5 killed by Texas escapee died from gunshot and stab wounds
June 9, 2022
CENTERVILLE, Texas (AP) — A Texas grandfather and his four grandsons killed by a prison escapee died from gunshots, sharp force injuries and stab wounds, a medical examiner’s report said.
Convicted murderer Gonzalo Lopez escaped from a prison transport bus last month and is accused of killing Mark Collins, 66, and his four grandsons, who ranged in age from 11 to 18, authorities said.
Authorities believe Lopez attacked the family at their ranch near Centerville, about 115 miles south of Dallas, then stole their truck and drove it more than 200 miles before he was shot to death by police.
A medical examiner’s report released Thursday by a Leon County justice of the peace said Collins and his 18-year-old grandson, Waylon Collins, died from gunshot wounds and sharp force injuries.
The three younger grandsons — 16-year-old Carson Collins, 11-year-old Hudson Collins, and 11-year-old Bryson Collins — died from gunshots and stab wounds.
Police in Uvalde, Texas, face a barrage of criticism for delays in confronting the shooter who slaughtered children and teachers last week. Officials admit law enforcers screwed up; worse, they impeded parents who wanted to intervene, leaving the crime to be ended by agents who ignored police orders. As politicians rush to leverage tragedy to advance legislative agendas, we’re reminded again that it’s foolish to place our trust in authority or to surrender our ability to protect ourselves and our loved ones.
“From the benefit of hindsight, where I’m sitting now, of course it was not the right decision,” Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, admitted of police choosing to wait for backup and equipment before intervening in a massacre that took the lives of 19 schoolchildren and two teachers. “It was the wrong decision, period. There’s no excuse for that.”
That decision delayed the response for over an hour. Finally, a Border Patrol team that drove 40 miles to the scene defied orders and stopped the shooter’s rampage.
“Federal agents who went to Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday to confront a gunman who killed 19 children were told by local police to wait and not enter the school — and then decided after about half an hour to ignore that initial guidance and find the shooter,” noted NBC News.
The feds weren’t the only ones willing to intervene. Instead of taking on Ramos, local police tackled, pepper-sprayed, and handcuffed parents rather than allow them to take action at which officers balked.
“The police were doing nothing,” said Angeli Rose Gomez who was briefly arrested for challenging official indecision.
“Once freed from her cuffs, Ms. Gomez made her distance from the crowd, jumped the school fence, and ran inside to grab her two children,” reported The Wall Street Journal. “She sprinted out of the school with them.”
This isn’t the first time police faced criticism for dithering in response to danger. By the time officers entered Colorado’s Columbine High School in in 1999, 47 minutes had passed allowing the shooters to do their worst before killing themselves. Columbine was supposed to spur changes in police policy, but that wasn’t apparent during a 2018 incident at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida.
“Information reported over 10 months by the South Florida Sun Sentinel reveals 58 minutes of chaos on campus marked by no one taking charge, deputies dawdling, false information spreading, communications paralyzed and children stranded with nowhere to hide,” that newspaper concluded.
Our discourse over law enforcement in recent years can be characterized as a debate between people who vilify cops and those who sanctify them. They’re either racist thugs or a thin blue line standing against barbarism. The crimes of Derek Chauvin and his buddies as well as the heroism of the federal agents who raced to Uvalde shows that both breeds exist. But the majority of officers are regular people working a unionized public-sector job. Like most of us, they go through their days and collect their pay.
“Cops are civilians with guns who have had minimal training,” Eugene O’Donnell, a law professor with John Jay College of Criminal Justice and former police officer told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. “Some of them are heroic. But not all. You’re asking for Zeus-like cops to speed to these scenes and be ready to put down mass killers. And cops are being told to stay out of trouble by the courts, the media, the culture. That’s their alpha and their omega.”
Angeli Rose Gomez’s children gave her a personal stake, which is why she was willing to run into Robb Elementary School; other parents scuffled with police for the opportunity to do the same. An unidentified woman in Charleston, West Virginia, also had skin in the game (her own) when she drew a concealed pistol and put down a man who opened fire on a crowd a day after the Uvalde massacre, preventing the death of anybody other than the attacker. Most officers don’t have personal stakes in the incidents to which they respond, and it’s asking a lot to expect them to put their lives on the line for strangers. They don’t even have a legal obligation to protect us.
“Nothing in the language of the Due Process Clause itself requires the State to protect the life, liberty, and property of its citizens against invasion by private actors,” then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote for the majority in DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services (1989).
