Shooting At Global Foods
By Greg L | 13 May 2008 | Crime | 40 Comments
Police are investigating a shooting that happened shortly before noon today in front of the Global Foods on Sudley Road in Prince William County. Articles in the MJM and Gainesville Times indicate that the perpetrator is an adult Hispanic male who drives a dark-colored SUV. The victim was transported to “an area hospital” and his condition is not yet known.
UPDATE: The Gainesville Times has additional information about the suspect in this case:
The suspect is described as a Hispanic male, approximately 5′3″ tall, has chipped front teeth, short cropped hair, and was wearing blue jeans, white sneakers, and an orange baseball hat. The suspect left the scene in a dark colored SUV.
The opinions expressed here are solely the views of the author, and not representative of the position of any organization, political party, doughnut shop, knitting guild, or waste recycling facility, but may be correctly attributed to the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. If anything in the above article has offended you, please click here to receive an immediate apology.
You can follow the discussion through the Comments feed. You can also pingback or trackback from your own site.
40 Comments
Leave a Reply
Views: 1151
Loading ...
Well, that would explain the two PWC Police cars I saw speeding down Sudley Manor Drive with lights flashing at about 12:05
I wonder what color SUV. If its burgundy, I know where they can interview potential suspects.
Does anyone know if the area schools were locked down?
Stonewall Middle was on lock down. I am sure WestGate Elem was too it’s even closer than SMS.(imho).. Possibly Mullen, Stonewall High, Sinclair, Sudley, and Ellis.
See my post on the subject, “me-n-u.” Government schools got the word; a teacher calling from the closest private school — Manassas Adventist Preparatory School — was told they were spraying for gypsy moths, and that there was no danger.
First of all James, I agree that ALL schools should be notified. I also think that you should get your story right. I read your post on your blog and it was not in Manaport Shopping center and it was not 1/2 mile away. It was in Festival Shopping Center and it is over a mile away. If you want to be taken seriously, get your facts right. But in the end, ALL schools must be on the call list.
Doug Mataconis said on 13 May 2008 at 4:29 pm:
Well, that would explain the two PWC Police cars I saw speeding down Sudley Manor Drive with lights flashing at about 12:05
That is a daily occurence.
Well, Peter, I got my information from a husband of one of the teachers, who was relying on what she was told by the police officer in question. I may have sacrificed accuracy for speed in getting out word of this outrage (I certainly am not intimately familiar with the details of the area in question). Clearly, the officer in question didn’t have all of his facts straight, either (probably understandably, in light of the nature of the emergency).
Isn’t Global/Festival a laborer/hangout for illegals?
What about home schoolers? Shouldn’t the police have a list of home schooled kids and their phone numbers and contact them also?
I think Mr. Young is correct. There are a number of private schools in the area that have a sizable population of school children. They should be warned as well as public schools. If the private school needs to make some arrangement for that to happen (like giving the police contact numbers) then they should do that.
Advocator,
I hope you joking.
Advocator,
I meant to say, “I hope you are joking.”
The ole fingers are not working well today.
Johnson said on 14 May 2008 at 9:55 am:
Isn’t Global/Festival a laborer/hangout for illegals?
Has been for many, many years.
I guess they’re just doing the work Americans won’t do, and enlightening us with their “culture”. Aren’t we lucky? I notice that there is NOTHING about this incident in the pro-illegal apologist WaPo. How curious.
It is my understanding that the schools went into ’shelter in place’ rather than a lockdown where all school activities cease.
Where do you draw the line on who to contact? Is there a central contact list? If you are a private school can you opt in or out? How about day care?
Here is a website parents and private schoolds can subscribe too for cell alerts or get FREE alerts through email. www.schoolsout.com. The listing covered the USA, including participating colleges.
Dolph, ’shelter in place’ is a type of lockdown.
Thats great information silverfox. I would have thought that the private schools administration would have known about something like that and made sure they were on the list. I think the administration was at fault as much as if not more than the police.
