, opened fire with a semiautomatic rifle on a military recruiting center in Little Rock, killing one soldier and wounding another.

Ms. Bledsoe was stunned. “I would never have thought this could happen,” she said.

Eight months after the shooting, Mr. Muhammad’s family is still sorting through the confusing pieces of his shattered life. A gentle, happy-go-lucky teenager, he had become a deeply observant Muslim in college, shunning gatherings where alcohol was served. He traveled to Yemen to study Arabic, married a Yemeni woman, was imprisoned and then deported for overstaying his visa. After returning to Memphis last year, he stewed with anger about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Recently, Mr. Muhammad, 24, thrust himself back into the news by claiming in a note to an Arkansas judge that he was a member of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a terrorist group based in Yemen. He asked that he be allowed to plead guilty to capital murder, a request that will probably be denied.

The note has renewed questions about his case, which had been nearly forgotten in the wake of subsequent attacks, most notably the shooting rampage in November at Fort Hood, Tex., and the attempted bombing of an airplane on Christmas Day. Like both of those cases, Mr. Muhammad’s involved a Yemeni connection and the failure by the authorities to anticipate an attack, despite having clues.

In Mr. Muhammad’s case, the same F.B.I. agent interviewed him twice before the shootings: once while he was in prison in Yemen and then again in Nashville soon after he returned. But the Federal Bureau of Investigation did not place Mr. Muhammad under surveillance, law enforcement officials have said, apparently believing that he did not pose a threat.

In January, Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey, sent a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. requesting information about the F.B.I.’s interviews with Mr. Muhammad before the shootings, raising questions about why someone possibly suspected of extremist ties was allowed to buy a firearm.

But no one is more vocal about shining light on Mr. Muhammad’s radicalization than his father, Melvin Bledsoe. Though he has hired a lawyer for his son, visits him in his cell in Little Rock on weekends and contributes to his defense, Mr. Bledsoe, 54, says he has no illusions about his son’s guilt.

“My heart bleeds for the families of the victims,” he said.

What he wants, Mr. Bledsoe says, is to understand how “evildoers” brainwashed his son, as he puts it. And he wants the F.B.I. held accountable for what he considers its negligence in preventing the attack.

“They didn’t pull the trigger, but they allowed this to happen,” Mr. Bledsoe said. “It is owed to the American people to know what happened. If it can happen to my son, it can happen to anyone’s son.”

The F.B.I. said it could not discuss Mr. Muhammad on orders from the judge.

It also appears that Mr. Muhammad’s trial, set for June, will answer few questions about his radicalization. Prosecutors say that they consider it a straightforward murder case and that they intend to try it without delving into Mr. Muhammad’s religious conversion, political beliefs or possible ties to terrorists.

“If you strip away what he says, self-serving or not, it’s just an awful killing,” said Larry Jegley, the lead prosecutor for Pulaski County, which includes Little Rock. “It’s like a lot of other killings we have.”

Pvt. William A. Long of Conway, Ark., was killed in the shooting, and Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula of Jacksonville, Ark., was wounded.

Despite Mr. Muhammad’s claim to be a Qaeda soldier, Mr. Jegley said “it looks to me like he was acting alone,” a view supported by some law enforcement experts. Those experts, and Mr. Bledsoe, also say there is no evidence that Mr. Muhammad was ever in contact with Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Yemeni-American cleric who exchanged e-mail messages with the accused Fort Hood gunman, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan.

Why Mr. Muhammad might fabricate links to Al Qaeda is a subject of debate. Mr. Bledsoe suggests that his son may be trying to fulfill a sense of martyrdom; some experts say it may be a form of self-aggrandizement.

But whether Mr. Muhammad is a lone-wolf jihadist or a Qaeda soldier, his case underscores the immense challenges of identifying homegrown extremists, experts say.

Mr. Muhammad was born Carlos Bledsoe in 1985. Raised a Baptist, he was by all accounts a sunny child who loved playing basketball and telling jokes. After graduating from high school in 2003, he went to Tennessee State University in Nashville to study business, saying he wanted to take over his father’s company someday.

In his freshman year, he was arrested for possessing an illegal weapon. Though the charge was later expunged, the incident caused him to explore religion more deeply, his father said. He considered Judaism, attended a speech by Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader, and then, to his parents’ dismay, decided to become a Sunni Muslim.

He dropped out of college at the end of his sophomore year and began working odd jobs in Nashville hotels and restaurants. He was also becoming more religiously devout, spending time in Nashville’s Somali community, praying regularly at the Islamic Center of Nashville, wearing Arab-style clothing, forswearing alcohol and changing his name.

In 2007, wanting to learn Arabic and visit Mecca, he decided to move to Yemen and signed a contract to teach English for $300 a month in the southern port city of Aden, records show.

Before he left, he told his sister that he hoped to marry in Yemen and move to Saudi Arabia. When she expressed concerns about Islamic terrorists, she recalled, “He looked me in the eye, held my hand, and said, ‘I’m not one of those Muslims.’ ”

Details of his life in Yemen remain sketchy. In addition to teaching, he took Arabic at The City Institute in the capital city, Sana, the Yemeni government has said. And a year after arriving, he married one of his students, Reena Abdullah Ahmed Farag, in Aden, according to a copy of the marriage license.

On about Nov. 14, 2008, just two months after his wedding, he was arrested in Sana for overstaying his visa. What might have been a simple immigration case turned complicated when the police found fake Somali identification papers on him.

Somalia is considered a training ground for Islamic extremists by American counterterrorism officials. The Yemeni government threatened to put Mr. Muhammad on trial.

Mr. Bledsoe says that although the F.B.I. interviewed Mr. Muhammad soon after his arrest, he did not learn of his son’s detention until two weeks later, when Mr. Muhammad’s wife contacted him. Under prodding from the American Embassy in Sana, the Yemeni government deported Mr. Muhammad on Jan. 29, 2009.

Mr. Muhammad told his father that while in prison he met Islamic radicals who told him that the American government had forsaken him. “We are your real brothers,” they said, according to Mr. Bledsoe.

