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Residents Take Up Arms Following Attacks
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
Residents Take Up Arms Following Attacks
Tami Kimball
London, KY, Aug. 21 - Residents in a Laurel County neighborhood are getting together to stop more attacks like those that have been plaguing the community lately. Neighbors are taking turns staying up all night, watching out in the wake of violence and threats. They believe it's intimidation for their calls to police after someone tried to steal gasoline from a neighbor.
Debbie Estep and her family were rudely awakened recently. Estep tells LEX 18 News that shots rang out "just all at once...boom, boom, boom."
The gunfire was were very close to where her children were sleeping. Now their windows are blocked by a dresser. While the shots didn't hit the kids, shooting tore up many of their personal items.
"Glass was falling out of the truck, the storm doors...and there were buckshots in the door," Estep says.
The family's swimming pool was also shot and deflated. And the childrens' 10-month-old pony, Sugar, has 47 buckshots embedded in his skin.
Adding insult to injury, the Esteps believe the same people burned down their barn a few days later. "You've got people who are cold-hearted, and don't care. It makes you afraid to lay down and go to sleep at night," Estep tells LEX 18 News.
Neighbor Joseph Walking Red Bear witnessed some of the criminal activity, and says now he and others in the neighborhood are being threatened. "They said they'd shoot out this whole holler," he says.
So they've set up a neighborhood watch...with plenty of motivation: Estep says there are more than two dozen children in an area that covers a quarter of a square mile. She says, "this stuff has to stop now. If anyone comes up here, and pulls a gun, we will defend ourselves."
The sheriff's department tells LEX 18 News that it hasn't arrested anyone specifically for damaging the Estep's property. But investigators say they did make some drug arrests in that area, and impounded 9 vehicles the day after the barn burned down.
While the neighbors say they're arming themselves, police are encouraging the community to call authorities if they see any suspicious people hanging around.
http://www.msnbc.com/local/WLEX/M217916.asp?0ct=-302&cp1=1
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
Tami Kimball
London, KY, Aug. 21 - Residents in a Laurel County neighborhood are getting together to stop more attacks like those that have been plaguing the community lately. Neighbors are taking turns staying up all night, watching out in the wake of violence and threats. They believe it's intimidation for their calls to police after someone tried to steal gasoline from a neighbor.
Debbie Estep and her family were rudely awakened recently. Estep tells LEX 18 News that shots rang out "just all at once...boom, boom, boom."
The gunfire was were very close to where her children were sleeping. Now their windows are blocked by a dresser. While the shots didn't hit the kids, shooting tore up many of their personal items.
"Glass was falling out of the truck, the storm doors...and there were buckshots in the door," Estep says.
The family's swimming pool was also shot and deflated. And the childrens' 10-month-old pony, Sugar, has 47 buckshots embedded in his skin.
Adding insult to injury, the Esteps believe the same people burned down their barn a few days later. "You've got people who are cold-hearted, and don't care. It makes you afraid to lay down and go to sleep at night," Estep tells LEX 18 News.
Neighbor Joseph Walking Red Bear witnessed some of the criminal activity, and says now he and others in the neighborhood are being threatened. "They said they'd shoot out this whole holler," he says.
So they've set up a neighborhood watch...with plenty of motivation: Estep says there are more than two dozen children in an area that covers a quarter of a square mile. She says, "this stuff has to stop now. If anyone comes up here, and pulls a gun, we will defend ourselves."
The sheriff's department tells LEX 18 News that it hasn't arrested anyone specifically for damaging the Estep's property. But investigators say they did make some drug arrests in that area, and impounded 9 vehicles the day after the barn burned down.
While the neighbors say they're arming themselves, police are encouraging the community to call authorities if they see any suspicious people hanging around.
http://www.msnbc.com/local/WLEX/M217916.asp?0ct=-302&cp1=1
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
Comments
Pam Louwagie
Star Tribune
Published Aug 22, 2002 BURG22
An unsavvy burglar who was shot by a surprised 79-year-old north Minneapolis homeowner was hit Wednesday with criminal charges.
Jimmie Lee Emerson, 48, was shot about 11 p.m. Monday after he kicked in the back door of Harvey Keefe's house, then tried to open the chained door of the bedroom where Keefe had been sleeping, according to police, a criminal complaint and the homeowner.
