Gary man kills 4 relatives, self

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

http://www.indystar.com/print/articles/0/078476-3630-093.html

A Gary man with a history of mental illness fatally shot four family members, including his 2-year-old nephew, then killed himself early today, police said. The suspected gunman's 82-year-old grandmother survived the shooting and was able to call police.

The shooting happened at 5:30 a.m. in the living room of the home the extended family shared on the city's westside. Terry Lee Dennie, 20, who had been estranged from the family and was living on the street, knocked on the door of the home at 3:30 a.m. and was let in by his sister Ladanna Dennie, 18, said Lake County Coroner David J. Pastrick.

With the television still on and the other family members sleeping Terry Dennie began shooting his relatives one by one with a 9mm semi-automatic handgun, Pastrick said. Terry Dennie's mother, Angela Walton-Scruggs, 41, was shot once in the head, as was his brother, Darion L. Dennie, 17.

When the shooting started, Ladanna Dennie shielded her 2-year-old son, Isaiah Dennie, to protect him, Pastrick said. Dennie shot Ladanna five times, some of the bullets hurling through her back, Patrick said. The toddler, beneath her, was struck multiple times.

"For whatever reason, he was intent on getting the baby," Patrick said
<snip>

A sad statement on the ready/easy availability of guns and the price of putting more mentally ill people on the street.

[Loyal]

1. Don't turn a tragedy like this

into a gun control/gun rights thread, please. It's a sad event, for sure, but don't turn it into that. Exploiting a tragedy for political gain isn't right.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

2. Actually, there were two points that are shoved in one's face by this

tragedy. Our treatment of the mentally ill as well. It's an event that makes me question our society's judgement in the way these problems are addressed. They are political questions and this is a political forum. The deaths of 8000 Iraqi civilians are a tragedy as well. Do you disdain our discussing them as a political vehicle?

You're right. It IS a tragedy. I don't feel that the discussion of causes is wrong. I feel it is something that should be discussed in the hopes of bringing awareness and hopefully a better understanding of the causes of this horrendous event.

Peace

[billbuckhead]

3. Political gain? How about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?

America's wacky promiscuous gun culture is nothing less than domestic terrorism perpetrated by the gun lobby and it's rightwing friends.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

4. We live in a country where parenting is secondary to work and jails

are the major housing benefit for the mentally ill rolled into a society that glorifies war and killing. Pour guns into the mix and what can we expect. Unfortunately, it seems most of the responsible gun owners have moved to Canada.

[okieinpain]

5. guns, knifes, bats, pipes, he would have found something

to do the job. I was watching the news a couple of days ago and they were talking about the two kids that killed those professors. the reporter said that the kids had planned on killing someone else earlier but were scared off because the occupant of the house they went to had a gun.

so there you go, it's still better to have one and not need it, then to need one and not have it. I'm not crazy about gun's but they are not really the problem, they just make the problem bigger.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

7. Yeah. Like the 4 year old boy that killed his 5 year old

sister and wounded his seven year old brother. I'm sure if he couldn't find a gun, he'd have grabbed a club and had at them.

Anguish, Questions In Killing By Boy, 4
Sister, 5, Shot Dead; Brother, 7, Wounded
By Cheryl W. Thompson and Ian Shapira
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, September 29, 2003; Page A01


By the time police arrived, the 4-year-old boy had put down the .45-caliber semiautomatic handgun and was standing in the doorway crying.

"He kept asking if everybody was okay," said Cpl. Diane Richardson, a Prince George's County police spokeswoman.

Outside the Palmer Park rambler, his 5-year-old sister, Kimberly, lay dying from the single gunshot that the boy had fired through the red, wood door. His 7-year-old brother, Gregory Thigpen Jr., was critically injured with a bullet wound to the back. And his 10-year-old sister, Katina Brice, who was left to watch the children while her parents were out, was yelling for help.

A day after Saturday's tragic shooting, Prince George's police were trying to trace the handgun and determine how a 4-year-old had gotten hold of it. They said yesterday that charges could be filed against the parents or others who had left the weapon within his reach.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14945-2003Sep28.html

<snip>
Naw, our gun laws are just fine.

[DoNotRefill]

13. What would you suggest?

Please keep in mind the following: It's already illegal for the mentally ill to possess firearms (federal law). It's also illegal for a person ACCUSED of being violent to a family member to have a gun (no conviction required, also federal law).

In the case of the 4 year old, it's already illegal to give a 4 year old unsupervised access to a gun (state law).

What's your solution? Make it Double Secret Illegal?

There are all kinds of laws on the books regarding guns. Obviously, laws can only go so far towards preventing tragedy. Some things that MIGHT work are education programs (teaching kids if they find a gun not to touch it, and to tell an adult) and addressing some of the societal issues that are the cause of the violence.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

16. It's pretty obvious that these laws are ineffective. This stuff happens

way too often. What I would suggest is that we draft serious legislation that has not been influenced by an arm of the weapons manufacturers whose product is being regulated.

And there's the societal question. The last three generations have been raised to consider the gun as a problem solver rather than a weapon. Hell, just look at the neocon's belief that if we took our big guns to Iraq and killed enough of the Iraqis, they would fall in line and believe as we do.

Didn't happen.

Isn't going to happen.

I guess another possibility would be get all handguns and assault weapons off the street. I know, you can't protect your family with a shotgun... Or you feel that happiness is a warm gun?

Or how are you going to protect yourself from a government gone mad or an invasion... The Iraqis are a well armed people. Look how well they are doing against an occupying U.S. force.

Maybe the comic Chris Rock has the answer. Keep guns legal. Just charge $10,000.00 a bullet. It might make someone think twice before pulling the trigger.