Back home, Mr. Muhammad often seemed uneasy, his sister said, fuming sullenly when he saw news reports about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mr. Bledsoe decided to open an office in Little Rock to give his son a job so that he could bring his wife to the United States. By April, Mr. Muhammad was living in a spare apartment less than three miles from the recruiting center.

These days, Ms. Bledsoe said, her brother can seemed relaxed one moment, but strident the next.

“He gives a history of what the meaning of paradise is,” she said. “That’s where he wants to go. He wants to go to paradise.”

    A Muslim Son, a Murder Trial and Many Questions, NYT, 17.2.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/17/us/17convert.html

Homer Journal

An Officer Shoots, a 73-Year-Old Dies, and Schisms Return
 

February 15, 2010
The New York Times
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON

HOMER, La. — For the past year, many residents of this tiny town in the northern Louisiana hill country have waited in anger.

They have waited ever since last Feb. 20, when Bernard Monroe, a 73-year-old black man left mute from throat cancer, was shot to death in his front yard by a white police officer who claimed, contrary to other witnesses, that Mr. Monroe had a pistol. They waited as the state police finished its investigation, as the case was passed on to the state attorney general and as a grand jury deliberated on a list of charges, including murder, manslaughter and negligent homicide.

And on Feb. 4, after two days of testimony, the jury delivered its decision: no indictment.

The outcome jarred a town of 3,400 that, like so many small Southern towns, has been struggling to move past a heritage of racial mistrust. Even among disillusioned black residents, it seemed like a throwback to uglier times.

“Nobody felt like he was going to get jail time,” said Faye Williams, 55, discussing the decision with others at Laketha’s Salon downtown and referring to the officer. “But we thought there’d be at least a trial or something. It just ain’t right.”

Last week, the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of Mr. Monroe’s family against the town and two former police officers, arguing that they had failed “to exercise reasonable care” and “created a volatile situation” in the series of events that led up to the shooting.

Jim Colvin, the town attorney, said he had just received the lawsuit and did not know enough about it to respond to its accusations.

The shooting happened on a Friday afternoon. Mr. Monroe had been sitting in a folding chair on the edge of his yard, amid more than a dozen friends and relatives. Two Homer police officers, Tim Cox and Joseph Henry, pulled up in separate cars and began making small talk, several witnesses said.

Shaun Monroe, Mr. Monroe’s son, who had been sitting in his truck in the street, pulled into the driveway. The younger Mr. Monroe, 38, has a criminal record, including charges in 1994 of firearms possession and assaulting a police officer, his last felony charges.

But there was no warrant for his arrest that Friday. Kurt Wall, the assistant attorney general who presented the evidence in the case to the grand jury, said the officers had been told that if they ever saw Shaun Monroe with a black bag, which they say they did, it probably contained drugs.

No other witnesses saw such a bag that day. But when Officer Henry called his name, Shaun Monroe darted behind the house, went back around the front and ran inside. Officer Cox followed and chased him through the house, a chase that, the lawsuit argues, was “without just cause” or legal justification.

Shaun Monroe burst out of the front door and was at the front gate when Officer Henry, who was in the yard, hit him with a Taser. Seconds later, Officer Cox reached the front screen door from the inside, witnesses said, as the elder Mr. Monroe was walking up the steps to the porch.

Officer Cox told investigators that the elder Mr. Monroe had picked up a pistol he kept on the porch and was aiming it at Officer Henry. All of the civilian witnesses say Mr. Monroe was carrying only a sports drink bottle.

But this is not in dispute: Mr. Cox shot Mr. Monroe seven times in the chest, side and back. Several witnesses said they saw a police officer later place the pistol next to Mr. Monroe’s body, but the police officers said that was because it had been moved when they were checking his wounds.

Much of the town, which is nearly two-thirds black, went into an uproar. In April, the Rev. Al Sharpton led a rally in Homer. In July, the two officers, who had been on leave, resigned and left town.

The state police produced a report in August, and, after reviewing it for several months, the district attorney passed it on to the state attorney general. A local prosecution presented a conflict, he said, as the two officers were witnesses in other parish cases.

The grand jury consisted of eight whites and four blacks, all from Homer and the surrounding area. Mr. Wall said that more than 20 witnesses testified, civilians as well as law enforcement officers.

“We just put everybody on and let them say whatever they had to say or observe and let the jury make their determination,” he said. “We felt it was a very thorough and accurate presentation.”

Many in the town, including some whites, are skeptical. They point out, for instance, that the forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy was never called to testify about the nature of Mr. Monroe’s wounds.

“No one knows more about the way Mr. Monroe died than I do,” said Frank Peretti, the Little Rock-based pathologist, who was surprised to learn about the grand jury’s decision in the news. (Mr. Wall said his presence had not been necessary, as the parish coroner testified and had the autopsy report.)

Others see the case as closed.

“I just wish the black community could get beyond this,” said Toney Johnson, 61, one of two whites on the five-person town council. “The law has done its job, in my opinion.”

Mr. Johnson, who pointed out that Homer elected a black mayor several years ago with significant white support, said the council had become polarized along racial lines since the shooting. He says that Officer Cox was only doing what many residents in the poor, mostly black parts of town had requested — getting tough on the drug problem.

“It’s very tragic that this happened, but it happens,” he said.

The elected chief of police, Russell Mills, who is white, said he was advised by the town lawyer not to comment. He drew criticism shortly after the shooting for a statement he made to The Chicago Tribune that seemed to advocate racial profiling.

In a letter clarifying that statement in The Guardian-Journal of Claiborne Parish, Mr. Mills wrote that residents of high-crime neighborhoods had urged him to do something about numerous shootings, so he had developed a policy of “preventative policing,” in which officers stop groups of young people walking in these neighborhoods, ask for identification “and possibly pat them down.”

That approach, also used by some big-city police departments, is all too familiar to black residents here, many of whom call it harassment.

Though Homer has come far from the intense racial friction of the 1960s, a sense of mistrust has lingered, both white and black residents say. And though even some whites in town are privately troubled by the grand jury’s decision, many black residents have come away with bitter resignation.

