Church Shootings

Church shootings in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and Knoxville, Tennessee, USA, have left ten injured and at least two people dead this weekend.

A man walked into a Knoxville, Tennessee, church and opened fire Sunday, July 27, 2008, injuring 7 people, various local media have reported.

The incident took place at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Church at 10:15 a.m.

Church members said children from the congregation's summer theater workshop were performing a musical when the shooting occurred. A children's production of "Annie" was taking place at the time of the shooting.

Steve Drevik, a church member, described the shooter as a man with long blond hair, who appeared to be in his 40s. He said he walked into the sanctuary and opened fire with a shotgun, shooting indiscriminately. No children are believed to have been hit by the gunfire.

Seven people were transported to an area hospital. The extent of their injuries is unknown.

The alleged shooter is in custody.

Update: A man died in Sunday's church massacre in Tennessee when he stood in front of a gunman who fired on congregation members, a witness said.

Greg McKendry was the only immediate death in the incident at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, the Knoxville (Tenn.) News Sentinel reported.

"Greg McKendry stood in the front of the gunman and took the blast to protect the rest of us," witness Barbara Kemper said.

Capt. Brent Seymour, a spokesman for the Knoxville Fire Department, said police had a suspect in custody, CNN reported.

Knoxville's WBIR-TV reported only six of the injured individuals suffered gunshot wounds in the attack. The seventh injury victim only suffered an ankle injury, the TV station said.

The TV station added that no children were thought to have been hurt and two of the hospitalized victims may be serious condition.

Knoxville's WVLT-TV said the gunman may have been restrained by members of the congregation following the shooting spree.

Meanwhile, on Saturday, July 26, 2008, three men were injured in a church shooting in Canada. Early Saturday morning, Toronto woke up to a murder in the least likely of places: church property. Devon Wynter, 40, was found dead in a hall underneath the Disciples Revival Church. He was pronounced dead in hospital.

Two other men were also injured in the crossfire. One was hit by a stray bullet. The other hurt himself as he raced from the scene. The wound on his leg, believed to be a cut from a piece of glass, was so severe he thought he had been shot.

Both men are expected to be fine.

Sunday church services are going ahead as usual.

Cops have combed the area for clues, lifting fingerprints from the door and even searching a nearby stream.

Police say many of the 500 witnesses on scene (a dance was occurring) have been cooperative. If you have information that could help their investigation, give them a call.

Phoenix College Shooting

Three people were wounded when a gunman opened fire at a Phoenix, Arizona, community college on Thursday afternoon, July 24, 2008.

Police speculate that the shooting stems from a longtime dispute between the suspect and a student. Investigators say the suspect, who is a former student, shot three people in a computer room at South Mountain Community College. One of the victims was seriously injured and remains in critical condition on Friday.

Police arrested Rodney Smith, 22, nearby after he flew the scene to a nearby home. Witnesses say the suspect and student had a verbal confrontation shortly before the shooting.

Two people were struck by stray bullets and are in stable condition at Maricopa Medical Center. The third victim, who reportedly was the suspect's target, suffered a shot to the leg and is listed in critical condition.

Another NBK Murder

There appears to be another copycat murder due to the motion picture, Natural Born Killers.

Eric Tavulares was fascinated with the movie Natural Born Killers.

He told police he has seen it 10 or 20 times. He told police, according to a complaint filed Monday, July 21, 2008, that he had been watching it Friday night, July 18, the night he strangled his childhood sweetheart, 18-year-old Lauren Aljubouri.

According to the complaint: Tavulares, also 18, told police he has had known Aljubouri since the second grade and that they had been dating on and off since the sixth grade. Aljubouri, who graduated in January from Arrowhead High School in Waukesha County, got home around 10:45 p.m. Friday.

She and Tavulares lived in an apartment in the 2400 block of N. Frederick Ave., not far from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where Aljubouri planned to study graphic design. Tavulares planned to study fire science at Milwaukee Area Technical College.

Tavulares told police they began watching Natural Born Killers, a 1994 movie directed by Oliver Stone in which the murder spree of two psychopathic lovers becomes a media obsession.

They stopped the movie about halfway, Tavulares said, and went to bed.

“He stated he does not recall exactly what happened next,” the complaint says, “but something caused him to switch mentally and he rolled over on Lauren Aljubouri and he began strangling her.”

