92 year old Lady shot to death in drug bust

[Showtime]

crazy how she hit 3 of them before getting taken out.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/11/22/woman.shot.ap/index.html

Edit
I had a feeling they were covering their asses, but whatever the case, hopefully the truth comes out.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/11/28/atlanta.shooting/index.html

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- An informant cited in a search warrant as having purchased narcotics at an elderly Atlanta woman's house denies buying drugs there, authorities say.

[mcs328]

I read about it from another source also. Some commenters blame the police for excessive force but if you shoot at the police than expect return fire. I don't think her age is an excuse once bullets start flying. What if her aim was better and she killed those 3 officers?

[bachviet]

She shot better than the cops. :eek:

[MikeD]

http://media1.break.com/dnet/media/temp/12_30_2005/grannymachinegun.jpg

[Napoleon54]

That's an unfortunate situation from both sides. Kudos for the woman for defending herself, perhaps she lives in a rough neighborhood where break-ins are common. It's possible, even likely, that she's hard of hearing and has poor eyesight, didn't know she was shooting at cops. Hopefully an investigation will clarify why things went down the way they did.



http://media1.break.com/dnet/media/temp/12_30_2005/grannymachinegun.jpg

ROTFL

[zippyjuan]

Apparently one of Atlanta's toughest neighborhoods and the cops were in plain clothes, banging on her door in the middle of the night. I imagine she was plenty scared. The cops could not see who was shooting at them and even if they did, they would return fire when someone shoots at them.

[ShawnLee]

Sucks, but what was "Sam" doing selling drugs there?

It's not like this was a no-knock warrant, I'm cool with this.

[Houdini]

Sucks, but what was "Sam" doing selling drugs there?

It's not like this was a no-knock warrant, I'm cool with this.
:stupid:

She felt genuinely threatened and did what would have otherwise saved her life. And she must have been a damn good shot. The only reason it made news is b/c she was old. It's not like that factors into any decisions. "Before I shoot you, how old are you?" BS

[Thesifer]

Knowing just what I know from reading the story and nothing else, I side with the police officers. They bought drugs from the house, there were what appear to be drugs IN the house still.
They were doing their job and got shot at.

[Houdini]

Knowing just what I know from reading the story and nothing else, I side with the police officers. They bought drugs from the house, there were what appear to be drugs IN the house still.
They were doing their job and got shot at.

That said, if you were in a 92 old woman's shoes (tight, I know) in a bad neighborhood, and a few guys come barreling through your door - perhaps you're in another room, whatever, getting you gun, in the bathroom, etc., you may feel differently. I know that if a few people, whom I didn't know were police officers, were to knock down my door with weapons, I'd probably shoot too. Home=castle, etc. If anything, the blame should be on the dude who had the drugs, Sam, or whatever his name was. He should be held liable for her death and the wounding of the cops.

I can't imagine being 92 years old, a nice person, non-demented (I'm assuming, based on the neighbors' accounts), living in a bad neighborhood (hell, it might have been good when she moved in...things change), and having to make a life/death decision.

I still don't think this would have made any blip on our news radar if the woman hadn't been 92 years old. That's my point. Her age, in a situation like this, is irrelevant.

[ShawnLee]

Between the write ups from Thesifer and Houdini, I think that's a good summary of how I feel about this.

Mainly, I want to sort of edit what was posted. I said that I'm cool with what happened. I realized that that might be an unfortunate set of words since it might suggest that I'm happy with it. Certainly not, we need to mourn the lost innocent here, but I can't see how this could reasonably have been avoided.

[WhiskeyPapa]

I can't see how this could reasonably have been avoided.The Amsterdam solution: All drugs are legal (or at least the cops ignore them).

The China solution: Execute all drug dealers.

I agree, in the USA this probably could not have been avoided. "Sam" is responsible for the death of that old lady.

[gwilks98]

I modified your post....


The China solution: Execute all drug dealers that sell to the chinese.


It's funny how everyone assumes the old lady was innocent. How does anyone really know if she wasn't in on it and just firing at the cops?

Yes, it seems to be a freak accident. Could things have been done differently? Meh...I wasn't there. I do appreciate that they didn't appear to make eitehr side look like the wrong doers.

[PlayBoyWorld]

I'm still baffled by this "Sam" character. Obviously not a relative, because the article said she didn't have kids. Part of me thinks she knew he was selling drugs out of her home. Knowing that, she had to have expected some kind of problems at some point, either from a drug deal gone bad or from the cops. Probably why she came out shootin'.

[eSDee]

Poor old bird.

[twistedbrowntucker]

I smell a cover up.

[renovation]

I think its long over due that people start taking theire neighborhood back from the creeps. Sure they live in bad/run down areas but when they discover the local turf has been taken over by these people they need to speak out and work together to clean it up. Sure it not a easy task. When its your own family its even harder. And sure it is easy to close your eyes to a problem, but when its at your front door you need to do something. To be poor is not a sin, but not to try and improve your misfortune is!

[Napoleon54]

More info available in this article: http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/11/28/atlanta.shooting/index.html

The woman has gotten younger, the cops didn't knock, and the informant denies buying drugs at that house.

[CourtJester]

It's just sad when anyone dies like that

[Houdini]

So it was a "no-knock" warrant on an old lady's house. I'd probably have exchanged a few shots too. And yeah, she must be one helluva shot, especially for her age.

That said, news stories always, ALWAYS screw up the details. I recently had a small blurb published in some newspapers around here about something that I was kinda involved in, and the details, for several days, as presented by the media, were often dead wrong. And people still don't know the full story. And I don't care. But it really was a wake-up call for media validity.

