The Last Gun (38 page)

August 5, 2011—Cape Canaveral, Florida. Francis Howard Morrell, a seventy-one-year-old retired dentist, burst into a pet-grooming business and fired a round into the ceiling with his Glock 9mm pistol. He was said to be eccentric and was apparently in a dispute with the business owner. Morrell pointed his pistol at responding police and was shot dead.
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September 2, 2011—Jacksonville, North Carolina. Robert Lewis, twenty-nine, a former military policeman, was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and failure to secure a firearm from a minor. Lewis's three-year-old son, Tyler, shot himself with a Glock 22 pistol left in the home in November 2009. Lewis claimed that he had left the gun on top of a seven-foot-tall home entertainment center, a claim prosecutors disputed. The toddler shot himself in the head with the gun.
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October 11, 2011—Helena-West Helena, Arkansas. More than seven hundred law enforcement officers arrested fifty-one people in several small Arkansas Delta towns, the culmination of a major drug-trafficking investigation. A federal indictment in the case said a network of people helped transport drugs, paraphernalia, and weapons, including Glock 40 caliber pistols, AK-47 assault rifles, and AR-15 assault rifles.
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October 15, 2011—Gonzales, Louisiana. Celestine Skia, a twenty-two-year-old housekeeper, bought a 40 caliber Glock pistol at Cabela's Sporting Goods for her boyfriend, a federal indictment alleges. The boyfriend is charged in state court with shooting a man to death the same day. Skia, who pleaded not
guilty, was also accused of buying a Kel-Tec .223 pistol at a gun show on September 18, 2010, and an assault rifle a year earlier at the same show.
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October 27, 2011—Webster, Texas. Blake Powell, twenty-six, was sentenced to eight years in prison after having pled guilty to aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Powell showed up at a co-worker's home after he was fired for drinking on the job. He then pursued the co-worker in a high-speed chase through a residential neighborhood, firing at least ten rounds from his Glock pistol. “You are kind of like everybody's nightmare about one of those workplace guys that go berserk,” Judge Shawna L. Reagin said at Powell's sentencing.
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November 4, 2011—Gulfport, Mississippi. A federal judge sentenced Daniel Vashon Cantino, twenty-eight, to more than fifteen years in prison on meth and firearm convictions. Cantino threw a Glock 9mm pistol and 3.5 grams of meth out of his car on the day he was arrested.
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November 12, 2011—Lauderhill, Florida. Kristopher Bieger, thirty, a Lauderhill police officer, allegedly emptied his Glock pistol shooting at his ex-girlfriend, Officer Brittny Skinner, thirty-one, while she was sitting in her patrol car. Bieger pleaded not guilty to charges stemming from the incident, which followed Skinner's ending their relationship the week before. The patrol car's trunk, rear driver's side door, and window took most of the shots, although at least one bullet went through the patrol car seat, through Skinner's police uniform, and into her protective vest, police said.
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November 13, 2011—Spotsylvania, Virginia. A forty-five-year-old man with a CCW permit died after he accidentally shot himself with his 40 caliber Glock pistol. The man—whom authorities did not identify—was sitting in the front seat of his family's minivan in a shopping center parking lot. He apparently attempted to adjust the pistol he was carrying and inadvertently pulled the trigger. The single bullet struck him in the hip, and he bled to death in a matter of minutes.
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November 16, 2011—Mahopac, New York. Michael Boccardi, forty-seven, lay in wait and shot Michael Purdy, fifty-six, to death with a 40 caliber Glock pistol. Both men were separated from their wives. When Boccardi's wife dropped Purdy off at his house after their dinner together, Boccardi came out of his hiding place and fired several shots at Purdy, who was killed by a bullet to the head. Boccardi, a CCW permit holder, then committed suicide with his Glock pistol.
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November 24, 2011—Naples, Florida. Police arrested Royce Lee Davis, fifty, after he made “inflammatory” remarks at a family Thanksgiving gathering, dragged a family member outside by the shirt collar, and fired a 40 caliber Glock pistol into the air three times.
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December 6, 2011—Jourdanton, Texas. Joe Gonzalez, thirty-one, an instructor at a gym, was shot at work when John Luebano, forty, an employee at the gun shop next door, accidentally fired a 9mm Glock pistol he was unloading. The Bullet Hole gun store and Revolution Athletics are adjacent to each other in the strip mall. The bullet went through a common wall.
