Domestic-Violence in Bristol, Tennessee: Once Again A Young Murderer

A Fourth Victim Has Died In Edgemont Towers Shooting

Bristol, Tennessee Police officials say a fourth shooting victim has died at Bristol Regional Medical Center.

Police also confirmed that the shooter, Rusty Rumley, has also died from a self-inflicted gunshot.

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UPDATE: Edgemont Towers Shooting Suspect is Dead

Carter County Sheriff's Office had originally reported to News Channel 11 that the suspect was taken into custody earlier. Carter County Sheriff's Office then reported to News Channel 11 that Rusty Rumley died. Our news teams are working to clarify the sequence of events.

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BRISTOL, Tenn. - Three people are dead and another "gravely injured" in a shooting this morning at Edgemont Towers, Police Chief Blaine Wade said this afternoon.

The victims have not been identified.

Meanwhile, police said they are searching for Rusty Rumley Jr., 26, of Watauga, Tenn., in connection with the shooting. Wade said the shooting is believed to be "domestic-violence related."

A number of law enforcement officers from four agencies are on Rasnick Hollow Road, just across the Carter County line, trying to find Rumley, who is believed to have abandoned his pickup truck and fled on foot, according to Wade. Rumley and his parents are believed to live on the road.

Sgt. L.C. Tester with the Carter County Sheriff's Office said Rumley has military experience and is believed to be armed and dangerous.

Rumley is described as 5 feet, 7 inches tall, weighing about 155 pounds with black hair.

Heller Vs. District of Columbia: Gun Control and the Second Amendment

Anything But Erratic, Says Jessica Baty of Her Boyfriend, Steven Kazmierczak

CNN reports:

The girlfriend of the gunman who killed five people and then himself at Northern Illinois University last Thursday told CNN that there was "no indication he was planning something."

Jessica Baty said her boyfriend, Steve Kazmierczak, gave no warning of the terror he planned to unleash at NIU.

"He wasn't erratic. He wasn't delusional. He was Steve; he was normal," Jessica Baty tearfully said in an exclusive interview Sunday.

Baty, 28, had been dating and living with Steven Kazmierczak for two years.

"He was a worrier," she said. He once told her he had "obsessive-compulsive tendencies" and that his parents committed him as a teen to a group home because he was "unruly" and used to cut himself.

He had been seeing a psychiatrist, Baty said, and was taking an anti-depressant to treat depression. But Kazmierczak had stopped taking the medication three weeks ago, "because it made him feel like a zombie," she said.

"He wasn't acting erratic," she said. "He was just a little quicker to get annoyed."

She knew he had purchased at least two guns. He told her they were for home protection.

On Valentine's Day, Baty was in class at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign where she and Kazmierczak were graduate students studying criminal justice. The students began to talk about a mass shooting taking place at Baty and Kazmierczak's alma mater, NIU in DeKalb.

She didn't think much of it, and her mind drifted to where her boyfriend told her he would be that day -- with his godfather in another town in Illinois.

Ordering Guns Via Internet

Web site used to buy gun accessories by Steven Kazmierczak is owned by the same company that operates a site patronized by Seung-Hui Cho, the company said.

Kazmierczak ordered two 9 mm Glock magazines and a holster for a Glock handgun from the Web site February 4, said a statement released by TGSCOM Inc.

He received them February 12, two days before the NIU shootings, it said.

"TGSCOM Inc. also operates the Web site used by Seung-Hui [Cho] to purchase a firearm used in the Virginia Tech shootings last April," the statement said.

Cho killed 32 people before turning a gun on himself in that incident.

Once more, I am amazed that anyone can order a firearm over the internet! How stupid can we get? Anonymity is the name of the game when you have decided to end your own life and take as many others with you as you can in a few minutes. What easier way is there than to order a weapon via online shopping? Once more, you've got to be kidding.

Another Young Murderer But A Woman This Time

A 23-year-old woman killed two fellow students in a classroom at a vocational college Friday, then killed herself, police said.

The women apparently were shot in their seats in the second-floor classroom at Louisiana Technical College, Baton Rouge Sgt. Don Kelly said. About 20 people were in the room at the time, he said.