Yeah, cause Americans never shoot at each other. Ignorance at it’s finest.
Anonymous said on 14 May 2008 at 2:03 pm:
I guess they’re just doing the work Americans won’t do, and enlightening us with their “culture”. Aren’t we lucky? I notice that there is NOTHING about this incident in the pro-illegal apologist WaPo. How curious.
The way I see it, there were two problems with the police response to the MAPS situation. First, a perpetrator inclined to invade a school and initiate a hostage situation (the danger about which the government schools were warned) isn’t going to make a distinction between private and government schools; he’s simply looking for a target, defined as a large gathering of vulnerable individuals. A school — any school, particularly one where children are playing outside (yesterday was a beautiful day) — is an inviting target, which is my point. Therefore, all schools should be warned in such a circumstance. Probably day-care centers, too. And don’t tell me that the police don’t know where they are.
More disturbing, however, is the fact that, on a specific inquiry by a MAPS teacher, the first response of the police was to prevaricate, telling the school that there was no danger, and that the helicopters in the area were spraying for gypsy moths.
I am more troubled by the latter — a sin of commission — than the former, which was a sin of omission, perhaps an oversight. I wouldn’t say that heads should roll over the former, since it could have been a function of poor planning. The latter involves a specific decision to lie to someone seeking information upon which to make a decision. That should provoke severe consequences.
An update on the shooting - the victim is in stable condition and the police are still searching for the suspect and reviewing surveillance videos of the parking lot which show the suspect running from the scene. The article is at http://www.wmal.com/Article.asp?id=700456
Won’t SOMEONE think of the CHILDREN????????
The administrators of the school are the responsible party. And James, your previous mis-information leads me to not believe your information about what was told to the teacher at the school. You seem to stretch the truth to make it more dramatic but all you do is make yourself unreliable. In the end it is the responsibility of the administrators of the school to keep the children safe, scanners have been around for a long time. The school needs to take the initiative and not blame others.
luigirusty said on 14 May 2008 at 5:47 pm:
Yeah, cause Americans never shoot at each other. Ignorance at it’s finest.
List the last instance where a gringo shot another gringo outside of a supermarket in the area. PUT UP OR SHUT UP! Seven out of the last nine murders in this area were comitted by illegal aliens.
yeah stonewall high was not on lockdown
That afternoon there was a lot of activity in the sky over Manassas. There was a helicopter hovering for a long period of time over 28 near the area of the flooding. There was other air traffic related to the shooting as well as general small plane activity. It is the time that gypsy moth spraying is taking place and they to notify communications of the flight schedule due to the emergency calls because of the low flying. Geekies a week ago there was the crazy yellow spray plane freaking everyone out going down the road as he was skimming the trees and rolling everywhere in the skies.
That being said I can’t understand why the dispatcher didn’t put 2 and 2 together and give out the right information. There has got to be a way to notify private and public schools in an event of an emergency in the area. It is completely unacceptable that a private school can not receive updates just as the public school does. All of our children deserve the same protection!!
Time for inquiries to be made.
“Peter G.,” if you were a little more interested in common sense than in scoring points (wow, I had two minor facts wrong — the location of the shooting and the distance from the school— acting in reliance upon second-hand information, related to me by the outraged husband of one of the teachers) , you might be taken a little more seriously. I made mistakes. Wow! Then again, I have a full-time job, don’t live in Manassas, and have to rely upon information provided by others. I’m not a journalist, and don’t pretend to be.
Schools (public or private) don’t pay anyone to monitor police scanners. Only newspapers, and radio and television stations do so. That you suggest that schools do so is simply silly.
The important thing here is that a member in the public in a position to take a few security measures to protect children in a potentially dangerous situation was lied to by a government employee. You say that my rather minor errors “lead [you] to not believe [my] information about what was told to the teacher at the school.”