Within three or four minutes, Tavulares said, Aljubouri was dead.

“I just never dreamed this could happen to my daughter and that he would ever hurt her like this in a million years,” said Lauren’s mother, Debbie Aljubouri, sobbing during a phone interview Monday night. “We’re just absolutely devastated. She had so much promise in the future, and it’s such a tragic loss.”

Debbie Aljubouri said her daughter was independent, driven and intelligent, determined to pursue her passion for the arts at UWM.

Lauren Aljubouri had worked at Hartbrook Cafe in Hartland from the time she was 15 until June, painting a mural at the business just before she finished working there, her mother said. Lauren Aljubouri graduated early and with honors from her high school, she said.

Lauren Aljubouri handled her search for colleges on her own, telling her mother that all she needed to do was attend the registration session at UWM, Debbie Aljubouri said.

“There isn’t anything that girl couldn’t do, no matter what it was, and do it well,” Debbie Aljubouri said. “She just handled everything.”

Lauren Aljubouri moved into her apartment within the past few weeks, her mother said.

She had worked at Umami Moto, a Milwaukee restaurant, for about a month, said Omar Shaikh, an owner of the business.

“She was a wonderful girl, rather quiet, but a very dependable, hard worker,” Shaikh said. “She seemed like a young, happy girl.”

Lauren Aljubouri and Tavulares had been dating steadily for the past few years, Debbie Aljubouri said.

“I knew him,” Debbie Aljubouri said. “He was turning his life around more this year, I thought.”

Tavulares has convictions for resisting or obstructing an officer, possession of an illegally obtained prescription drug and bail jumping, according to online court records.

According to the criminal complaint:

Tavulares told police that when he realized Lauren Aljubouri was dead, he jumped off her and attempted to resuscitate her.

A police officer arrived at their apartment shortly after 3 a.m. Saturday.

Tavulares answered the door.

“I did it,” he told the officer, according to the complaint.

“I can’t believe it. I did it,” he said.

The officer followed Tavulares into the kitchen. Without being questioned, according to the complaint, he again told the officer, “I killed her.”

Lauren Aljubouri was pronounced dead at the scene. Tavulares is charged with first-degree reckless homicide. He faces up to 60 years in prison.

Debbie Aljubouri said she was upset Tavulares was not charged with first-degree intentional homicide.

“I don’t understand this,” she said.

Source: "‘Natural Born Killers’ fan charged with strangling girlfriend," by Crocker Stephenson and Ryan Haggerty, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, July 22, 2008.

Zodiac Is Back

There is something sinister happening in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Women soldiers are being killed. Young women are being stalked. There is a copycat about.

In that town's Fairfield Inn, in the room where Spc. Megan Lynn Touma’s body was discovered June 21, 2008, a killer watched.

He went purposefully about his killing in that North Carolina hotel room, and then scrawled the "Zodiac Symbol," like that of the infamous Zodiac Killer, upon the room's mirror, according to local police.

He is calling himself, by his actions and his symbol, Zodiac.

The sign he used to inscribe the letter he sent to the press reminds us, of course, of the Zodiac of the 1960s.

The choice of the date, the Summer Solstice, may be part of his plan for attention.

Perhaps even the location, Fayetteville, was picked on purpose. The name game. The copycat effect. You've read of both of them here.

Below is the note. More later.

Kentucky Workplace Killings

Wesley Neal Higdon, 25, who killed five people and then died by suicide in a "rampage" at the Atlantis Plastics injection molding manufacturing facility in Henderson, Kentucky, called his girlfriend two hours before the shootings to warn her that he was going to kill his boss, police told the media on June 25, 2008.


Henderson is a city located in Henderson County, along the Ohio River in Western Kentucky. It was called "Red Banks" by the native Americans who originally lived and hunted there because of the reddish clay soil on the banks of the river. For more than 100 years the city has been home to the Southern Cherokee Nation.

Henderson's roots lie in a scheme by a North Carolina judge, Colonel Richard Henderson, and a group of investors who sought to buy much of modern-day Kentucky and Tennessee from 1,200 Cherokee Indians gathered at Sycamore Shoals (located at present day Elizabethton, Tennessee) and later resell these frontier lands to settlers.