Officers ran into the building within four minutes of the first 911 call, which came at 8:36 a.m., Kelly said.

Fighting Over Girl Results in Critical Wounding of Teenagers in Las Vegas

By RYAN NAKASHIMA and KATHLEEN HENNESSEY
LAS VEGAS - Assailants shot six young people Tuesday at a school bus stop, wounding two critically, in a midday attack that followed a fight over a girl, authorities said.

School police arrested three teenagers in the fight that happened hours before the shooting, Sheriff Doug Gillespie said. Investigators were still seeking two gunmen, who were believed to have fled on foot from the scene of the shooting, a working class neighborhood of northeast Las Vegas.

An 18-year-old man was in critical condition and a 17-year-old boy was upgraded to serious condition, both with gunshots to the torso, said Cheryl Persinger, a University Medical Center spokeswoman.

Four people, including at least two boys and a girl who are under 18, were treated for gunshot injuries to their arms and legs and released, she said. All four are students at Mojave High School who had just stepped off the bus, which was coming from the school, police said.

Six Students Shot in Las Vegas

LAS VEGAS - While getting off their school bus in northeast Las Vegas, six students were shot .

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported on its Web site that five of the victims were believed to be boys and the sixth was a girl. Two were in their late teens and the others are juveniles, the newspaper said.

Two of the wounded are in critical condition, according to police. Two shooters appear to be involved in the incident.

Rantings of Matthew Murray

Matthew Murray reportedly ranted prior to his attacks in Colorado at Youth With A Mission in Denver and New Life Church in Colorado Springs:

"You Christians brought this on yourselves," Murray reportedly wrote on a website for people who have left Pentecostal and fundamentalist religious organisations, shortly before the second of his two attacks.

"I'm coming for EVERYONE soon and I WILL be armed to the @#%$ teeth and I WILL shoot to kill. ... God, I can't wait till I can kill you people. Feel no remorse, no sense of shame, I don't care if I live or die in the shoot-out.

"All I want to do is kill and injure as many of you ... as I can especially Christians who are to blame for most of the problems in the world."

Source: KUSA TV

Matthew Murray, in these writings, sounds like a terrorist to me, a person motivated by hatred of others' religious beliefs. Someone who has decided that he has a right, perhaps even a responsibility to set himself above others. He sounds like someone who has put himself in the place of God, deciding who has the right to live and who must die.

Account of Jeanne Assam's Response to Matthew Murray

Early on Sunday morning, Matthew Murray, 24, the home-schooled son of devoutly Christian parents, had shot and killed two people at the Youth With a Mission training center in a Denver suburb. Twelve hours later, police say, he drove to Colorado Springs and started shooting in the parking lot of the New Life church before walking inside the church building as a service was letting out, shooting as he went.

He took two more lives at the church. He was in the building when Bourbannais (a member of New Life Church who is a Vietnam veteran) arrived.

“I ran and heard the gunfire and it was roaring like thunder,” Bourbannais told Meredith Vieira (TODAY co-host).

He saw a male security guard with his gun drawn, but the guard was not firing at the Murray.

“I said, ‘Gimme your handgun. I’ve been in combat. I’m going to take this guy out,’ ” he said, adding he repeated the request four or five times, but the guard would not hand him the weapon.

Bourbannais was behind a pillar at the time, deciding what to do next.

“The only thing I could think to do was walk out from the pillar so the gunman would see me,” he said. “He was a man in black, but he sure wasn’t Johnny Cash.

“So I yelled, ‘Coward!’ stood out, and our eyes met and he lifted his rifle, fired, and I took a few fragments – very minor – in my left forearm.”

Bourbannais stepped behind the pillar again and repeated his demand that the security guard give him a gun so he could take the shooter out. When he got no response, Bourbannais stepped out from behind the pillar to confront Murray again.

At that point, another security guard, 42-year-old Jeanne Assam, arrived with her gun drawn. Unlike the male guard, she was using hers.

“They were engaged in a firefight. He was firing. She was firing,” Bourbannais said. “And she was completely exposed. I was in Vietnam for 14 months in combat, and it’s the bravest thing I’ve ever witnessed. She kept yelling, ‘Surrender,’ and returned fire the complete time.”