“If it was a black man killing a white man, he’d be in jail, no question,” said Shavontae Ball, 20, whose sisters saw the shooting. “It’s like my grandmother said: ‘Ain’t nothing ever change in Homer.’ ”

    An Officer Shoots, a 73-Year-Old Dies, and Schisms Return, NYT, 15.2.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/15/us/15homer.html

Professor Said to Be Charged After 3 Are Killed in Alabama

February 13, 2010
The New York Times
By SARAH WHEATON and SHAILA DEWAN

Three faculty members at the University of Alabama in Huntsville were shot to death, and three other people were seriously wounded at a biology faculty meeting on Friday afternoon, university officials said.

The Associated Press reported that a biology professor, identified as Amy Bishop, was charged with murder.

According to a faculty member, the professor had applied for tenure, been turned down, and appealed the decision. She learned on Friday that she had been denied once again.

The newspaper identified Dr. Bishop as a Harvard-educated neuroscientist. According to a 2006 profile in the newspaper, Dr. Bishop invented a portable cell growth incubator with her husband, Jim Anderson. Police officials said that Mr. Anderson was being detained, but they did not call him a suspect.

Photographs of a suspect being led from the scene by the police appeared to match images of Dr. Bishop on academic and technology Web sites.

Dr. Bishop had told acquaintances recently that she was worried about getting tenure, said a business associate who met her at a business technology open house at the end of January and asked not to be named because of the close-knit nature of the science community in Huntsville.

“She began to talk about her problems getting tenure in a very forceful and animated way, saying it was unfair,” the associate said, referring to a conversation in which she blamed specific colleagues for her problems.

“She seemed to be one of these persons who was just very open with her feelings,” he said. “A very smart, intense person who had a variety of opinions on issues.”

The shooting occurred in the Shelby Center at the university around 4 p.m., officials said. Few students were in the building, and none were involved in the shooting, said Ray Garner, a university spokesman.

Officials said the dead were all biology professors, G. K. Podila, the department’s chairman; Maria Ragland Davis; and Adriel D. Johnson Sr. Two other biology professors, Luis Rogelio Cruz-Vera and Joseph G. Leahy, as well as a professor’s assistant, Stephanie Monticciolo, are at Huntsville Hospital in conditions ranging from stable to critical.

Officials said the suspect was detained outside of the building “without incident.” The police said a weapon had not been recovered.

Andrew Ols, a senior at the university, said he had been in a biology lab in the Shelby Center less than five minutes before the shooting began. “Now that we realize that it was a faculty person that committed the crime, no students were injured and no students were targeted or anything like that, there’s more shock than there is fear,” he said.

The shooting came just a week after a middle school student near Huntsville shot and killed a classmate.

“This is a very safe campus,” Mr. Garner said. “It’s not unlike what we experienced a week ago. This town is not accustomed to shootings and having multiple dead.”

Nick Zivkovic, a senior, was filling his gas tank around 4 p.m. after finishing a lab in the Shelby Center. “Next thing I know, 40 to 50 police cars are flying by,” he said. Back at the building, emergency vehicles created an “ocean of lights” as police with SWAT gear and automatic weapons stormed into the building. A registered first responder, Mr. Zivkovic passed out blankets and tried to comfort the evacuated students who were trembling and mumbling in the parking lot.

“You just try to hand them some hot chocolate,” he said.

The university was put on lockdown “almost instantaneously,” said Trent Willis, chief of staff to Mayor Tommy Battle. But some students complained on Twitter and to reporters that they did not receive the university’s alert until hours after the shooting.

“The U-Alert was triggered late because the people involved in activating that system were involved in responding to the shooting,” said Charles Gailes, chief of the university police, at a news conference.

“We’re going to stop, we’re going to sit down, we’re going to review what happened,” Mr. Gailes said. “All of these actions are going to be learning points, and we’re going to be better for this.”

Erin Johnson, a sophomore, told The Huntsville Times that a biology faculty meeting was under way when she heard screams coming from the room.

According to the 2006 profile, Dr. Bishop and her husband tired of using old-fashioned petri dishes for cell incubation and designed a sealed, self-contained mobile cell incubation system. The system was described as reducing many of the problems with cultivating tissues in the fragile environment of the petri dish. The system was later marketed by Prodigy Biosystems, which raised $1.2 million in capital financing after winning third place in an Alabama technology competition.

Robbie Brown contributed reporting from Atlanta.

    Professor Said to Be Charged After 3 Are Killed in Alabama, NYT, 13.2.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/us/13alabama.html

Tennessee Woman Accused in Trail of Death

January 24, 2010
The New York Times
By SHAILA DEWAN

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Few people here know that the ashes of David Leath, still in the cardboard box from the crematorium, are kept on a shelf above the clean towels in the Suburban Barber Shop where he cut hair at the middle chair for almost 40 years.

But almost everyone has an opinion on how he ended up there. Mr. Leath, 57, was found dead of a gunshot wound in his own bed in 2003. His wife, Raynella Dossett Leath, said it was a suicide, but she was ultimately charged with murder. Her dramatic trial last year gripped the city, but it ended in a hung jury. Last week, she went on trial again.

The trail of death in the case, however, does not begin and end with a beloved barber, but winds its way up to the highest levels of law enforcement in this city. There was a fatal car crash, a love child, a missing will and, strangest of all, the 1992 death, officially by cattle stampede, of the Knox County prosecutor, Ed Dossett, who happened to be Ms. Dossett Leath’s first husband at the time.

During the investigation of Mr. Leath’s death, prosecutors became convinced that the death of Mr. Dossett was also a homicide, and they have charged Ms. Dossett Leath, 61, in that case as well. That trial will begin in August.

In the meantime, Ms. Dossett Leath has become a notorious figure around town. Seventy percent of potential jurors responding to a court questionnaire for the second trial said she was probably guilty, according to a defense attorney.

