It’s actually an important distinction, because most of the coverage is all about the police officer who died, rather than drawing attention to the fact that, once again, this is a story about a man killing a woman.
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From the local paper, interviewing an eyewitness:
James Gray saw at least two people get shot. Gray said he was coming out of the clinic area when he saw a man in a black coat, black hat and dark pants shoot a woman three times in the chest. The man and the woman had been walking and talking to each other before the shooting, he said. The gunman stood over the woman and shot her three more times after she fell to the ground, said Gray. Then a squad car turned its lights on and came down the drive and the gunman shot at the squad car.
“It was chaos,” said Gray. “It was just mass chaos.”
Gray said the gun looked like a 9 mm handgun; a police source said authorities had identified it as a 9 mm.
When the gunman came into the hospital, it appeared that he was shooting people at random, said Gray, who saw one other person shot.
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This is a story I followed closely, for all the obvious reasons, but also because my daughter volunteers at the hospital where the officer was taken (he died later that evening), so I was texting her to keep her appraised of the chaos and media circus that was about to rain down on them.
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I’m glad she is okay.
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I hope that she hasn’t been traumatized by this.
Out of curiosity, why was the officer taken to another hospital, when he was shot on the literal doorstop of one? Does the hospital he was taken to have specialists or better facilities?
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Yes, he (and the pharmaceutical student/assistant) were taken to the best hospital on the south side, the University of Chicago Trauma Center. Plus, the police were still searching Mercy Hospital in case there was more than one shooter and/or to help anyone who might potentially have been shot and not yet found.
So far in 2018, this makes 2 Chicago police officers killed in the line of duty, against at least 62 women in Chicago killed by the men in their lives.
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Yup, the same old pattern:
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Excuse me? Why does a subject of a protection order still even have a gun, much less a concealed carry permit? Ow, wait, 'Murica.
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Just a reminder that knife control is stricter than gun control in many parts of the US.
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It’s a great point. I remember the last time I bought a chef’s knife – even in its sealed plastic packaging, in an opaque shopping bag, it felt weird taking it home on the subway.
ETA: “great point” – oh dear, I did it again.
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After living in MT and TX the majority rules of my life, the thought of carrying a pocket knife could be illegal just boggles my mind.
Even here in IL I can carry my 7" dagger (provided I’m not carrying it with the intent to hurt someone)
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@MalevolentPixy
@gadgetgirl
@Wisconsin_Platt
I remember when I first arrived in the big apple I usually carried a Victorinox jackknife with me. It was a simple model with a 3” blade. I thought nothing of it. My coworkers at Macy*s, who had grown up in the city, got nervous when when they found out about it. They warned me about dire consquences if a cop found that on me. But, I’m white, so I wasn’t too worried about that.
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I was thinking as I read the article: my grandparents carried small folding knives in their pockets most of their lives. My grandfather used his as a pencil sharpener most of the time; my grandmother used hers for trimming flower stems and breaking yarn. I still have my grandmother’s somewhere. It has a very pretty handle with a mother-of-pearl (probably fake) design on the handle. The blade has been sharpened so many times it’s really too thin to use.
It’s quite a lot of work to unfold the blade – the hinge is very stiff – but I could see an overzealous lawyer calling it a “gravity knife”.
One of the things that annoyed me in the article is all the people mentioned being caught with knives basically got in trouble for using public transit and/or walking to get to work. If they’d had a car or van to stow their gear in, they would have been fine.
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Yes, this.
I carried a folding knife with me from late childhood/early teen years through just after 9/11. At the time, carrying folding knives was commonplace and almost literally nobody would consider them weapons. It wasn’t something anyone could pull in a fight. It had a very stiff blade that was hard to get to… I had to prize it out rather than flip it open or push a button.
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I have a Swiss army knife in my purse, though I’ve only maybe used it a couple of times. I usually forget it’s in there… except for a few times I’ve had to pass the purse through x-ray machines. I think I told one security person, “there may be a Swiss army knife in there, if you can find it you can have it.” (I think it was some federal building that had a post office I needed to visit and I wasn’t sure it was allowed.) He just smiled and let it pass.
I’m pretty sure the biggest blade is 2 and a half inches, which is legal here, I think. One of these days I’ll come across it, take it out and leave it at home… which is when I’ll suddenly need it.
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“with”
This phone keyboard has a really hard time figuring out I swyped “with”. Usually it writes “wuthering” from that one time I was in a discussion about Emily Brontë.
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I understand that if you just use an Australian accent and a grin, there won’t be any problems at all.
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I carry a 3” Swiss Army knife in my pocket everywhere, and use it for all sorts of stuff. It never occurred to me it might be illegal somewhere. Except on airplanes. But I guess it’s at the low end of ability to inflict damage. (“Ow, you just cut off my hangnail!”)
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Same here. I even travel with it; just throw it in my checked bag and put it back into my pocket on the other end. I use it for everything from trimming a hanging thread to butchering a chicken to opening beer bottles. I go to England a lot and it’s totally illegal there. I got pulled aside at Eurostar security a while back. They warned me it would get confiscated on the way back but let me through. I ended up mailing it home.
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I am constitutionally unable to not have some form of tool on me at all times. I have both of my grandfather’s pocket knives, but don’t carry them with me anymore for the obvious reasons. So instead, I have a Utili-key on my key ring, even when traveling:
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