"I was scared stiff," Keefe said Wednesday. "I hated like heck to shoot anybody, but what are you gonna do when you're an old man?"
Keefe, a World War II Marine Corps veteran who was wounded twice, said his home of 36 years had been burglarized before, so he took extra security precautions, including chaining his bedroom door shut at night.
He said his pulse raced when he heard somebody ramming the back door of his house, which is just across the street from Theodore Wirth Park. He reached for the .38-caliber revolver on his dresser. When he heard somebody jiggle his bedroom door handle and try to open it, he feared for his life, he said. So he raised his gun to the part of the door where he thought the burglar might be and fired once.
He heard rustling in the dining room outside his door, he said, but didn't hear talking, so he assumed the burglar was alone.
Not knowing where his bullet landed, he called 911 from a phone in his room. He had trouble hearing the operator at first, with the shot still ringing in his ears. "That pistol made a heck of a racket," Keefe said.
He stayed on the line until police lights flashed in his yard and the 911 operator confirmed that it was indeed the authorities.
Police found Emerson about six blocks away when they were called to a medical emergency, the complaint said. He said he was shot in the arm "near the parkway." Police found a trail of blood leading through the neighborhood and back to Keefe's bedroom door. Keefe's VCR had been dumped along the way.
The complaint said Emerson admitted he had been in Keefe's house without permission. He acknowledged that the blood in the house was his, it added.
He was charged in Hennepin County District Court with first-degree burglary. He was under arrest Wednesday at North Memorial Medical Center in Robbinsdale, where he was in stable condition.
Keefe, whose living room is adorned with skeet-shooting trophies, said he doesn't regret firing the shot.
"I know I've done the right thing," he said.
"I'm glad I didn't kill the man, because I'd hate like hell to have that on my conscience, even if he is a bad guy. But I hope he gets enough prison time where I won't see him again in my lifetime."
-- Staff Writer David Chanen contributed to this report.-- Pam Louwagie is at plouwagie@startribune.com.
http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/3180954.html
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
Death is the last thing we should fear
- - - - - - - - - - - -
by Pamela White
(letters@boulderweekly.com)
On Saturday, it will be 15 years since I wanted to kill. If I'd had a gun the night of Aug. 24, 1987, at least one man-perhaps two-would have died.
I had just moved into a new apartment here in Boulder that day and was starting classes at CU after a year's maternity leave. My baby was 9 months old and had just taken his first steps. The world seemed full of possibility and promise.
But that night, two young men armed with switchblades nearly put an end to any possibility. They broke into my apartment, using the backs of their knives to shatter the glass of my kitchen window. Had I not gotten a call off to the police, I would have been raped at knife-point and perhaps killed. Who knows what they would have done to my little boy.
CU Police Officers Gary Arai and Tim McGraw arrived in time to prevent a tragedy. As they investigated the crime scene and did paperwork, I wanted to be as close to them as possible because they made me feel safe.
It wasn't their brawn I was thinking of, though I'm sure they're both formidable. It was the semi-automatic in their holsters.
"If I'd had a gun, I'd have shot them both in the face," I told Gary.
I visualized myself doing just that-holding the gun, firing at the filthy, leering smirk on the men's faces, watching their heads split like melons.
Not long after the break-in, I shared those thoughts with a former professor of mine, now a friend and mentor.
"If I'd have had a gun, I'd have shot both," I told her.
While sympathetic and full of compassion, she wasn't impressed, so I explained further.
"I would be better for me to kill them then let them attack me."
Her response, to the best of my recollection, was this: "Certainly it would be horrible if they had done what they wanted to do, but if you had shot them it could have cost you your soul."
Her words stayed with me, niggled me, pissed me off.
What was I supposed to do? Invite the attackers in so they didn't have to risk cutting themselves on glass, allow them to assault me, then offer them cigarettes?
"Hi, my name is Pam, and I'll be your rape victim tonight."
The right to defend oneself against violent criminals is etched into the American psyche. In Colorado, the "Make My Day" law allows citizens to shoot with impunity anyone who breaks into their homes if they have a reasonable belief that the intruder is going to commit a crime in their home or harm them in any way.