Every quirk in her behavior has been parsed by Knoxville residents for motive, even the fact that she had Mr. Leath’s body cremated the day after he died. His body contained unprescribed sedatives and painkillers, according to an autopsy conducted hours earlier. Mr. Leath’s friends say he was opposed to cremation and owned a plot in the cemetery where his parents are buried.

On a recent morning at the Suburban Barber Shop, Mr. Leath’s former partner, Hoyt Vanosdale, told how Ms. Dossett Leath had asked him to deliver a package to Cynthia Wilkerson, Mr. Leath’s daughter from a previous marriage, who now cuts hair at her father’s old station. Mr. Vanosdale said she did not tell him that the small, heavy box contained Mr. Leath’s ashes.

“Isn’t that kind of creepy?” he asked.

For years, Raynella Dossett Leath enjoyed an elevated — some say protected — status in Knoxville. She was a respected nurse, married to the county prosecutor (in Tennessee, they are called district attorneys general). The couple, who married in 1970, lived with their three children on the Dossett family farm just west of town.

In 1992, Mr. Dossett was found dead in their corral. His wife said he had been trampled by cattle, and the death was ruled an agricultural accident. Mr. Dossett had been in the late stages of terminal cancer, and Ms. Dossett Leath told the authorities that she had helped him out to the barn to feed the cattle at his request.

Randall E. Pedigo, the medical examiner at the time, said the notion of a domestic cattle stampede raised suspicions, but about insurance fraud not murder.

“There was a lot of talk and speculation at the time that it was to make it look like an accidental death to collect double indemnity,” said Mr. Pedigo, who lost his medical license after being convicted of sedating and sexually molesting minors in 1995. “Some people even speculated that it might have been Ed Dossett’s idea.”

Mr. Pedigo said that prosecutors in Mr. Dossett’s office resisted his performing an autopsy, that he felt pressured to rule the death an accident and that he had a “policy” of erring on the side of the family in cases where a judgment call was required. He persuaded Ms. Dossett that the insurance company would need an autopsy, and she consented. Mr. Pedigo said he found traumatic injuries consistent with trampling and a hoof print in the middle of the bib of Mr. Dossett’s overalls.

But when the current medical examiner, Dr. Darinka Mileusnic-Polchan, reviewed the file as part of the Leath investigation, she found that those injuries were not life threatening. Instead, Dr. Mileusnic-Polchan said, Mr. Dossett’s morphine level was “so extraordinarily high it is unlikely that any human could function in an ambulatory manner or continue to live.” In 2006, Ms. Dossett Leath was indicted in his death, charged with administering an overdose of morphine.

Six months after Mr. Dossett’s death, his widow married his friend and neighbor, David Leath. Friends say the couple was happy — at least at first. He built her a greenhouse; she bought him a custom truck with a matching horse trailer.

Two years later, Ms. Dossett Leath’s 11-year-old son was killed in an auto accident; her 15-year-old daughter was the driver. Not long after that, according to court records and newspaper accounts, Ms. Dossett Leath learned that her dead husband might have had another son, with a woman who worked in his office. In the midst of a divorce, the woman told her husband, Steve Walker, that one of their two sons was actually fathered by Mr. Dossett, and he told Ms. Dossett Leath.

Ms. Dossett Leath soon lured Mr. Walker to a barn on her farm, telling him she had found some papers related to the child. Once there, she opened fire on him, according to his account, and chased him across the hayfields until she ran out of ammunition. According to Mr. Walker’s statement to the police, she said she would kill him and the child’s mother and raise the child herself.

Ms. Dossett Leath was charged with attempted murder, but pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and did six years of “diversion,” a form of probation. Then, the charge was expunged.

Friends say it was only months after Ms. Dossett Leath completed her sentence that Mr. Leath was found dead. He had signed deeds and a will, now missing, ensuring that Ms. Dossett Leath would inherit all the couple’s property. At the trial, her defense lawyers argued that the victim killed himself, offering evidence that he was depressed and that his health was declining. But a firearms expert for the prosecution said that of three shots fired from the gun that day, it had been the second one that killed Mr. Leath.

Ms. Dossett Leath’s lawyer, James A. H. Bell, said that his client had loved her husband and that there was no way she would have killed him.

“If you believe Miss Raynella murdered him,” Mr. Bell said, “you have to believe she is nothing but a serpent of Satan.”

Only one juror declined to convict her in the first trial.

    Tennessee Woman Accused in Trail of Death, NYT, 24.1.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/us/24knoxville.html

Police Surround Gunman After He Kills 8 in Virginia

January 20, 2010
The New York Times
By IAN URBINA

A gunman shot and killed eight people before firing on law enforcement officers and hitting a police helicopter on Tuesday in a thickly wooded area of south-central Virginia, a state police official said.

Late Tuesday, state police officers said that they thought they had the gunman, whom they identified as Christopher Speight, 39, surrounded in the woods and that he was still alive.

Seven bodies were found in one house, the authorities said, and the eighth victim was found by the side of the road and died on the way to the hospital.

All the victims were adults, the police said.

A state police official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the investigation, said two of the victims were thought to be the wife and the son of the gunman. He would not give other details.

Gov. Robert F. McDonnell of Virginia said he was sending his secretary of public safety, Marla Decker, to the scene to join the deputy secretary, John Buckovich, and Col. Steven Flaherty, superintendent of the State Police.

“This is a horrific tragedy,” Mr. McDonnell’s office said in a statement. “The governor’s thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families.”

Officers were called to the scene in Appomattox County at 12:02 p.m. after receiving a report that a man lying in the middle of the road needed urgent medical attention, Sgt. Thomas Molnar of the State Police said.

But when the police arrived, chaos ensued. Officers were fired on by a man hiding in the woods, the authorities said, and a helicopter hovering overhead was hit four times in and around its fuel tank, forcing it to make an emergency landing nearby. No officers were hurt, the authorities said.

Police dispatchers alerted a local school to go on lockdown, and businesses closed as more officers raced to the scene. Two homes were evacuated, and soon more than 100 officers formed a perimeter around the suspect, who they said they thought was hiding in a wooded area between Police Tower Road and Snapps Mill Road just outside the town of Appomattox.