So, we’d be foolish to surrender our right to defend ourselves and our loved ones, as many politicians demand, in hope that public employees with no stake in the situation and families waiting at home will take up the slack. No law or hollow promise relying on the limitations of human beings in public sector jobs can replace the attachments we have to our children, spouses, friends, and our own lives.
Politicians also vow to fortify schools against attack with fencing, metal detectors, and armed guards. The approach hardens targets, but it confines children in something like prison camps. It also leaves those within the perimeter at risk if it’s breached. Then-Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble wrestled with that dilemma after a 2013 terrorist attack at the Westgate mall in Nairobi, Kenya.
“Noble said there are really only two choices for protecting open societies from attacks like the one on Westgate mall where so-called ‘soft targets’ are hit: either create secure perimeters around the locations or allow civilians to carry their own guns to protect themselves,” ABC News reported at the time. Noble seemed to favor armed civilians since that allows for dynamic responses to unpredictable situations—assuming police don’t tackle enraged parents trying to protect their children.
Based on the seemingly inevitable trail of threats, manifestos, and bad behavior left behind by Ramos and his ilk, some pundits advocate intensified scrutiny of potentially troubling messages. “The answer is obvious,” insists Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. at The Wall Street Journal. “Surveillance powered by big data, whose advancing role in our world seems unstoppable in any case.”
But, as economist Arnold Kling points out, a lot of people say troubling, violent, and extremist things, but very few actually do anything to endanger others.
“For surveillance to work, you have to be willing to see thousands of people tracked for every one who actually attempts murder,” Kling cautions. “And you will have to intervene every time the surveillance algorithm reveals a potential for the person to become violent.”
We would end up with a Big-Brother state staffed by risk-averse bureaucrats. They would live in dread of missing a dangerous person, and the threshold would drop whenever somebody slipped through.
The truth is that proposals for a prison society of disarmed and surveilled subjects shepherded by public employees are unworkable. The state can’t defend us from danger, and nothing obligates us to pretend otherwise.
If you want to protect yourself and your loved ones, you have to do it yourself.
We train you to defend your life against an armed assailant and survive.
In-Gauge of Polk County conducting armed assailant defense training classes.
These are not your ordinary concealed carry classes.
These classes train you to defend your life and the lives of your loved ones.
There is more to owning and using a gun than just knowing how to pull a trigger.
We train you to defend your life against an armed assailant or assailants. Yes, we train you how to engage multiple assailants and survive. Survive to live your life with family and friends.
All classes meet and exceed the State of Florida’s training requirement for applying for a Florida concealed carry license recognized in 37 states.
Visit our website or contact us for training opportunities.
Our graduates are trained to engage an armed assailant and survive to go home and have dinner with their families.
Saturday we graduated another class of advanced, concealed carry guardians. They did not complete just another “concealed carry’ class, like those conducted at gun shows, gun shops or in rented hotel rooms. They completed over 15 hours of advanced, tactical, handgun training. You read that correctly, over 15 hours.
These advanced, trained graduates will have your back while you are shopping, fueling your vehicle or attending church services.Rest assured, there are trained people out there carrying concealed firearms among you. They may be far and few between, but they are there.
We make every effort to train as many people as possible. But, we can only train those who register to be qualified to carry a deadly weapon in public.
We don’t want to train everyone who wants a concealed carry license. We only want to train those who are serious about learning how to defend their lives and the lives of their loved ones.
Othersconduct classes to qualify people to apply for a concealed carry license. We conduct classes to not only to qualify people to apply for a concealed carrry license, we qualify people to carry a deadly weapon in public.
If your concealed carry class did not look like the photos above, you may want to contact us for real, concealed carry, firearms training.
Just four months into 2022, Transportation Security Administration officers in Florida have already stopped nearly 200 guns from being taken onto flights.
Apr 13, 2022 – TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA)
TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — Just four months into 2022, Transportation Security Administration officers in Florida have already stopped nearly 200 guns from being taken onto flights. From Tampa to Jacksonville, passengers keep trying to bring guns with them on planes.
One can legally transport a firearm and ammunition on a commercial airliner, but it must be done in accordance to the law. To learn how, take a bonified concealed carry class conducted by In-Gauge of Polk County, because no other class is going to tell you.
Multiple laws since 1961 have adjusted or changed the restrictions for carrying a firearm or other weapon on a flight. Current law prevents guns from being carried on. Firearms are only allowed in checked baggage, according to TSA, and must be properly packed and declared during check-in.