Bourbannais walked parallel to her toward Murray as Assam shot him.

“As he slumped down and his head tilted, I said to her, ‘That’s the calmest, bravest thing I‘ve ever seen. How did you do it?’ “ he said. “She said ‘I was praying and asking the Holy Spirit the entire time to guide me.’ ”

Vieira asked Bourbannais if he realized that he could have been killed.

“I figured my chances were 30 percent,” he said, as calm as if he were describing a trip to the corner store.

“It’s the grace of God,” he said. “Like Jeanne, we’re both followers of Christ. I want to give God the glory, because I’m convinced He spared us that day.”

Jeanne Assam: Security Guard at New Life Church

Security Guard at New Life Church of Colorado Springs, Colorado who confronted and shot Matthew Murray, the 24 year old shooter. Note in the following report that Assam and other volunteer security guards at the church are trained and licensed. Assam acknowledges God's help and presence, but she is not a vigilante.

Bea Karnes writes:

Assam said that it felt as if it was just she, the gunman and God in the church. "I give the credit to God. I say that very humbly," said Assam. "Because of the fire power he had versus what I had, (it) was God. I did not run away, and I didn't think for even a minute to run away. I just knew that I was given the assignment to end this before it got too much worse....My hands weren't even shaking."

Assam acknowledged that it was loud and scary. She repeated "so loud" three times during the news conference.

Assam is part of a security detail at the church that's licensed, trained and equipped with firearms. They're all church members who worship at one service, while being assigned to provide security at a different service. Assam didn't hesitate to shoot the gunman. "I just knew that I wasn't going to wait for him to do further damage," she said.

Another Young Murderer: Matthew Murray Identified As Colorado Killer

JUDITH KOHLER writes:

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - The gunman believed to have killed four people at a megachurch and a missionary training school had been thrown out of the school a few years ago and had been sending it hate mail, police said in court papers Monday.

The gunman was identified as Matthew Murray, 24, who was home-schooled in what a friend said was a deeply religious Christian household. Murray's father is a neurologist and a leading multiple-sclerosis researcher.

Five people — including Murray — were killed, and five others wounded Sunday in the two eruptions of violence 12 hours and 65 miles apart.

An Armed Guard Kills Colorado Gunman

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - A hospital official said early Monday that a second victim of a gunman's shooting spree at New Life Church has died, bringing the death toll from both Colorado attacks to five.

Earlier, a gunman shot four staff members at a missionary training center near Denver, killing two, after being told he could not spend the night. About 12 hours later and 65 miles (105 kilometers) away, a gunman shot parishioners at a megachurch before a guard killed him, police said.

A guard killed the gunman; now this is the person who should be carrying a gun openly...

Speaking of Guns

Opposite Reactions: Pro Gun Carrying vs. Gun Control

An "Eye-Witness" of Robert Hawkins shooting in the shopping mall, writes:

This part of the story may be removed later, but I will have it here for now.

I do not have a Concealed Handgun Permit. I have completed the training class, but I keep putting off applying for the permit because I think it is useless. In the places I would need a gun most, I am not allowed to have it. I will not be a person living in fear and not go to Van Maur because they don’t allow guns.

My point that Open Carry needs to be easier in Omaha, and places like Westroads need to take down their “no guns” signs.

If I had my gun deeply concealed, I wouldn’t have been able to draw it very fast. However, If I had open carried, I could of drawn instantly.

Either way though, I could have drawn and taken a clean shot. However, in both cases, regardless of the laws, I am not allowed to carry a gun at all in Westroads Mall. If the laws did not oppress my rights, I would carry a gun most places (except work). I would certainly have had it in the mall as mall shootings have been on my mind since the incident at a mall involving a shotgun back in February.

My wife is somewhat cautious about guns as is my sister-in-law. After this event, both are now pro-guns. In addition, I will never again be caught without a gun.

Off the top of my head, this gentleman (who amazingly survived being within a fairly close distance of shooter, Robert Hawkins at the mall in Nebraska) makes me imagine the 'wild West' where everyone was armed openly everywhere... in the streets, in the saloons, in the hotels, perhaps even in the churches (?)!