Police officers were seen at 3030 Snapps Mill Road, which neighbors said is home to a family of four, according to local television reports.

Appomattox, which is about 100 miles west of Richmond, is best known as the place where Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered to end the Civil War.

Bethel Hawkins, who lives about two miles from the shooting scene, said the police had warned families to lock their doors. “We’re just being cautious, keeping our doors locked, not going outside,” Mr. Hawkins said, adding: “We’re not going out in the dark not knowing what’s out there. But we trust in the Lord to take care of us.”

    Police Surround Gunman After He Kills 8 in Virginia, NYT, 20.1.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/20/us/20virginia.html

Pentagon Report on Fort Hood Shooting Details Failures

January 16, 2010
The New York Times
By ELISABETH BUMILLER and SCOTT SHANE and

WASHINGTON — The military’s defenses against threats from inside its own ranks are outdated and ineffective, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said on Monday as he described the findings of a Pentagon review of the Nov. 5 shooting spree at Fort Hood, Texas.

Mr. Gates cited poor communications about internal threats to the security of personnel, as well as a weak supervision by commanders, as systemic problems with implications that go beyond the single case of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the military psychiatrist accused of the shootings.

The formal report, released at noon by the Pentagon, found that "some medical officers failed to apply appropriate judgement and standards of officership” when judging Major Hasan, and that more attention should have been paid to his overall performance rather than just his academic record.

Major Hasan behaved erratically and had questionable communications with a radical cleric during the years and months before the shootings, which killed 13 and injured 28 more, according to various officials monitoring the investigations that ensued.

But his supervisors took no actions based on his behavior, and he was transferred to a combat unit at Fort Hood last summer.

Several officers may be held accountable for any failures in supervising Major Hasan during his psychiatric training in the Washington area, Mr. Gates said. He referred the recommendations to the Army for further review. He did not provide details, but the Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times, which first reported the findings overnight, said that as many as eight mid-ranking officers could face reprimands.

The preliminary review was conducted by Togo West, a former Secretary of the Army, and Adm. Vernon E. Clark, a former Chief of Naval Operations.

“It is clear that, as a department, we have not done enough to adapt to the evolving domestic internal security threat to American troops and military facilities that has emerged over the past decade,” Mr. Gates said.

He said he was particularly concerned that the military does not seem to be alert to signs of radicalization in its own ranks, to be able to detect its symptoms or to understand its causes. Major Hasan’s commanders and supervisors, he suggested, may have lacked the clear authority or explicit channels for reporting any doubts they had about him. Indeed, troubling information about individuals is often withheld or filed discreetly away instead of being shared, he said.

“Force protection programs are not properly focused on internal threats such as workplace violence and self-radicalization,” he said. “The problem is compounded in the absence of a clear understanding of what motivates a person to become radicalized and commit violent acts.”

He called on commanders and leaders at every level of the military to deal with problems in the ranks “openly and honestly. Failure to do so, or kicking the problem to the next unit or the next installation, may lead to damaging if not devastating consequences.”

The review’s findings, although they were focused only on the military and not on other agencies, are the latest signal that the government has not achieved the smooth communications and agility among intelligence agencies that has been sought ever since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

“The challenge for the Department of Defense is to prepare more effectively for a constantly changing environment,” the report said. “The Department’s security posture for tomorrow must be more agile and adaptive.”

The report recommends that the Pentagon work more closely with the F.B.I., which runs a terrorism task force jointly with other agencies. The task force uses investigators, analysts, linguists and others to review intelligence reports about possible links between troops and terrorist or extremist groups.

Mr. Gates said at the news conference that he is seeking several quick steps to address problems like this.

The report recommended that the Defense Department should devote the same commitment to protecting its personnel from internal threats as it does to protecting them from external dangers; needs to develop guidance and awareness programs so that commanders can better indentify risky behavior within the ranks; must share information about potential internal threats across the military bureaucracy, and should develop more sophisticated and agile responses to deadly emergencies like the shooting at Fort Hood.

The officers who face discipline supervised Major Hassan but failed to pass on disturbing information about his behavior and performance several stages of his Army career: during his medical training at the Uniformed Service University of the Health Sciences, his residency in psychiatry at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, and an academic fellowship before he was assigned to Fort Hood. Major Hasan, 39, was born and raised in Virginia, the son of Palestinian immigrants who ran a restaurant and convenience store in Roanoke. After graduating from Virginia Tech, he pursued a military career against the wishes of his parents, relatives have said.

During his residency, he alarmed some colleagues by becoming increasingly outspoken against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, whose traumatized and injured veterans he was counseling. He became preoccupied with the conflict between his understanding of Islam and the American military’s role in fighting Muslims overseas, presenting his concerns at one point in a PowerPoint presentation that some fellow psychiatrists found disturbing.

But supervisors minimized the matter, justifying Major Hasan’s concerns as part of legitimate and valuable research on how to manage Muslim soldiers in combat zones.

Starting in late 2008, Major Hasan wrote about 20 e-mail messages to a radical Yemeni-American cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, asking for guidance on religious obligations, including whether it would be justified for a Muslim American soldier to kill fellow soldiers. Mr. Awlaki had become an influential figure whose writings and sermons, distributed from his popular Web site, encouraged violence to defend against what he described as attacks on Muslims.

A few of the e-mail messages, but not all, were intercepted and passed on to the Joint Terrorism Task Force, officials have said. A Defense Department analyst examined them and decided the queries were part of Major Hasan’s research and warranted no further investigation.

Major Hasan, who had long told relatives he was desperately afraid of being sent to a combat zone, was told last year that he was to be deployed to Afghanistan. On Nov. 5, according to witnesses, he took two handguns to a Fort Hood clinic where soldiers who were returning from war or about to depart went for processing, and he opened fire.

Major Hasan was shot by police and hospitalized, but survived to face murder charges.

Some witnesses have said they think he shouted “Allah Akbar,” or “God is great,” during the shooting. Commentators have debated whether Major Hasan’s personal problems or a jihadist ideology played a greater role in the episode.