‘No Floridian will be restricted’: DeSantis makes promises about COVID Properly packed, in this case, means unloaded and locked in a hard-sided case.
“Whether or not they had nefarious intent, accidents happen and tragedies could result,” said TSA spokesperson Sari Koshetz. “This dangerous trend continues across Florida and across the country. Know exactly where your gun is before you enter the airport and make sure that it is not in your backpack, purse, computer bag or suitcase that you plan to bring into the security checkpoint.”
So far in 2022, and only halfway into the month of April, TSA officers have already seized 195 guns from passengers at Florida airports. Some passengers carried multiple guns on them, others not only had guns, but rounds chambered. Neither option is legal.
Here’s how those some of those seizures break down in Florida’s airports, according to TSA:
Orlando International (MCO): 40 guns Ft. Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL): 36 guns Tampa International (TPA): 26 guns Miami International (MIA): 19 guns Jacksonville International (JAX): 17 guns
According to officials, “passengers face a civil penalty from the TSA that can reach as much as $13,910 and that is imposed regardless of whether the individual is arrested” by law enforcement officers or agents. Passengers with TSA PreCheck membership also lose their privileges, sometimes permanently.
A TSA release on the guns at Florida airports said that was the case with one passenger at FLL.
“On Monday a man carrying a Beretta into Ft. Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport was intercepted by the TSA and while he was not arrested, he will lose his TSA PreCheck privileges and he faces a fine that could exceed $13,000,” TSA said.
Home invasion victim sexually assaulted while on phone with 911 operator, waiting for officers to arrive.
A California women was sexually assaulted, while on the phone with the 911 operator, waiting for law enforcement officers to arrive, responding to a call of a home invasion. Police response time: 7 minutes.
Following the assault, the woman was held hostage, with a gun pointed to her head, while on-scene officers negotiated with her assailant.
The suspect, Demetrius Trussell, was charged in San Diego Superior Court with 18 felonies.
Continuing to repeat the same errors expecting a differnt result can be a very expensive proposition at today’s ammunition prices.
Click Here and Enter the code word: ANSWERS (all CAPS) for a description of the errors.
We have recently seen the above photo appearing on Facebook, by a firearm training provider. The sad thing is, they are using it to promote their hundgun training classes.
If you cannot detect the errors appearing in the above photo, maybe you should consider taking an NRA firearms training class.
If you feel you can afford the price of ammunition and continue making the same mistakes attempting to improve your shooting performance, than disregard the errors pointed out in the photo above.
If you want to learn how to dramatically improve your shooting performance in one session, contact us for NRA firearms training. Its more than just training taught by an NRA instructor.
The cost of one box of ammunition will pay for the cost of one class that will improve your skills beyond your expectations.
Continuing to repeat the same errors expecting a differnt result can be a very expensive proposition at today’s ammunition prices.
Belleview teens were shooting each other while wearing armored vest when boy killed
Apr 8, 2022 : WESH 2 – Kelsi Thorud
BELLEVIEW, Fla. — Two teenagers have been arrested after a 16-year-old was shot and killed in Belleview Sunday.
According to police, the shooting happened inside a mobile home in the Gateway Homes of Belleview mobile home park along SE 52ND Court around 7 p.m. They found the victim, 16-year-old Christopher Leroy Broad Jr. suffering from a gunshot wound. He was taken to the hospital where he died.
Over the past few days, investigators have determined that another teen, 17, and Broad, were taking turns shooting at each other while wearing a body armor style vest.
“I saw a teenage boy come outside all hysterical screaming,” said Joe Vanhouten.
Vanhouten is an Army veteran who lives next door. He saw the immediate aftermath of the shooting.
“I was always taught from a young age you never play with guns,” he said.
According to arrest affidavits, three teenage friends, including Broad, lived at the home with one of their fathers. On the day of the shooting, they had a couple more friends over to hang out.
The lead detective discovered that one of the teens recorded Snapchat videos of the shooting. He said one of the videos first shows Broad shooting at one of the others who was wearing a “tan plate carrier style vest.” Another video shows how they took turns and Broad was shot at next five times by a 9 mm handgun.
“It seems weird to me that they would have a body armor vest. Why would you have one?” said Vanhouten.
According to the arrest affidavit, one of the teens told police they have shot at the vest before and no bullets went through it. The report also states the alleged shooter said one of his shots struck Broad in an area not covered by the vest. The medical examiner said he died of a single gunshot wound to the chest.
