Houston woman ringing in new year killed by stray bullet

[left-of-center2012]

Authorities say a woman ringing in the new year was fatally shot by a stray bullet outside her Houston home. The Harris County Sheriff's Office said 61-year-old Philippa Ashford died after being shot at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday. The sheriff's department said it appears she may have been struck by celebratory gunfire from outside her immediate neighborhood.

The woman's family and their neighbors were discharging fireworks in their cul-de-sac when she called out that she had been shot, according to the department. She was pronounced dead at the scene. "We have no indication that any family member or anybody in the cul-de-sac was discharging a firearm and we've walked the streets and canvassed up and down to see if we can find any shell casings in the neighborhood and are not finding anything," Sgt. Ben Beall, a spokesman for the Harris County Sheriff's Office, told the Houston Chronicle.

The Menninger Clinic, a Houston facility that treats mental illness, said in a statement that Ashford was a nurse manager there, serving as a leader and mentor to their nursing and clinical team. Her body has been sent for an autopsy and the sheriff's department is asking anyone with information regarding her death to call it.

The Chronicle reports that Houston police and Harris County deputies issued public alerts on New Year's Eve warning the public not to discharge their weapons while celebrating.

https://www.kob.com/us-news/houston-woman-ringing-in-new-year-killed-by-stray-bullet/5595472/?cat=600

[guillaumeb]

1. Of course we should not blame guns.

She could also have been hit by a falling meteorite.

[Sonny Mirviss]

2. In Arizona they have Shannon's law

Shannon's law refers to specific changes in Arizona statutes, enacted in 2000, making it a felony offense to discharge firearms randomly into the air.
Shannon's law is named after Shannon Smith, a fourteen-year-old Phoenix girl killed by a stray bullet in June 1999. Smith's parents, after being informed that the assailant's activity constituted, at most, a misdemeanor offense, advocated stronger penalties, to prevent future incidents of this kind.

Their campaign took them all over Arizona, and their efforts were supported by city councils of medium-sized Arizona cities such as Tucson. Then-Governor Jane Hull also joined them in their cause. After the Arizona legislature failed to pass the law twice in 1999, it finally received both state senate and state house approval in April 2000, and was enacted in that July. The NRA supported the law and worked in cooperation to form the 'Shannon's Law

I've been visiting folks in Phoenix and can tell you that a lot of people were violating that law.

It sounded like Bagdad over in the Maryvale area last night!