Had I blown their heads off, the law would have granted me immunity from prosecution. The men had taunted me from outside before breaking into my apartment, and their intent was clear on their faces. Reasonable belief? I knew what was going to happen if they managed to get a hold of me just like I know my own name. And even though they never laid hands on me, I received minor injuries from glass shards, which cut my legs.
I had no doubt at the time that I would have been justified had I blasted them into oblivion. No one would have blamed me, except perhaps the men's mothers. But then there was my mentor.
It would have cost me my soul?
At the time I wasn't certain I had one.
So many things have changed since 1987.
Gary and Tim still work for the CU Police Department, and I'm eternally grateful to them. The image of the two of them running full-tilt across an open field to get to me in time is forever set in my memory, along with the sound of my own screams. They put themselves in harm's way-one of the attackers turned on Tim, his knife drawn-for a stranger.
And my mentor's words, which seemed at best na?ve, now seem crystal clear.
Spirituality is a personal thing, so I won't bore readers with the minutiae of my own perceptions. But the past few years have shown me that death is the last thing human beings should fear. Instead, we should fear the ways in which we fail to live up to our spiritual potential. Worst for us are those times when we deny the humanity of others, whether they be jerks weaving in traffic, thugs intent on harming us, or even terrorists in airplanes.
While I might have kept myself physically safe by shooting those men, I would have been placing my life and happiness above theirs. I would have been falling prey to the lie that they had the ability to harm me in any real way. I would have been forgetting the spiritual truth both about my attackers and about myself.
That truth, as far as I've been able to discern (and I do not claim to be an expert or have the inside line), is that in dying, we risk nothing. We lose nothing. All that we are, all that we've done, all that we love stays with us. When we kill, however, we negate the value of others and put our souls at risk.
This is a recent revelation. It doesn't explain why I never bought a gun, despite the years of nightmares and the paralyzing fear of being alone at night that plagued me for years after the break-in. That choice had to do with my children and my fear that they'd find the gun and become statistics.
The nightmares have ended, as has the fear of being alone. The desire to buy a gun passed long ago. But I've never written about the handgun issue because in so many ways I'm a fence-sitter.
If someone tried to break into my house again, I'd probably still call the guys who pack heat for a living. I won't carry a gun. I let them carry one for me. Second Amendment supporters would say that makes me a hypocrite or even unpatriotic.
And although I consider myself a pacifist, I know what it's like to look at a man's face and see that he's actually happy and excited about his plans for hurting you. I'm not going to tell people, women in particular, that they shouldn't defend themselves just because I believe such-and-such.
Ultimately, the decision to kill in self-defense-or for any other reason-is a personal one. Each person makes his or her choice. As with all other choices we make, we pay the spiritual consequences.
So finally, after 10 years of writing columns, I speak out on the gun issue. And the only thing I really have to say is this: Our anger and fear do more harm to us than those who make us angry or fearful. When we meet darkness with darkness, some of that darkness enters and stays inside us.
Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com
http://www.boulderweekly.com/uncensored.html
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
Well all them are "heros" they died for their contry ,believes and atitudes ....
Better them than me ..... I kill them, god forgives them ....
Call me DREAD ! .........
JD
400 million cows can't be wrong ( EAT GRASS !!! )
Bottom line for me: All human lives are not worth the same. The life of a drugged-up sh**head with a switchblade is not worth one millionth of the lives of one of my family members or myself.
For many transgressions, I can understand where mercy or compassion would be the proper thing. But certain crimes, especially crimes against the defenseless, are worthy of nothing but death. Simple as that. Not 20-30, not 25-life. Death.
Whether that justice is delivered before the crime is committed, or whether it needs to be delivered after, it doesnt matter.
The bible tells us something about this.(paraphrasing)"There is a time to every purpose under heaven...a time to kill, and a time to heal..."
www.waveformwear.com
The new wave in free expression.
I'm probably preaching to the choir here. Isn't it frustrating that someone who has enough intelligence to put words on paper can be so wrong but feel so superior about it? Don't forget, she votes and she probably would vote to disarm her fellow citizens to keep them from the "sin" of self-defense also.