[Showtime]

I was reading the replies in the thread about the kid at ucla that got tasered and was surprised at the amount of support he received.

http://www.gotapex.com/off-topic/145503-video-ucla-student-tasered-by-security-in-library-for-not-showing-id.html

Later I found the news report about the 92 year old lady who go shot by police in a drug raid and decided to post to see what kind of reaction people would have over that. (Note: She was 88 according to county records if that makes a difference.)

Both titles were similar in that they didn't say the race, but did say what happened to the "perpetrator's" and why it allegedly happened.

Video: UCLA student tasered by security in library for not showing ID

92 year old Lady shot to death in drug bust

For some reason the students plight got much much more attention. I sided with the campus security in the Ucla case and didn't take any stance on the fatal shooting though I felt like the police should have done things differently. I noticed that, to a degree, people sided the way they sided in both cases, but there was a lot less interest/support for a dead 88 year old black woman than a tasered 20 year old Muslim student and I think that is some serious BS! People assumed she was probably involved, but there is very little that a 90 year lady could have been involved with.

Here we have a woman, born in 1918, whose parents or grandparents were probably slaves and had been through what we read about in our history books. Circumstance and bad policy cut short a life that had seen 16 presidents, 2 World Wars, several conflicts, the great depression, birth of tv, the end of segregation, the kennedy assassination, the beginning and end of the cold war, the 1st moon walk, 1st computers, diseases eradicated and new ones found, the birth of rock and roll and everything else that happened over the last 88 years. She saw and survived all those years. She watched as things went from bad to better to bad again and later watched as her neighborhood became a crack block. She carried on only to be woken in the middle of the night by strangers breaking into her house. She didn't over react, she was fighting for her life. If you read the article, it was a informant that had given the info they used. Regardless of if the information were right or wrong, they went about trying to arrest this supposed drug dealer in a very reckless manner. Straight cowboy gangster imo. The war on drugs is as impossible as the War in Iraq and I don't blame the police here any more than the soldiers there, but the policies and methods have to change.

Also I feel that people should be at least as outraged about a murdered black woman as they are about a tasered student.

Probably too much to ask for.

[eSDee]

That's quite a soapbox you're hollering from Showtime :rolleyes: The reason there is more outrage from people in the UCLA incident is because there is video evidence that the student was being tazered while handcuffed. While people differ in opinion how much rights a person has who refuses to show their ID, the unrefutable evidence was the video which showed him being tazed. In this day and age people are on opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to civil rights. Some believe that substituting freedom for safety is a neccesity with the amount of terrorism in the world. Many feel the complete opposite, where any sacrifice of liberty for safety goes against what this country was founded on. Both sides are passionate, which is why that thread was more heated.

In this thread I think that although people differed in opinion, most recognized it was a tragedy that an old lady had to go out like that. And just like the killed groom thread, we are waiting on more info before we can determine if the cops "murdered" her or not. If their story turns out to be B.S., they should all fry.

Don't get all pissy because you are confused by your own flip flop of emotions. Like you said most people were consistent with their thinking. It appears that your gripe is the hypocrisy of people's responses among the two threads. However, if people were consistent in their thinking, then that's not really hypocrisy is it?

[Jeffbx]

Uh, yeah, the events aren't really that similar. In the case of the old lady, she opened fire on the cops when they busted down her door & they returned fire. It's a sad, sad story, but I really don't see any other way this could have gone down. She though she was defending herself, and the cops were definitely defending themselves.

In the case of the library kid, both the kid AND the cops could have acted differently & the situation never would have escalated like it did. IMHO, they were both at fault for acting stupid.

[Showtime]

2 show their cards.

[eSDee]

Looks like she was innocent after all:


2 plead guilty in Atlanta police shooting death

Manslaughter pleas come after 3 officers indicted for killing elderly woman

ATLANTA - Two police officers pleaded guilty to manslaughter Thursday in the shooting death of a 92-year-old woman during a botched drug raid. A third officer was also indicted in the woman’s death.

Gregg Junnier, 40, who retired from the Atlanta police force in January, pleaded guilty to manslaughter, violation of oath, criminal solicitation and making false statements.

Officer J.R. Smith, 35, pleaded guilty to the same four charges and to perjury, which was based on making untrue claims in a warrant.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18328267/

At least justice prevailed. RIP Kathryn Johnston.

[johnnymk]

The story had sounded fishy to me.

[Houdini]

Yep. You bash in someone's door, you should expect to have to defend yourselves. Maybe they yelled "police!" Maybe not. Maybe a bad guy could have yelled "police!" as well. At any rate, from the info, it sounds like the woman acted correctly - sounds like a justified shooting.

No-win situation. I know if someone bashed in my apartment door in the middle of the night, I'd probably be scrambling for a pistol with trit sites asap. :shrug:

[le_stick]

The Amsterdam solution: All drugs are legal (or at least the cops ignore them).

The China solution: Execute all drug dealers and sell their organs .

I agree, in the USA this probably could not have been avoided. "Sam" is responsible for the death of that old lady.

hehehee

[le_stick]

If bad guys dress in police uniform and have a fake warrant, how do we, common people, know whether or not those are fake cop with a fake warrant? Some guy in plain cloth show me a badge and expect me to know that his/her badge is a real deal!!!! If anybody come knocking my door in the middle of the night I will be ready with mine .40 S&W. I rather be trialed by twelve then carried by six