Henderson's group, the Transylvania Company, hired Daniel Boone to help settle the region. The Virginia General Assembly ultimately voided the deal, but granted Richard Henderson & Company 200,000 acres in exchange for their efforts in developing the wilderness region. That ground was located where the Green River flows into the Ohio River

Among Henderson's many famous residents was John James Audubon, a naturalist who lived in the town in the early 1800s. Displayed throughout Henderson are sculptures of several of his paintings from the "Double Elephant Folio" published in The Birds of America. The sculptures were designed by Raymond Graf, for the City of Henderson, in 2002 and 2003. They are located at various areas in the Henderson downtown district.

Henderson, a quiet town of 28,000 people, was in shock from the shootings.


Police said Wesley Higdon of Henderson had an argument with his supervisor about wearing safety goggles and using his cell phone while was at his press machine on Tuesday, June 24, 2008.

Later that night, as the supervisor escorted him from the building, Higdon shot him, apparently using a .45-caliber pistol he kept in his car. Then, he charged into a break room and the plant floor and kept shooting before turning the gun on himself, police said.

"He just walked in, looked like he meant business, and started shooting at everybody," Henderson Police Sgt. John Nevels said at a news conference.

(Early reports say the shooting began just before midnight, on June 24th, St. John's Day, although media accounts generally published that the shootings occurred early on June 25, 2008.)

A man who called 911 frantically described the violent scene to a dispatcher, tallying up the number of dead around him.

"There's more than two people dead. There's like one, two, three, four, five people dead," the man said. "The supervisor is dead, too."

The killings stunned the sleepy Ohio River town of about 28,000 people, where a local leader said many residents know or are related to a worker at the plant. The plant, operated by Atlanta-based Atlantis plastics, employs about 150 people and makes parts for refrigerators and plastic siding for homes.

Henderson County Coroner Bruce Farmer identified the supervisor as Kevin G. Taylor, 30, of Dixon. The slain co-workers were Trisha Mirelez, 25; Rachael Vasquez, 26 and Joshua Hinojosa, 28, all of Sebree; and Israel Monroy, 29, of Henderson. Shooting survivor Noelia Monroy, Israel's sister, was hospitalized in nearby Evansville, Ind.

"Our whole community is in shock," Henderson County Judge-Executive Sandy Watkins said.

Employees at the company were sent home early Wednesday, but the company said that it hoped to resume limited operations at night. Atlantis Plastics CEO Bud Philbrook told The Associated Press in an interview in Atlanta that the company was reeling.

"It's just total shock. It's something you read about in the paper," Philbrook said.

Investigators were trying to piece together the timing of the shooting spree. Philbrook said that Higdon didn't appear to have any previously disciplinary problems at the plant.

Nevels said family members told detectives that Higdon kept a .45 caliber pistol in his car almost all the time, which is permissible in Kentucky.

Four of the victims were members of St. Michael's Catholic Church in Sebree, Ky., said the Rev. Jason McClure, who had spent much of the morning with the victims' families.

"They are very upset and hurting deeply and just trying to figure out what to do next," McClure said.

In a news release on the company's Web site, Atlantis Plastics said it is a leading U.S. manufacturer of three kinds of products: polyethylene stretch films for wrapping pallets of materials, custom films for industrial and packaging uses, and molded plastic pieces used in products such as appliances and recreational vehicles.

Talking About Indian Suicide Doesn't Cause It

One of the myths that is quickly overturned in any good suicide prevention program is that "talking about suicide causes suicide." I repeat, that's a myth.

Indeed, the suicide individual, whether youth or elderly, is literally dying to have someone talk to them about their pain and their thoughts of suicide. It is already "inside" of them.

People want to live, and yet infrequently feel the "only way out" of their pain is by dying. The copycat factor comes into play to reinforce the notion that it is the only option open, when it is presented specifically, repeatedly, and impersonally by the media, without protective factors.

Unfortunately, in a new article, "Suicide Sensitivity" by Rob Capriccioso, in Indian Times for June 18, 2008, the wrong message seems to have taken hold among my Rosebud Sioux brothers and sisters - or so seems the case from the reporter's story.