Along with the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day, the Fort Hood shootings have prompted deep concern in Congress that the nation’s intelligence and security agencies missed vital clues that attacks were coming.

The Defense Department review also focused on the warnings from Major Hasan’s colleagues about his increasingly strident views and how those warning were handled.

    Pentagon Report on Fort Hood Shooting Details Failures, NYT, 16.1.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/16/us/politics/16hasan.html

Police: 2 Dead, 2 Hurt in Ga. Business Shooting

January 12, 2010
Filed at 3:12 p.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

KENNESAW, Ga. (AP) -- Police say two people have been killed and two others injured in a shooting at a truck rental office in suburban Atlanta.

Officer Joe Hernandez with Cobb County police tells The Atlanta Journal-Constitution the shooter is in custody.

The shooting happened at a Penske Truck Rental facility in suburban Kennesaw, about 25 miles northeast of Atlanta.

    Police: 2 Dead, 2 Hurt in Ga. Business Shooting, NYT, 12.1.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/01/12/us/AP-US-Truck-Rental-Shootings.html

Ft. Hood Report Finds Early Warning

January 11, 2010
Filed at 7:48 a.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A Defense Department review of the shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, has found the doctors overseeing Maj. Nidal Hasan's medical training repeatedly voiced concerns over his strident views on Islam and his inappropriate behavior, yet continued to give him positive performance evaluations that kept him moving through the ranks.

The picture emerging from the review ordered by Defense Secretary Robert Gates is one of supervisors who failed to heed their own warnings about an officer ill-suited to be an Army psychiatrist, according to information gathered during the internal Pentagon investigation and obtained by The Associated Press. The review has not been publicly released.

Hasan, 39, is accused of murdering 13 people on Nov. 5 at Fort Hood, the worst killing spree on a U.S. military base.

What remains unclear is why Hasan would be advanced in spite of all the worries over his competence. That is likely to be the subject of a more detailed accounting by the department. Recent statistics show the Army rarely blocks junior officers from promotion, especially in the medical corps.

Hasan showed no signs of being violent or a threat. But parallels have been drawn between the missed signals in his case and those preceding the thwarted Christmas attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound U.S. airliner. President Barack Obama and his top national security aides have acknowledged they had intelligence about the alleged bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (OO'-mahr fah-ROOK' ahb-DOOL'-moo-TAH'-lahb), but failed to connect the dots.

The Defense Department review is not intended to delve into allegations Hasan corresponded by e-mail with Yemen-based radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki before the attack. Those issues are part of a separate criminal investigation by law enforcement officials.

In telling episodes from the latter stages of lengthy Hasan's medical education in the Washington, D.C., area, he gave a class presentation questioning whether the U.S.-led war on terror was actually a war on Islam. And students said he suggested that Shariah (shah-REE'-yuh), or Islamic law, trumped the Constitution and he attempted to justify suicide bombings.

Yet no one in Hasan's chain of command appears to have challenged his eligibility to hold a secret security clearance even though they could have because the statements raised doubt about his loyalty to the United States. Had they, Hasan's fitness to serve as an Army officer may have been called into question long before he reported to Fort Hood.

Instead, in July 2009, Hasan arrived in central Texas, his secret clearance intact, his reputation as a weak performer well known, and Army authorities believing that posting him at such a large facility would mask his shortcomings.

Four months later, according to witnesses, he walked into a processing center at Fort Hood where troops undergo medical screening, jumped on a table with two handguns, shouted "Allahu Akbar!" -- Arabic for "God is great!" -- and opened fire. Thirteen people were killed in the spree and dozens more were wounded.

Hasan has been charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder. He remains at a San Antonio military hospital, undergoing rehabilitation for paralysis stemming from gunshot wounds suffered when security guards fired back during the massacre. Authorities have not said whether they plan to seek the death penalty.

After the Fort Hood shooting, Gates appointed two former senior defense officials to examine the procedures and policies for identifying threats within the military services. The review, led by former Army Secretary Togo West and retired Navy Adm. Vernon Clark, began Nov. 20 and is scheduled to be delivered to Gates by Jan. 15.

Army Lt. Col. Jonathan Withington, a Pentagon spokesman, declined to comment on the West-Clark review because it's not complete. "We will not know the specific content of the report until it is submitted to the secretary of defense," he said.

Hasan's superiors had a full picture of him, developed over his 12-year career as a military officer, medical student and psychiatrist, according to the information reviewed by AP.

While in medical school at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences from 1997 to 2003, Hasan received a string of below average and failing grades, was put on academic probation and showed little motivation to learn.

He took six years to graduate from the university in Bethesda, Md., instead of the customary four, according to the school. The delays were due in part to the deaths of his father in 1998 and his mother in 2001. Yet the information about his academic probation and bad grades wasn't included in his military personnel file, leaving the impression he was ready for more intense instruction.

In June 2003, Hasan started a four-year psychiatry internship and residency at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and he was counseled frequently for deficiencies in his performance. Teachers and colleagues described him as a below average student.

Between 2003 and 2007, Hasan's supervisors expressed their concerns with him in memos, meeting notes and counseling sessions. He needed steady monitoring, especially in the emergency room, had difficulty communicating and working with colleagues, his attendance was spotty and he saw few patients.

In one incident already made public, a patient of Hasan's with suicidal and homicidal tendencies walked out of the hospital without permission.

Still, Hasan's officer evaluation reports were consistently more positive, usually describing his performance as satisfactory and at least twice as outstanding. Known as "OERs," the reports are used to determine promotions and assignments. The Army promoted Hasan to captain in 2003 and to major in 2009.

At Walter Reed, Hasan's conflict with his Islamic faith and his military service became more apparent to superiors and colleagues, according to the information. He made a pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, a trip expected of all Muslims at least once. But he was also cited for inappropriately engaging patients in discussions about religious issues.

Early in 2007, Maj. Scott Moran became director of psychiatry residency and took a much firmer line with Hasan. Moran reprimanded him for not being reachable when he was supposed to be on-call, developed a plan to improve his performance, and informed him his research project about the internal conflicts of Muslim soldiers was inappropriate.

