Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Police Didn't Know Gun Not a Firearm

Over the weekend, an attorney for the family said Penley's father told him that he contacted law enforcement before the boy was shot to tell them that his son did not have a gun and that he only had a pellet gun, Local 6 News reported.

However, phone records obtained by the FDLE showed authorities did not make contact with the dead boy's father until about 45 minutes after the boy had been shot, according to a report released Tuesday.
If that's the case, then the outcome can't be judged unreasonable. When I posted this, press accounts were very different, citing the boys father, a brother and a classmate all corroborating police and school authorities being told.

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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

See, this is why I NEVER talk to reporters. The average press report starts out inaccurate, gets worse for a couple days, and then, by day 5, gets most things right.

This is why I read David and Nicki instead of snoozepapers.

Ben said...

I wasn't there, but it's hard for me to imagine that the para-militaries couldn't contain that situation without pulling triggers, regardless of what they thought the gun was.

In order to negotiate, he (the student) would have to be contained. If a platoon of machinegun-toting men can't restrict a boys movements inside a locked down school, then something is waaay wrong. Did they think he had hostages or something?

I'm sure the boy was unbalanced and probably suicidal, but that doesn't make the tactics, and the end result, legit.

Anonymous said...

Hmmm. Ben brings up an interesting point. Why couldn't the officers locate and contain the boy without risking their lives, and then try to negotiate?