Believe it or not, as you see fit. Most people are sensible enough to know about the workings of government to have little doubt that it has the ring of veracity, and that I have known the lady who spoke to the officer and her husband for the better part of twenty years give me little doubt about its veracity.
James,
Did you read the post from “me”? I will believe it or not, as I see fit and I don’t believe you. Like I said before, ALL schools should be notified but if my kid was at a school that was not notified I would find out why and make the administration take steps to be sure they were notified next time. I would hope the school would take responsibility for the saftey of the people in the building. Losers place blame, winners do something about it.
Peter, as I’m sure that you’ve noticed, Jimmy is one of those people whose ego does not allow him to admit when he is wrong about anything…it’s always someone else’s fault (”wow, I had two minor facts wrong — the location of the shooting and the distance from the school— acting in reliance upon second-hand information, related to me by the outraged husband of one of the teachers”). You may also have noticed that, because he got the major information wrong, he considers the facts to have been minor (location and distance from the school minor??). I’m sure that you’ve run into this type of person before.
Very slick, “Peter G.”: you declare someone seeking to hold a public official responsible for his/her misdeed (lying to a citizen seeking the information upon which to act) as a “loser” for trying to “place blame.” And I’m the one frequently attacked here for “name-calling”?!?!?!
I guess, therefore, by your standard, that the entire criminal justice system — police; prosecutors; judges; juries — are “losers.” After all, all that they do is “place blame” for wrong-doing.
One might more logically suspect that “losers” seize on minor errors to evade the issue when they don’t want to be perceived as defending a logically untenable position.
And the untenable position which you seek desperately to evade is the fact that the MAPS administration did “take steps to be sure they were notified” ON THIS OCCASION. The school did attempt to “take responsibility for the safety of the people” at the school (children on a playground) when someone noticed an unusual number of helicopters in the area. My point (and I do have one) is that members of the public — including private-school administrators and teachers — are entitled to truthful information from the government upon which to base their decisionmaking. That’s one reason why we receive mailed notices about the County’s gypsy-moth spraying program with our water bills well in advance of that activity. Those “steps” were frustrated when the individual inquiring was lied to by a government employee. It shouldn’t have taken the EXTRA step of flagging down a police car. That officer is to be commended for giving truthful information when asked. An analogous situation — individuals fleeing from police — arose in my neighborhood a few weeks ago, and while I wouldn’t have expected some general alarm to individual residences, I certainly expected and received truthful information from one of the officers involved. Before I did so, I directed my sons to stay in an upstairs room in the house while I sought the information.
The alternative is imposing a lock-down whenever anything unusual is observed, and frequently disrupting the activities of the school needlessly.
“Me” is of course correct. I maintain that it’s important to make a distinction between the failure to notify — a procedural deficiency which can and should be corrected in the future — and the misrepresentation made upon the MAPS teacher’s inquiry, for the reasons and with the consequences stated above.
AW,
Don’t be too quick to critize Mr. Young on this. I’ve experienced two occasions when the dispatcher gave me incorrect information. In one instance when I called in a domestic fight (out in the front lawn) I was concerned when no police came. I called back the dispatcher (45 minutes later) because the combatants were still at it. The dispatcher told me that the police were busy. I said the persons involved were still outside fighting. Then I asked her if she expected me to break it up. She then said, “If you don’t mind.”
Next day I called the Captain to complain about it.
Sure fire way to get a quick response:
“OK officer, I’ll get my shotgun and put an end to this right now. Thanks for giving me the go-ahead on this.”
Then hang up. They’ll be there in thirty seconds.
“Lock-down” is the most idiotic response to an external threat.
Only force can defend against force, which is why folks call the police in these situations. If schools aren’t willing to train and certify teachers and administrators to use and deploy force in defense of their charges then your children will remain “soft targets” regardless of lock-down policy and any notification of nearby threat.
Schools in Israel had this lesson figured out 20+ years ago.