Nonetheless, Hasan presented the project, entitled "Koranic World View as It Relates to Muslims in the U.S. Military," and it was approved as meeting a residency program requirement, according to the information.

Hasan graduated from the Walter Reed residency program and began a two-year fellowship in preventive and disaster psychiatry. Despite his earlier reservations, Moran wrote a solid reference letter for Hasan that said he was a competent doctor.

Reached by telephone, Moran declined to comment.

Hasan completed the fellowship June 30, 2009. Two weeks later he was at Fort Hood.

------

Associated Press writer Pauline Jelinek contributed to this report.

    Ft. Hood Report Finds Early Warning, NYT, 11.1.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/01/11/us/AP-US-Fort-Hood-Pentagon-Review.html

Details Emerge on St. Louis Shooting, but Motive Unclear

January 9, 2010
The New York Times
By MALCOLM GAY and LIZ ROBBINS

ST. LOUIS — A day after a 51-year-old factory employee went on a horrific shooting spree at his St. Louis company, killing three co-workers and injuring five others before taking his own life with a single shot to the chin, St. Louis police officials were still trying to determine why he did it.

“It was a gruesome scene,” Capt. Michael Sack of the St. Louis police said at a news conference on Friday. “He fired well over 100 rounds throughout the complex.”

Captain Sack confirmed that the shooter was Timothy G. Hendron, 51, of Webster Groves, Mo. Mr. Hendron was married with a 20-year-old son and had a hunting license, according to public records. Officials said he went to the ABB Power factory armed for a rampage.

He took with him one assault rifle, one shotgun and two handguns, the police said, after finding the second handgun on the scene, along with a fanny pack full of ammunition. A fifth gun was found near the guard shack in the parking lot, where Mr. Hendron first opened fire on his co-workers.

The bodies of two men were found in the parking lot on Thursday by police arriving on the scene, and two more were found inside the building, one of which turned out to be that of Mr. Hendron.

On Friday, the police released the names of the three others, and ABB released a brief statement mourning the deaths of three of its employees. The company’s statement did not mention Mr. Hendron.

Police said that Carlton J. Carter, 57, was shot once in the head and was found dead outside the building. Terry Mabry, 55, was shot once in the head and once in the leg, and was also found outside. Cory Wilson, 27, was found shot in the shoulder and the head, and was found inside the plant.

Five more people were wounded in the incident. Two were hospitalized in critical condition and two more in fair condition, while one was treated and released on Thursday, police officials said. All five of the wounded were men.

A motive for the killings was not yet clear. A neighbor of Mr. Hendron said that at one point he was a supervisor at the plant, which assembles electrical transformers. At the time of the shooting he was engaged in a public dispute with ABB Power, as one of four named plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit filed against the company over the company’s pension fund.

According to the complaint, filed in 2006, ABB’s pension fund managers assessed fees that were “unreasonable and excessive,” and without plaintiffs’ knowledge. The plaintiffs had sought to recover financial losses, and the trial had just begun this week in federal court in Kansas City, Mo.

“He was sort of a private person, but he was always friendly,” said Glenn Meyer, 71, another neighbor of Mr. Hendron’s. “He mentioned he was having problems at work, but he never expanded on what the problems were.”

Malcolm Gay reported from St. Louis. Liz Robbins reported from New York.

    Details Emerge on St. Louis Shooting, but Motive Unclear, NYT, 9.1.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/09/us/09gunman.html

Gunman Kills 3 Co-Workers in St. Louis Factory and Then Himself

January 8, 2010
The New York Times
By LIZ ROBBINS

A factory worker who was suing his employer opened fire Thursday morning at an electrical equipment plant in North St. Louis, killing three co-workers before apparently taking his own life, St. Louis fire and police officials said. Five other people were injured.

Armed with an assault rifle, a shotgun and a handgun, the man began his shooting spree in the parking lot and continued inside the ABB Power plant, officials said. .

Four men were pronounced dead at the scene, the police said at a news conference on Thursday afternoon. Two bodies were found in the parking lot, and two were inside the building.

“We are pretty confident that the shooter is deceased,” said Chief Daniel Isom.

Two other shooting victims were in critical condition and two were in fair condition at a local hospital, and one was treated and released, police officials said. All five of the wounded were men.

The police said that they were awaiting confirmation of gunman’s identity from his family before releasing his name. St. Louis news media identified the gunman as Timothy Hendron, 51. A police official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the continuing inquiry, confirmed the name.

Mr. Hendron was one of four named plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit filed against ABB in 2006, in a dispute over the company’s pension fund. According to the complaint, ABB’s pension fund managers assessed fees that were “unreasonable and excessive,” and without plaintiffs’ knowledge. The plaintiffs had sought to recover financial losses, and the trial had just begun this week in federal court in Kansas City, Mo.

“We’re not really sure what the motivation of the shooting was,” Chief Isom said at the news conference. “It will take a long time for us to put together the pieces.” According to Chief Isom, the gunman opened fire around 6:30 a.m. and sent employees racing for cover in closets, under desks and on the roof, where wind chills dropped dangerously below zero.

Police officers and firefighters entered the building about 6:45 a.m., and found two bodies inside, but were not immediately sure whether one was the gunman. The plant was evacuated and for the next four hours, officers searched the 200,000-square-foot building in case the gunman was at large. The police set up a protective perimeter that included closing a section of Interstate 70.

Capt. Robert Keuss of the St. Louis Fire Department said he heard a police bulletin seeking a man with the name “Hendron.”

ABB Inc. said in a statement, “Our thoughts are with our employees and their families,” adding, “The St. Louis plant will be closed on Friday to accommodate further police investigation.”

Michael Sweney, a neighbor of Mr. Hendron in Webster Groves, Mo., said that the police had restricted access to their suburban St. Louis street early Thursday morning, and that officers had entered the house where Mr. Hendron lived with his wife.

The eruption of workplace violence took place on a frigid, snowy morning just as shifts were changing at the factory, which makes electrical transformers for power systems. ABB Power is a subsidiary of the Swiss-based multinational company ABB.

