Thoughts about local robbery/shooting and the aftermath.

[spinr]

Intial article: http://www.thesylvaherald.com/2005/111705/html/robbery_hospitalizes_three__de.html

I thought about posting about this last week when it happened, but my feelings on it waned a bit and for whatever reason I never did.  Local paper ran another story about the incident today and resurrected my consternation over things.

Here's today's article: http://www.thesylvaherald.com/html/questions_persist_after_last_w.html
And another from the Asheville paper last week: http://www.citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051117/NEWS01/51116033

I understand the family's grief over the loss of a loved one, but it really gets my bile duct raging that they can't accept the situation as it exists.  I suppose it's only natural... maybe I'd feel the same were I in their shoes... well, maybe not.

I happened to be working the night this took place and was somewhat involved in the goings on.  With what I know from the small part I had in it, there's nary a doubt in my mind that McCollum was the perpetrator.  The mention of his criminal record is quite lacking, as the record is quite extensive.  No really, it's long.  The bit about him making a plea agreement, while factual, is also questionable, since as of the night of the incident he still had several active felony warrants for his arrest.  

Damn the evidence, if it looks like a chicken, clucks like a chicken, then guess what...

And somehow I knew this would happen when we learned that Dewann was the suspect and to whom he was related.  I've dealt and been privy to other's encounters with his cousin, Anquell (mentioned in the article).  I'm not sure how to describe him.  He's a mostly decent person, and usually friendly, but when in situations like this or dealing with others in positions of authority, he always takes the position/attitude that he expresses in the articles; i.e., disbelief, it's anybody's fault but mine, etc.

Drives me nuts...

Especially this quote by him:

After hearing that Dewann only had a knife, we felt that it did not warrant that deadly a force.

Some people just make me want to beat them with a concrete block.

I know better than to let things like this get to me, but sometimes they just do anyway.



So... discuss.

[Preacherman]

I feel your anger, brother.  It seems to be a common reaction among family members today, no matter how overwhelming the evidence, to dispute their loved one's involvement.

Consider a case that involved me, a while back, at the prison where I work.  We have an inmate doing an eight-year stretch for drug dealing.  His wife came to visit him, along with her three kids of 7, 5 and 3 years old (only the youngest being the child of the man she was visiting).  She smuggled in drugs, hiding them in her kids' underwear and her own.  Our security cameras filmed her extracting the drugs (surreptitiously, so she thought) and handing them over to her man.  We promptly sent in a security team, isolated the group, and placed her under arrest.

She went into a screaming fit, accusing us of racism, sexism, and any other -ism she could think of, denying all knowledge of any drugs, etc.  We confronted her with the video evidence, and she accused us of faking it digitally (!).  Her kids, of course, were having fits seeing their mother so upset, and got even more so when we had to handcuff her to stop her assaulting our officers.  She also called me all sorts of names (I was present in the visiting room) for not siding with her against these "oppressive cops".

We had to call the FBI to arrest her (drugs in a federal prison make it a federal case), and called Child Protective Services to take away her kids.  It was heartwrenching to see her kids taken away, screaming for their mom, crying, etc...  all because this stupid bitch used them to smuggle drugs.



What's the betting those kids will grow up hating authority, distrusting cops, etc., all because of their mom's example?

[garrettwc]

spin180, I didn't read the whole thing, but I got the gist of what's going on. We had one similar here last year.

local PD is doing an attempt to locate on a juvenile that has a few yours ago threatened his mother and trashed her car. Police locate and corner him in an alley. He decides to attack the officers and they must use deadly force.

Mother and aunt are on the news boo-hooing. Mother says that they didn't have to kill him, just shoot him in the leg. Aunt says "cops shoot to kill you, they don't want you livin". Both of them are ignoring the fact that the cop that shot the miscreant is in surgery having an 8-inch bowie knife removed from her chest.