I don't know what's going on, but it seems like there have been a lot of shootings in the news lately. I mean, is it because there are more shootings than usual, or is because they are getting more coverage, or is it just that I noticed more of them?
There were like four murder-suicides in the last couple of weeks, where a man killed his wife/girlfriend and then shot himself. Then there was the nutcase who just went off in downtown Hillsboro last week, killed a bystander by accident, was chased to Cornelius and killed by the police. Then we had another murder-suicide yesterday at a local strip mall across the street from where I had lunch today.
To top it all off we have the incident up in Washington where 4 cops were killed. The news report made it sound like some nut case, and that seemed plausible to me. I was talking to a friend of mine about it and he thought it sounded like dirty cops. To him, to kill four police all at once sounds more like a professional hit than some guy with a screw loose. Maybe they were taking payoffs from drug dealers and they got greedy. Or maybe they were clean cops and they were getting too close to the dealers. There are stories of whole towns in the Northwest being in the marijuana business. Maybe this was one of them. Or maybe someone is smuggling heroin in from Afghanistan. The place is adjacent to an Air Force base.
The cops have a suspect. The last time he was in jail he got out on $150,000 bail, which means he had to put up $15,000 cash. Just where does an ex-con get $15,000 cash to post for his bail? I'm not sure just how this works, but I am pretty sure the bondsman keeps the $15,000 regardless of whether the guy shows up for trial or not. If he doesn't, he's going to spend that money tracking the guy down, otherwise he will be out the whole 150 grand.
Anyway, the whole thing stinks to high heaven. We've got four dead cops and an ex-con on the run. If he is the shooter, he could either be nuts, or a hired gun, and I doubt we will ever find out.
As for all the other shootings, I just don't get it. Maybe it's just a function of the ever increasing number of people.
I hear he's been shot - dead, not wounded - by another policeman :-(
ReplyDeleteI just read a couple of stories from Seattle, and they make a convincing case that 1) he was the shooter, and 2) he was out of his mind. So maybe corruption and drug trafficking are not part of this case.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.seattlepi.com/local/6420ap_us_officers_shot.html
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/412770_profile30.html