First of all, Capriccioso breaks every rule in terms of media guidelines for writing about suicide when he pens this sentence: "And the tribe's own law enforcement officials have kept track of several recent cases where suicide attempts within the reservation's small population have been successful. "

Suicides are not "successful," in the same way we want our youth to "succeed" in sports, school, work, and relationships. It has been shown that modeling behavior through writing that suicides have a "successful" goal is the incorrect signal to young people, especially among males who make up 4 out of 5 of the deaths by suicides. This tells me Capriccioso might be the source of what comes next, not the Indians.

Caprisccioso writes:

The Rosebud Sioux Tribe is still reeling from the devastating effects of suicide; and some tribal leaders, fearful of the situation, are doing their best to reflect inward regarding tribal and federal efforts in dealing with the outbreak...

In some respects, members of the tribe said, all of the attention on suicide has actually glorified the act for some. Many young people are hurting inside, and they're desperately seeking attention - even if that attention comes in the form of an emergency response to a drug overdose or a slit to the wrist.

''We need to strengthen our young people's feelings about themselves, as well as their connections with their parents,'' Black Bear said, noting that her task force's motto is ''Stop, think, honor, and celebrate your life.'' One of the videos that she regularly shows to youth notes that suicide is not a video game. ''We want them to know you won't be able to press play and start again.''

Tribal leaders are weary of the increased visibility of suicide on the reservation, and they do not want to see it glorified. Bordeaux, in fact, recently requested that IHS obtain his permission before allowing its officials to talk about their efforts to combat suicide at Rosebud. And IHS has followed his request.

''We want to be sensitive to our government-to-government relationship with the tribe,'' Thomas Sweeney, a spokesman for IHS, told Indian Country Today. ''We need to honor the tribe's wishes. ... We don't want to add to their difficulties.''

He added that it is quite rare for IHS to have hashed out such an arrangement.

''We don't want copycat suicide attempts, and I do wonder if that's happened over the past three years,'' Black Bear said regarding the increased attention as of late. ''This is an area where sensitivity is key.''

No, no, no! Talking about suicide does not cause it. Ignoring it does. But graphically and irresponsibly writing about it does have a negative impact.

The mechanism behind copycat suicides is the graphic glorification of suicides by discussing the exact details of the act - like printing the imagery of someone slitting their wrists, as was done by Capriccioso in his article.

If the Rosebud Sioux Tribe are confusing the two - or if this is just a badly written article mixing the two - something needs to be done to straighten this situation out. Someone isn't "getting it." Frankly, I don't think it is the Rosebud Sioux.

Kent State Student Dies

Robert Stamps, 58 (his wife said he was 57), one of the 13 students shot on the Kent State University campus by the National Guard on May 4, 1970, died Wednesday, June 11, 2008.

Stamps, who passed away in Madison just east of Tallahassee, was an observer sympathetic to the anti-war protests the day of the shootings and was shot in the buttocks while fleeing the tear gas gunfire.

Alan Canfora, another of the shot students who now runs Kent's May 4 Center, said Stamps had protested other times and always believed the Guard shooters should be tried for murder.

Stamps died of pneumonia, according to an e-mail his wife Teresa Sumrall sent to friends. Canfora said Stamps had contracted Lyme disease years ago at a May 4 event at Mohican State Park and had been bedridden with it the last few years.

He was the second of the nine students injured that day to die. James Russell, the oldest of the nine, died at his Oregon home last year at the age of 60.

After the shootings, Stamps graduated with degrees in sociology and Spanish. He lived for a while in Lakewood as an author and college teacher. Canfora said Stamps moved several times between Ohio, California and Florida, and frequently returned to the Kent campus for May 4 remembrances.

"It helps and it hurts," Stamps told The Plain Dealer at one of those events in 2000. "It heals old stuff and brings up old stuff at the same time."

Just a year ago, when students shot in the incident spoke against the current war in Iraq, Stamps told The Plain Dealer that his illness was "the only thing stopping me from actively going around to college campuses, protesting and talking to people about the war."

Killed that day were students Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer and William Schroeder. Scheuer and Schroeder were passers-by. Canfora said Stamps rode to the hospital in the same ambulance as Krause before joining him in a waiting room, where they learned students had died.

In addition to Stamps, Canfora and Russell, the wounded students were John Cleary, Thomas Grace, Dean Kahler, Joseph Lewis, Donald MacKenzie, James Russell and Douglas Wrentmore.

A private ceremony was set for Monday. Another ceremony is set for July in San Diego, Calif.

Source.