“A sad deal that teenage boys being I guess being teenagers, not realizing the possible consequences of what they were doing,” said Vanhouten.
Police now have the gun after serving a search warrant on the home. According to the arrest affidavit, the alleged shooter told police the gun belongs to his father who leaves it at home for protection.
“It’s just a sad story all the way around,” said Vanhouten.
Police say the 17-year-old who allegedly shot and killed Broad is now charged with aggravated manslaughter of a child with a firearm.
Another teen, also 17, is charged with providing false information to law enforcement.
Police say that teen was interviewed as a witness to the shooting and misled officers about what took place by blaming the shooting on other people like the other friends at the home and telling the 911 dispatcher that the house was shot by unknown suspects.
WESH 2 is not identifying the teens until they have been formally charged as adults.
WESH 2 tried calling the alleged shooter’s family, but they are not accepting calls. They also did not comment when we visited the neighborhood.
Authorities want everyone to know that guns should never be used this way.
“I’m sure these kids never envisioned that a death was going to occur as a result of their behavior,” Dr. David Thomas, a forensics professor at Florida Gulf Coast University, said.
Thomas said many people don’t understand armored vests.
“The biggest misnomer is that they’re bullet proof because they’re not. They’re ballistic vests and they’re rated on scales of what type of bullet they’ll stop,” Thomas said.
Thomas says even a police officer wearing the best vest wouldn’t want to get shot in it.
“That trauma is ungodly, what the body goes through,” Thomas said.
According to the police report in this case, the alleged shooter said one of his shots hit Christopher in an area not covered by the vest.
Thomas told WESH 2 News, sadly, he thinks a lot of teens don’t understand just how dangerous guns are.
“If you don’t know anything about the gun, if you don’t know anything about the equipment, just leave it alone. Stay safe and leave it alone because it’s not something to play with,” Thomas said.
“I’m proud of our homeowner for defending himself,”
“I’m proud of our homeowner for defending himself,” Judd added. “It’s called a ‘Castle Doctrine.’ He has the right to protect himself and his home from unknown intruders.”
“He had a gun, he knew how to use it, it was loaded, and he shot him a lot,” Judd said. “He gave him an early Christmas present. Only Santa Claus gets to come in your house — and Santa Claus is invited.”
According to police, the homeowner says an intruder tossed a flower pot through the glass French doors of the home in an attempt to gain entry from the back porch. The homeowner then shot the intruder three times.
Police arrived on the scene and found 42-year-old Steven Stillwell shot on the living room floor. Stillwell was rushed to the hospital and was in critical, but stable condition.
A shotgun belonging to Stillwell was found laying on the ground in the backyard of the home.
According to PCSO, the suspect has an extensive arrest history, with 14 felonies and five misdemeanors, including multiple burglaries and larcenies, DUI, drug possession, dealing in stolen property, fraud, possession of drug paraphernalia, and possession of a weapon/ammunition by a convicted felon. He also has 11 re-arrest charges, with multiple violations of probation.
Yes, the shelves are empty. Yes, backorders are the norm. Yes, prices have skyrocketed since May 2020. However, there is a solution. Slow down and control your fire.
Although not to this degree, ammunition shortages have occured before.
2008 – 2010 – The 2008 election of President Barack Obama triggered increased sales of both firearms and ammunition. USA Today
December 2012 – 2016 – In December 2012, a new wave of panic buying was driven by the perceived likelihood of new firearm control laws being passed by Congress and state governments in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
Curently, ammuniton can be found readily available online, on certain websites and at gun shows. But, at what price? The ammunition being sold online by private vendors and at gun shows is either old stock that has been setting on the floor in the back of someone’s closet or has been purchased in bulk from and gun shop or other retail outlet and marked up 2, 3 or 4 times the purchase price.
Recommendation
Slow down and control your fire!Refuse to pay the inflated prices, demanded by entrepreneurial, kitchen table scalpers selling on the Internet and at gun shows. Buy only what ammunition you currently need from legitimate retail outlets or gun clubs.
On the manufacturing front
Ammunition is being manufactured at a pace not seen since World War II.
Official statement from Jason Vanderbrink, president Federal / CCI / Speer / Remington Ammunition . . .
The bottom line: Buy only the ammuniton you need to keep up your skills and a little extra for any unexpected developments, and only buy from legitamate retail vendors. Starve out the scalpers. Be patient, ammunition will once again become readily available and the prices will come down.