Before Mr. Hendron, who at one point helped assemble transformers, became a lead plaintiff in the suit, he sought the advice of Mr. Sweney, a lawyer, who lives two doors down. “I sensed a current from Tim that he was disenchanted with the way management dealt with the pension fund,” Mr. Sweney said in a telephone interview. Mr. Hendron asked Mr. Sweney to recommend a good employment lawyer, he said.

“He felt he was standing up for the working man, in many ways,” Mr. Sweeney said, “but obviously the events of today do not show that to be the case.”

The police did not release names of victims, but Carl Poelker, a football coach at a local university, identified one of those killed as Cory Wilson, a plant supervisor and a volunteer high school football coach with Mr. Poelker’s son. “He was a leader,” Mr. Poelker said of Mr. Wilson in a telephone interview. “The thing with Cory, he was one of those guys, as soon as you meet him, you like him.”

Carlton Carter of St. Louis was also killed in the rampage, according to Mary Kelly, a neighbor.

Malcolm Gay contributed reporting from St. Louis. Toby Lyles contributed research.

    Gunman Kills 3 Co-Workers in St. Louis Factory and Then Himself, NYT, 8.1.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/us/08gunman.html

Girl, 9, and Baby Sitter Shot Dead

January 8, 2010
Filed at 10:15 a.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

MOUNT VERNON, N.Y. (AP) -- Police say a man fatally shot his 9-year-old daughter and her baby sitter in a New York City suburb.

Mount Vernon police Chief Barbara Duncan says the child and the 42-year-old woman were found on the second floor of the child's home late Thursday night.

He says the girl's father was in custody Friday morning, arrested on a murder charge. A handgun has been recovered.

The names of the suspect and the victims have not been made public.

Duncan says the sitter was dead at the scene. The girl was pronounced dead at Mount Vernon Hospital.

She says the mother was not home at the time of the killings.

Police found the victims when they answered a report of domestic violence in the neighborhood of neat private homes. Mount Vernon is 15 miles north of midtown Manhattan.

    Girl, 9, and Baby Sitter Shot Dead, NYT, 8.1.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/01/08/us/AP-US-ChildandSitterKil.html

Two Killed in Las Vegas Courthouse

January 5, 2010
The New York Times
By STEVE FRIESS

LAS VEGAS — A man clad in black opened fire in the federal courthouse lobby here on Monday, killing a security officer and wounding a deputy United States marshal before he was fatally shot by federal officers as he fled.

The gunman was identified by a Las Vegas Police Department official as Johnny L. Wicks, 66. Mr. Wicks had filed a complaint against the Social Security Administration in 2008 over a reduction in his benefit, according to the police official, who declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak publicly, but it was not known whether that played a role in the shooting.

“At this point, we believe it was a lone gunman, a criminal act, not a terrorist act,” Special Agent Joseph Dickey of the F.B.I. said five hours after the shooting, which occurred about 8 a.m. and rocked the city’s downtown. “We are following up on this to determine why this man did what he did today.”

According to Agent Dickey, the gunman entered the Lloyd D. George Federal Courthouse, about five miles north of the Strip, pulled a shotgun from underneath his jacket and began firing indiscriminately from outside the security area where visitors and their belongings pass through metal detectors and X-ray machines.

Struck in the chest was Stanley W. Cooper, 65, who had retired after 26 years with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and worked as a courthouse security officer since 1994. He died instantly. A 48-year-old deputy United States marshal whose identity has not been released was shot in the upper arm and hospitalized in good condition. He has spoken to investigators, the agent said.

Seven federal marshals and other courthouse security personnel chased the gunman from the courthouse, Agent Dickey said. The man was shot in the head and died on the sidewalk in front of a historic school that has been converted into an office building.

Henrietta Moss, 43, was walking to work at a pawnshop in the area when she heard the noise.

“It was, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, and it went on,” said Ms. Moss, whose description comports with a video, posted on YouTube, taken from a few blocks away on which about 20 shots are heard. “I couldn’t see anything, but you knew that something bad was going down.”

Agent Dickey would not say how many people were in the lobby of the courthouse when the shooting occurred, but Senator John Ensign, a Republican who has an office in the nine-story building, said he spoke with a woman who had been just passed through the security checkpoint when Mr. Wicks opened fire.

“She told me that had she not been behind a pillar, she would have been killed,” Mr. Ensign said.

The senator said that neither he nor Senator Harry Reid, a Democrat who is the majority leader and who also has offices in the building, had received any credible threats recently. Nor were there any recent threats to the courthouse, Agent Dickey said.

For several hours after the shooting, local television stations broadcast what turned out to be false reports of other gunmen on the loose, which led to evacuations in the commercial area surrounding the courthouse.

Many businesses, including Jennifer Martin Realty, two blocks away, locked their doors out of fear.

“We heard in the news that there were four gunmen and they had shot one of them,” said Katherine Vermillion, who handles administrative work at the real estate firm. “I saw six police cars outside and a lot of activity, and we didn’t know what was going on.”

Joseph Berger contributed reporting from New York.

    Two Killed in Las Vegas Courthouse, NYT, 5.1.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/us/05vegas.html

Man Arrested in Thanksgiving Killing

January 2, 2010
Filed at 11:42 p.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WESTON, Fla. (AP) -- A Florida man suspected of killing four family members in a Thanksgiving shooting has been arrested in the Florida Keys.

Jupiter Police Sgt. Scott Pascarella says Paul Merhige was arrested by U.S. Marshals late Saturday at a motel in Long Key.

The 35-year-old Merhige had been the subject of a massive manhunt that included a $100,00 reward for information leading to his capture.

Merhige is accused of killing his twin sisters, aunt and 6-year-old cousin on Thanksgiving Day at a gathering in Jupiter.

Investigators said Merhige planned carefully, taking clothing, cash and a computer hard drive before the killings.

A news conference was planned for later Saturday on the case.

    Man Arrested in Thanksgiving Killing, NYT, 2.1.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/01/02/us/AP-US-Family-Shootings.html