[DoNotRefill]

18. It's kind of hard...

to carry a shotgun on your belt, isn't it? And yes, I carry a concealed handgun every day that I leave the house (I'm in a high-risk occupation, and am duly licensed). I don't need it often, but having it has saved my ass several times. You never need a handgun until you need it very badly.

Guns aren't a problem-solver, they're a last-ditch means of self defense, when everything else fails.

I'm curious....if the Democratic Party adopted as part of their platform the banning of all handguns and "assault weapons" (a misnomer if ever there was one), do you really think we'd be able to elect so much as a local dog-catcher, much less take back control of the federal government? I doubt it.

"Or how are you going to protect yourself from a government gone mad or an invasion... The Iraqis are a well armed people. Look how well they are doing against an occupying U.S. force."

Ummm....maybe you haven't been keeping up with the news, friend, but the Iraqi people have been invaded by the best military on the planet. Organized resistance was quickly crushed. Bush declared "mission accomplished". And the Iraqi people (with their guns) have killed more US military since then than the Iraqi military did "during the war". In fact, it looks like we're going to be tied down there for at LEAST the next decade. The term "quagmire" has been used. Remember the American Revolution? The rebels lost the large majority of the battles, but still won the war. The two big rebel victories were Saratoga (resulting in additional supplies and French support) and Yorktown (where Cornwallis was finally trapped...not defeated militarily, but trapped). The Iraqis can keep fighting, and they only have to win once, while the occupying force has to win every time, while not taking casualties, to keep public opinion over here going for them. If we've made Iraq so "safe for democracy", why are all the troops over there still there, getting shot at?

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

20. You can sling a shotgun over your shoulder...

Of course it isn't much of a fashion statement.

And you're probably right about Dems taking a stance on Gun Control. There are more gun nuts in America than people who would like to see fewer guns in the hands of every Tom, Dick and Harry. I'm a minority. I can live with it.

As to the Iraqi question... There have been over 9000 Iraqi casualties to 300 American casualties. 600 to 1. And this is at a place where grenades were available for a quarter a piece in the markets of Baghdad at the beginning of the occupation.

I doubt seriously that the Iraqis will run America out before American opinion does.

All the people masturbating in front of reruns of Red Dawn and Invasion USA need to stop a minute and think about the victims of this last spate of insane shootings and possibly wonder that just because they aren't the type to abuse firearm ownership that there are just too many fucked up Americans that don't have a clue. Too many people that are going to get drunk this weekend and bust a cap in the ass of a buddy over a football game, the man or woman who gets his /her button pushed at the wrong moment and shoots his wife.

THESE ARE THE PEOPLE DYING FOR YOUR RIGHT TO CARRY A GUN. Bet you don't send them flowers.

[DoNotRefill]

21. And in Viet Nam...

"I doubt seriously that the Iraqis will run America out before American opinion does."

the North lost a million soldiers to our 50,000 dead. They still won, in case you forgot. We won the battles, they won the war. Meanwhile, how long did we have occupation troops in Germany after WWII? Where was the public uproar over that? Oh, yeah...I forgot, US troops weren't getting wasted every day there...

Slinging a shotgun isn't an option for me, not just because of it's bulk.

"All the people masturbating in front of reruns of Red Dawn and Invasion USA need to stop a minute and think about the victims of this last spate of insane shootings and possibly wonder that just because they aren't the type to abuse firearm ownership that there are just too many fucked up Americans that don't have a clue. Too many people that are going to get drunk this weekend and bust a cap in the ass of a buddy over a football game, the man or woman who gets his /her button pushed at the wrong moment and shoots his wife.

THESE ARE THE PEOPLE DYING FOR YOUR RIGHT TO CARRY A GUN. Bet you don't send them flowers."

People die. They die for all kinds of reasons, and in all kinds of ways. When those 4 little girls got blown up in the church in Birmingham, why didn't the Civil Rights movement stop what they were doing? BECAUSE YOU DON'T GIVE UP ON CIVIL RIGHTS BECAUSE OF STUPIDITY, NO MATTER WHAT THE COST. And yes, the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is a CIVIL LIBERTY, no matter how much you say it isn't.

Punish people who abuse Civil Liberties. Don't try to take them away from the people who don't. If somebody yells "FIRE!" falsely in a crowded theater, you punish the person who yells, you don't place prior restraint on all speech or ban books about fire. How difficult is that to understand?

[TAH6988]

14. Where the

HELL was his mother and/or father? Seems like THEY are the guilty party here. We already have laws against parents leaving their children unattended and leaving guns within the reach of children. It's the dumbass, irresponsible parents who caused this tradegy.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

17. If we keep jailing people for stupidity, there won't be enough

people left to pay for the prisons. Hell, we're getting there already.

Tommy Chong goes to jail for selling bongs. I doubt the guy who sold the gun to the Gary man will ever be found muchless do time.

[lebkuchen]

6. It's horribly sad and tragic

like the 4 y.o. who shot two siblings the other day.

The entire US of A is sad and tragic, which is why I refuse to live there anymore, or even visit.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

8. I just posted a link to a follow up on the story ... WP

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14945-2003Sep28.html

[CO Liberal]

9. We See Far Too Many Stories Like This

Something needs to be done about the way we treat the mentally ill AND our attitudes about guns.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

10. Just as sad, you'll have the Repugs and gun rights people

suggesting they prosecute as an adult.

An exageration, I know, but it seems to be their answer to the problem.

[CO Liberal]

11. There's No One To Prosecute

The gunman killed himself.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

12. I was refering to the four year old we were discussing above in

a kind of side thread. Should have made myself clearer on that, I can see how you wondered about it.

[TAH6988]

15. They should

prosecute the parents. Without doubt.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

19. What would it accomplish?