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December 9, 2011—Weleetka, Oklahoma. Oklahoma law enforcement authorities charged Kevin Sweat, twenty-five, in the June 2008 shooting murder of Taylor Dawn Paschal-Placker, thirteen, and Skyla Jade Whitaker, eleven. The girls were shot multiple times along the side of a rural road near Weleetka. Sweat, who was being held for another murder when the charges were filed, admitted to an investigator that he shot and killed the girls. He called the girls “monsters” and said he “panicked” when they came toward his car, so he grabbed his Glock 40 caliber handgun out of his glove box, shot them both multiple times, then grabbed a 22 caliber gun and shot them again. Sweat was implicated by means of ballistic evidence from the Glock pistol.
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December 10, 2011—Phoenix, Arizona. The
Arizona Republic
reported that Daniel Lee Good, forty-two, had been charged with second-degree murder after authorities re-investigated his wife's death in 2008, which had originally been ruled a suicide. Leslie
Good, forty-eight, had been shot in the chest with a 45 caliber Glock pistol.
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December 14, 2011—Sevierville, Tennessee. Corporal Chris Huskey, a veteran deputy with the Sevier County Sheriff's Department, was reported to be back at work after completing a firearms refresher course. Huskey was demonstrating a Glock pistol to Deputy Adam Bohanan at a convenience store on November 23 when the weapon discharged, firing a bullet through a computer monitor and the wall of a walk-in freezer, where it lodged in a pack of frozen bologna.
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December 16, 2011—Washington, D.C. William N. McCorkle and Andre Clinkscale Jr., both twenty-six, were each sentenced to more than a hundred years in prison on three counts of first-degree murder. The pair shot three men to death at a gas station in May 2008 after an argument. McCorkle was armed with a 9mm Glock pistol equipped with an extended magazine holding at least twenty-nine rounds of ammunition. Clinkscale also had a pistol. The two fired at least thirty-eight shots at the three men, who were hit seventeen times, eleven times, and nine times, respectively, for a total of thirty-seven wounds.
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December 25, 2011—Grapevine, Texas. Azizolah “Bob” Yazdanpanah, fifty-six, who was dressed as Santa Claus, shot six family members to death before killing himself. The victims included Yazdanpanah's estranged wife and two children, who lived in the apartment, and three in-laws. The family had been together to celebrate Christmas. Yazdanpanah used both a 40 caliber Glock pistol and a 9mm Smith & Wesson pistol to shoot his victims in the head.
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January 2, 2012—Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Raymond Earl Baker, thirty-five, allegedly shot Desiree Marie Harrell, forty-three, to death with a Glock 40 caliber pistol. Harrell was found slumped over the center console of a Buick Regal. She had been shot eight times. Police said Baker confessed to the killing.
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January 6, 2012—Evansville, Indiana. Two men were arrested after an early morning shooting inside a bar. The pair were
apprehended as they tried to flee in a pickup truck. A loaded Glock pistol was found on the driver, Kem Duerson Jr., thirty-three. Duerson was later charged with dealing cocaine and being a felon in possession of a firearm.
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January 10, 2012—Raleigh, North Carolina. Steven Neal Greenoe, thirty-seven, a former U.S. marine, was sentenced to ten years in prison for illegally trafficking dozens of handguns to the United Kingdom, including Glock pistols. Greenoe used his concealed-weapon permit to buy multiple guns at a time at various gun shops in North Carolina. He concealed them in his luggage to transport them to England, where he lived with his British wife. Investigators said the guns were sold to criminal gangs in England. British authorities linked a gun Greenoe purchased to a drive-by shooting in Manchester, England, in February 2011.
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January 24, 2012—Cranston, Rhode Island. Steven T. Smith, forty-four, allegedly pulled a Glock 45 caliber pistol out of his desk and threatened to shoot Michael Emerson, forty-six, a former employee who had returned to pick up his welding equipment. Smith was charged with felony assault.
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January 31, 2012—Allentown, Pennsylvania. Enrique Manuel Ortiz, twenty-five, was charged with shooting to death Hagos Mezgebo, an Ethiopian refugee and apparent stranger, on January 7, then threatening three women at gunpoint shortly after the shooting. When Ortiz was arrested during a vehicle stop on January 9, police found a 9mm Glock pistol under his seat. Heroin and cocaine were also found in the vehicle, and Ortiz was charged with several drug trafficking–related offenses.
