Ala. Prof's Story Begins With Brother's 1986 Death

[Faygo Kid]

Unbelievable:

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (AP) -- When a young woman in Massachusetts killed her brother with a shotgun blast in 1986, authorities waited more than a week to question family members and the death was ultimately ruled an accident.

Now, a quarter-century later, Amy Bishop is accused in another shooting -- an attack that killed three fellow biology professors at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

In the days since Friday's shooting, revelations about Amy Bishop's past have raised questions about whether much of the violence could have been prevented. In the latest twist, police said Tuesday that Bishop had also been charged with assaulting a woman in 2002 during a tirade over a child's booster seat at a restaurant.

The story started more than two decades ago when police were called to the Braintree, Mass., home Bishop shared with her parents. Authorities found her 18-year-old brother, Seth, dead of a shotgun wound to the chest.

Bishop's father later told police he and his daughter had a disagreement and she went to her room. She said she had wanted to learn to load a shotgun her parents had bought after a recent break-in.

Bishop said she accidentally fired the gun in her bedroom as she tried to unload it, then went downstairs to ask her brother to help, according to a police report.

She said the gun went off again as Seth, a Northeastern University freshman and a virtuoso violinist, walked across the kitchen.

She told police she thought she had ruined the kitchen, but did not realize she had hit her brother. She said she ran away and thought she dropped the gun, which went off a third time. She did not remember anything else until she was taken to a police station.

But police and witnesses say she fled with the gun to a car dealership, where she pointed it at employees and demanded a getaway car. She told them her husband was going to come after her and she needed to flee.

She was caught but never charged. Police said it took 11 days before they could interview family members because they were so distraught. When they finally did, authorities decided to let her go, declaring the whole thing an accident. . .

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/02/16/us/AP-US-Ala-University-Shooting.html?_r=1

The bizarre story continues at the link.

[tularetom]

1. So many enablers, so many missed opportunities to prevent this tragedy

This woman was a disaster waiting to happen. The signs could not have been clearer, but the intervention that could have averted the latest incident was never forthcoming.

As a former department head in a local government agency I can tell you how things like this "slip through the cracks" as one of the students put it. Laziness on the part of HR staffs plus legal limitations on inquiries designed to protect the privacy of job applicants. I had to deal with background checks on applicants for professional jobs that were performed by 19 year old clerks with no training in personnel matters and no formal education beyond high school. More than one of these half assed background checks came back to bite us in the ass in court, because we had failed to do our homework.

I'm actually surprised this doesn't happen more often.

[enuegii]

2. This has nothing to do with slipping "through the cracks",

nor is the fault of "laziness on the part of HR staffs" or "legal limitations on inquiries". Since the local police in Massachusetts chose not to file charges in 1986 despite very suspicious circumstances (three shots fired in two different rooms after an argument in an "accidental" shooting?), there was really nothing to miss in the course of a background check, unless you count allegations and rumors from the subject's neighbors. And just how much weight should hearsay be given?

This situation smells to me of just another instance of the well-connected literally getting away with murder, at least until it involves prominent people and happens in a very public place in front of witnesses other than dear old mom.

What bothers me, I guess, is the inevitable backlash sure to come from this. How many people in their forties and fifties who were busted for pot or DUI or a fistfight in their teens or twenties are going to get caught up in the rush to get on the security bandwagon?