I was going to just append the last post, but these updates seem to require their own post.
Larson Case Update:
There are some new details coming out about the Aaron Larson case, courtesy of the Seattle Times, with more witnesses stepping forward questioning why the officer involved continued to fire on Larson after he fell to the ground and appeared to be incapacitated.
Some nurses and a paramedic who witnessed the shooting and rushed to aid Larson but were told by the officer that he was already dead. But when they checked he was still moving and he had a pulse. This would seem to indicate that if the officer had stopped firing after Larson had fallen to the ground that he might have survived the incident.
It was also revealed that Larson had a history of mental illness for the last couple of years and that he had recently tested negative for drug use during an employment related drug screening. This seems to back my theory that Larson didn't choose his fate that night, that he was not in control of himself and that lack of control wasn't due to any drug use.
As I said, I am still reserving judgement on this one and I really hesitate to draw any conclusions until more details and witness accounts surface. It is a tragedy no matter which way you paint it.
Carnation Killings Update:
Some horrifying new details have emerged that appear to resolve the question as to whether or not the King County Sheriff's deputies that did not investigate the 911 hang-up call could have prevented some of the 6 deaths in Carnation Washington on Christmas Eve.
From the Seattle Times: (warning, contains sickeningly graphic details)
The last thing Erica Anderson did was try to protect her children.
The 32-year-old woman's husband was dead or dying, and she had been shot twice during a Christmas Eve ambush at her in-laws' rural Carnation home. Still, she managed to crawl over the back of a couch and dial 911 on a cordless phone.
But before she had a chance to speak, according to graphic court documents filed Friday, Joseph McEnroe — armed with a .357-caliber Magnum handgun — walked up and pulled the phone from her hand and popped out the batteries. McEnroe, according to the documents, "allowed [Erica] to huddle with her children before he shot [her] in the head."
"McEnroe made sure to mention that he apologized to [Erica] after she pleaded with him not to shoot her, saying '... You don't have to do this,' " according to the court papers. "McEnroe recalled how he looked at her and said, '... Yes, we do.' "
McEnroe shot 5-year-old Olivia Anderson in the head "at very close range," said Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg. Then he turned to 3-year-old Nathan Anderson, the last survivor in the home.
The boy had picked up the batteries McEnroe had torn from the phone and held them up in one hand. McEnroe told detectives the child gave him "... the look of complete comprehension ... as if he understood." McEnroe then shot him in the head as well, according to the documents.
"I didn't want them to turn us in," McEnroe explained, the documents say.
Aside from showing just how inhuman these killers were when they murdered those children after they watched their parents die in front of them, this also seems to indicate that the officers would have arrived much too late to have saved any of those poor victims' lives that day. Though, there is quite a bit of back and forth going on about the exact timelines and the survivablilty times for the types of wounds that were inflicted.
While reserving judgement on this one as well, all I knwo for certain is that it was a truly horrifying crime and utterly inexcusable despite recent stories in the news trying to paint a picture of the two killers in an understandable light. I'm sorry, but the only thing to understand with these two is that they chose to allow their hardships to obliterate any humanity they might have had when they killed those 4 adults and 2 children... they deserve no more understanding than that.
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