Don’t fall for “security theater.” Demand real security.
Greg, the only problem with your scenario is that they’ll be there to arrest YOU, because of Caller ID.
Patty, thanks for the support.
You have to understand that the [redacted] will take any opportunity to attack me, even when she is removing all doubt (you know the old saw, “Better to remain silent and though a fool than to speak up and remove all doubt”). It doesn’t matter whether I’ve satisfied any of her “standards,” because she has none. To the extent that she espouses any, they’re all of convenience, like any power-hungry political hack, to be discarded if no longer useful. Remember a few weeks ago, when Hitlary became the champion of gun owners and the faithful? Same principle at work.
Witness the contradiction: according to the [redacted], my “ego does not allow [me] to admit when [I am wrong about anything.” What does she quote to support this assertion? A quotation where I admit my error!?!?!
Witness her silence in the face of “Peter G.’s” name-calling. She has said in the past that she opposes it, yet engages in it herself and remains silent when others do it, so long as it is directed at the right target.
Witness her failure to recognize the difference between major and minor facts. She quibbles because I misidentified the shopping center (one in apparently close proximately to the site of the actual shooting) and the distance to the school (1/2 as opposed to a full mile). Now, I suppose that if I had identified the shopping center as Potomac Mills or Tysons Corner (what is that, 10 or 15 miles difference?), the [redacted] might have a point. The important facts are that: (1) there was a shooting; (2) it was in close proximity — a few minutes’ driving distance — to an unwarned school; and (3) the suspect remained at large.
‘Course, the bright side is, the [redacted] can print out and bring along a copy of her comment if she ever wants to get out of jury duty!
[Ed note: comment edited.]
I did call into MCPD a long while back and was told they were very busy. A bicycle stolen from my son was seen at Osborn High. I told the dispatcher that I was going over to the school (it was after regular school hours) wtih my 8mm and I would confront whomever got on the bike. By the time I got to the school lot a police cruiser was there.
My 8mm was the cam-corder I had at that time. But just the same it got the response I was looking for.
me-n-u,
Try telling that to a kid in PWC. You will quickly be corrected, as I was. There are different expectations with ’shelter in place’ and lockdown. I had to hear about it in full detail yesterday. I guess that is a good thing that someone listens at that age. For the record, I agreed with your assessment of matters until my attitude was adjusted.
James,
Looks like GL had to clean up your last post. Calm down, this is just a discussion, don’t lose your mind. I was making a statement about winners and losers, you can decide who goes in what catagory. If I have a problem I do something about it, I fix the problem. The school administration has to fix the problem.
Greg doesn’t like it when I respond in kind when the [redacted] decides to engage in name-calling, “Peter G.” It’s rather entertaining, actually, since he never bothers to “clean up” her belittling appellations. Draw your own conclusions about that double-standard.
Suffice it to say that I’m quite calm. I calmly respond with plain-speaking when people attempt by artifice and implication what might get them in trouble if plainly said. I hear that some think such “straight talk” (or pretensions to it) is popular in the GOP lately, though my impression is that it’s just an effort to couch closet Liberalism in media-acceptable terms, an effort to put lipstick on a pig, if you will.
In any case, my point is that you fail to recognize WHERE the problem lies: the MAPS administration didn’t get truthful information upon reasonable inquiry to the PWCPD. And that’s a problem that they lack the authority or ability to “fix.”
[Ed note: comment edited.]
James,
I disagree. If they plan ahead I am sure they can come together with the police dept. to have some sort of alert set up when necessary. As far as getting truthful information, how do the police know who was calling? Something needs to be set up ahead of time, just like calls to the media for school closings. The school needs to take the lead on this, the safety of the children is in their hands.
So it’s OK when government lies to you? Sorry, but we’ll have to agree to disagree on that one. Withholding facts for national security purposes (failure to reveal the extent of the disaster at Pearl Harbor comes to mind) is one thing; naked lies is another thing entirely.