Grief

[Jim Page]

(01-11-2013 03:20 AM)My Name Is Kate Wrote:  Why is it that eyewitness accounts of a second (and even third or fourth shooter) in some of these "lone gunman" mass shootings, is not mentioned in mainstream news, beyond an initial mention immediately after the event?

Kate, my guess would be that in the immediate aftermath of an unexpected event, folks are desperate to communicate and on the edge of panic. The additional shooters are phantoms.

When 9/11 occurred, I was working in an office building two blocks from the White House. Our building was evacuated after the Pentagon was hit by an airplane. As we walked out onto the sidewalk of K Street, a fine white ash was in the air. I bet 20 people I spoke with, including police, told me that an airplane had crashed into the mall in front of the White House. Some said they had seen the smoking crater.

On the way home, I heard WTOP repeatedly tell listeners that the State Department had been damaged by a car bomb. All of this was panicky nonsense.

When JFK was murdered, I was told by our school bus driver on the way home from school that Richard Nixon, former vice president, had been killed in Dallas by a hand grenade. Nixon had been in Dallas that morning, but I bet he never realized that he'd been killed by a hand grenade.

It's like my cousin who knowingly said that he wasn't bothering to vote in the presidential election because it was a little-known fact that Romney owned all the voting machines and he'd steal the election that way. People want to say something astonishing, I guess.

--Jim