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January 31, 2012—Madison, South Dakota. Carl V. Ericsson, seventy-three, allegedly shot to death Norman Johnson, a seventy-two-year-old retired high school English teacher, with a Glock pistol. According to police, Ericsson's motive was a fifty-year grudge he held against Johnson, a high school classmate. Ericsson allegedly knocked on Johnson's door, shot him twice in the face, and walked away, leaving the victim's wife to find the body in the doorway
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February 9, 2012—Portland, Oregon. The families of two women shot to death by an off-duty Clackamas County sheriff's sergeant filed an $8 million wrongful-death lawsuit, claiming that county authorities knew the officer was dangerously unstable and should have intervened. On Feb. 12, 2010, Sergeant Jeffrey A. Grahn confronted his estranged wife, Charlotte, and two of her friends, Victoria Schulmerich and Kathleen Hoffmeister, at the M&M Restaurant & Lounge in Gresham. After arguing with Charlotte Grahn, he grabbed her by her hair, pulled her outside, and shot her in the head with a Glock 40 caliber pistol. He returned to the bar and killed Schulmerich and Hoffmeister with shots to the head. He then went back outside and killed himself.
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February 22, 2012—Memphis, Tennessee. Chester Wrushen, thirty-three, and Jamiel Carpenter, thirty-two, admitted to police that they exchanged gunfire in Wrushen's front yard, but each claimed the other fired first. Carpenter's twelve-year-old son was in the car with him, along with a shotgun and a 40 caliber Glock pistol. Both men were arrested and charged with aggravated assault and reckless endangerment.
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February 24, 2012—New Haven, Connecticut. The city's Shooting Task Force arrested Gary Williams, twenty-four, who was wanted in a December 17, 2011, shooting in which two men were wounded. Police seized a 40 caliber Glock pistol and a Stag Arms assault rifle from Williams's home. Several 40 caliber shell casings were recovered at the scene of the December shooting.
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March 17, 2012—St. Petersburg, Florida. A nine-year-old boy shot his sixteen-year-old cousin in the hand and neck with a 45 caliber Glock pistol he found in the home. The elder child survived the wounds. Police also found an AK-47 assault rifle and an AR-15 assault rifle in the home. The guns, legally owned, were kept under the bed of the injured boy's father.
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March 20, 2012—Stamford, Connecticut. A fifty-seven-year-old woman narrowly escaped injury when a bullet fired during a shootout on the street penetrated her apartment. Investigators found a bullet, which had blasted through her air-conditioner
frame, under a sheet in her bed. One of the three guns used in the fracas, a 45 caliber Glock, was found in a nearby Dumpster.
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April 2, 2012—Petaluma, California. Proceedings began in the first-degree murder trial of Kenneth Doyle Mullennix, fifty-one, charged with firing a single shot from a Glock pistol into the right eye of his wife, Buapha Mullennix, thirty-seven, during an argument in the bedroom of their home in January 2010. Mullennix admitted he shot his wife, with whom he was angry because of an affair she was having. But he claimed she threatened him with the gun, and although he has no specifie recollection of shooting her, he contends that the gun must have gone off during a struggle. He was also charged with illegal possession of an SKS semiautomatic assault rifle.
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April 9, 2012—Washington, Indiana. Derek Franklin Williams, forty-nine, was sentenced to sixty-five years in prison for the murder of his wife, Kim, on February 4, 2011. Williams shot his wife twice in the head with a 40 caliber Glock pistol, then shot himself under the chin. He survived the injury. The couple's two children were in the home at the time of the shooting.
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Apr. 12, 2012—Erie, Pennsylvania. Rachel A. Kozloff, thirty, allegedly shot to death Michael Henry, thirty, with a 9mm Glock pistol she had recently bought. Henry died in his apartment of two gunshot wounds to the torso. Four shell casings were found in the apartment.
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April 24, 2012—Port Arthur, Texas. A three-year-old boy was shot by his twenty-two-month-old brother with the family's 9mm Glock pistol in front of their home. The gun had been left on the front seat of the family's truck, and the two children were playing in the front yard.
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