I can't imagine that this sort of open gun carrying would make any of us safer. It seems to me that if we all carried guns, then any time we felt threatened, we would be faced with the awful decision: do I shoot this person or wait? If I shoot this person, will that fellow over there (who is also packing a gun openly) know why I took the shot? Or will that person draw his or her handgun and shoot me? Goodness, just about everyone around me at that particular moment might draw his or her gun and shoot me!

As for me, I think I lean towards gun control, not open gun toting.

The KEY question is: How did this 19 year old get an AK-47?

Arrested Under Suspicion: Online Killing Rampage Threat

LOS ANGELES - Los Angeles police arrested a 21-year-old Loyola Marymount University student in connection with an online threat to shoot people on campus, officials said Saturday.

Police arrested Carlos Huerta, a senior at Loyola, for investigation of making criminal threats. Huerta was taken into custody on Saturday night near his apartment on campus.

Huerta is suspected of posting a message that he would shoot and kill as many people as possible on campus before being killed himself by police, authorities said.

Colorado Springs' Church Parking Lot Shootings

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - A gunman opened fire in the parking lot of a Colorado Springs church on Sunday, striking four people, the church's pastor said.

The conditions of the people shot outside the New Life Church were not known, El Paso County Sheriff's Lt. Lari Sevene said.

Lance Coles, a pastor at New Life Church, told The Associated Press he received a report that a man was shooting at people in the church parking lot and that the gunman may have entered the church.

It was not immediately known whether the shootings were related to an earlier shooting about 70 miles away in the Denver suburb of Arvada. There, two people died and two were wounded early Sunday when a gunman opened fire in a dormitory at a missionary training center on the campus of Faith Bible Chapel.

Denver Shooting at Youth Missionary Training Center

DENVER - A gunman walked into a training center for young Christian missionaries in a Denver suburb early Sunday and opened fire, wounding at least four people.

The shooting happened at about 12:30 a.m. on Sunday at the Youth With a Mission center, Arvada Police spokeswoman Susan Medina said.

The extent of the injuries was not clear, and the gunman was still at large Sunday morning.

According to its Web site, Youth With a Mission has about 1,000 locations worldwide and trains people to become missionaries. About 50 people were inside the Arvada site when the gunman opened fire.

Troubling Choice: Freedom or Security

(Associated Press) OMAHA, Neb. - An Amish schoolhouse. A college classroom building, bustling with students and professors. An upscale department store at a mall, decked with holiday trimmings.

In recent years, massacres have occurred in the most benign settings, confronting Americans with a troubling choice: move toward airport-style security in a wide range of public places or fatalistically accept the slim chance that tragedy could strike anywhere in a free society.

Massacres are unlikely events; and Americans must not give up freedoms in order to remain secure. Security is actually an illusion. Just as a lock on a front door will not keep a burglar from entering one's home, neither will security guards and gates keep us safe from random acts of violence in public places.

If we succumb to fear, then we will lose. And, the terrorists, the crazies will win.

'I Just Want to Take A Few Pieces of (expletive) With Me"

OMAHA, Neb. - As police released surveillance images of a shaggy-haired, bespectacled Robert Hawkins taking aim at holiday shoppers, more details were revealed Friday about the teenager's suicide note, in which he wrote that he "just snapped."

“I know everyone will remember me as some sort of monster, but please understand that I just don’t want to be a burden on the ones that I care for my entire life,” he wrote. “I just want to take a few pieces of (expletive) with me.”

The 19-year-old gunman left the note at the suburban house where he lived Wednesday before going to Omaha’s Westroads Mall with an AK-47 and opening fire on the midday holiday shopping crowd, fatally shooting eight people at the Von Maur store before turning the gun on himself.

Associated Press

Young Murderers

MICHAEL ANDERSON, 24
ROBERT HAWKINS, 19

OMAHA, Neb. - The young man (Robert Hawkins) who killed eight people and committed suicide in a shooting rampage at a department store spent four years in a series of treatment centers, group homes and foster care after threatening to kill his stepmother in 2002.

Michael Anderson killed a young woman who answered an online advertisement for a babysitter. She was shot in the back by Anderson and a friend of his when she came for the interview.