Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Accidental Shooting of Woman who Looked like a Bird - Shooter Gets Probation




via Microdot from Boing Boing

A gentleman in Grand Junction, Colorado was put on probation after shooting a woman in the head. Apparently, he thought the woman was a red bird but really she just had a red mohawk. The woman, who did survive, "may have been passed out from intoxication prior to being shot" and that a bag of suspected meth was found near her, according to UPI. The man, Derrill Rockwell, 49, was ordered to pay $10,000 in restitution and put on five years probation.
Is that a gun-friendly response to what the guy did, or what? Probation for shooting someone by mistake while on the disqualified list?

What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.

3 comments:

  1. mikeb302000:

    It appears that they were even gunnerzfriendlier than we thought. This:

    "The District Attorney’s Office dismissed remaining charges, including tampering with evidence, reckless endangerment, disorderly conduct and false reporting. He was ordered to pay more than $10,000 in restitution.

    Rockwell initially misled the investigation, authorities said. Conley told the judge that Rockwell offered a wet towel for the woman’s head injury and drove her to the emergency room at St. Mary’s Hospital after the shooting, leaving his name and phone number with doctors.

    “She got out of the truck on her own accord,” Conley told the judge.

    Rockwell told a nurse he heard noises outside his home, went outside and found a woman bleeding from the head. Conley said Rockwell later explained he went home, gathered the rifle and drove to the Redlands Roller Dam, where he tossed the weapon into the Colorado River.

    Six days after the shooting, Rockwell told another story to police detectives, acknowledging he fired the weapon after confusing the woman’s red mohawk hairstyle for a distant bird.

    Stephan Schweissing, Rockwell’s attorney, said Rockwell’s interview with police Oct. 11 went against his advice to his client. Had Rockwell not voluntarily spoken with detectives, he likely wouldn’t have been charged by the District Attorney’s Office in the matter, Schweissing said.

    “He just couldn’t live with himself, knowing what he knew,” the attorney said."

    from here (http://www.gjsentinel.com/news/articles/shooter-mistakes-mohawk-for-fowl-runs-afoul-of-the).

    And, of course, we have the cherry on top of the "Stupident Sundae":

    "This was a tragic accident, and I’m truly sorry,” he told the judge.".

    Six days from his initial interview he goes to the cops, victim doesn't show up in court? Call me a cynic, I'm seeing a quid pro quo.

    It's just a damned good thing that he shot her with a piddlin' li'l ol' .22 caliber rifle (I do hope the stupids from the media are right and that he wasn't using a carbine), 'cuz it's hard to kill somebody with a li'l ol' .22.

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  2. You missed the fact that the man has a burglary conviction from 1995, so he is a prohibited person. He does strike me as something of a simpleton. It may be that a drug test was in order. Chalk this one up to crazy things happen.

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  3. 'You missed the fact that the man has a burglary conviction from 1995, so he is a prohibited person. He does strike me as something of a simpleton. It may be that a drug test was in order. Chalk this one up to crazy things happen."

    Yep, just another statistically insignificant outlier in Greg Camp's Gunzworld.

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