Eight killed in North Carolina nursing home rampage
Carthage, NC
March 29, 2009
(CNN) -- An armed man shot and killed seven patients and a nurse at a Carthage, North Carolina, nursing home Sunday morning before being wounded during a shootout with a police officer, authorities said.
Three other people, including the police officer and a visitor to the nursing home, were wounded in the attack, Carthage Police Chief Chris McKenzie said. The police officer was treated and released, McKenzie said.
The slain patients ranged in age from 78 to 98, Moore County District Attorney Maureen Krueger said. The man accused of carrying out the attack, 45-year-old Robert Stewart, was in custody, and his condition was unknown Sunday night, McKenzie said.
Stewart was not an employee of the nursing home -- the Pinelake Health and Rehab Center -- and he did not appear to have been related to any of the patients, she said.
"There is still more to be uncovered as far as his purpose in being there," she said.
A witness told CNN affiliate WRAL that Stewart was armed with a rifle, a shotgun and other weapons. The officer who stopped him, Justin Garner, "acted in nothing short of a heroic manner" and probably prevented the carnage from being worse, Krueger said.
Stewart faces eight counts of first-degree murder and one count of felony assault on a police officer, and other charges are pending, she said
Carthage is about 60 miles southwest of Raleigh.
Sunday's killings were the latest in a series of high-profile but apparently unrelated rampages in March, including the killings of 10 people by an Alabama man who was then killed by police. At a southern Illinois church, a man shot and killed the pastor and stabbed two parishioners...
In Carthage, crisis counselors were setting up in the town's First Baptist Church to aid survivors of the latest killings.
"I don't know the emotion entirely has set in," McKenzie said. "This is a small community built on faith, and faith will get us through."
____________________________________
And Robert Stewart of North Carolina, like other emotionally unstable American men who have murdered wantonly during the present month, had a constitutional 2nd Amendment right to all the firearms he wanted.
Right?
Rush Limbaugh thinks so.
The late Charleton Heston thought so.
Following to its logical conclusion a favorite theme of you right wing nut cases--that the solution to the growing menace of enraged shooters in our society is for every man and woman to go armed at all times--should I assume the 98-year-old nursing home patient killed by Stewart should have whipped a Glock from under the covers and initiated a gun battle in the ward?
No, the solution is not more guns. The solution is fewer guns.
Every redneck in this nation does not have a right to an arsenal of rifles, pistols, and shotguns and hundreds or thousands of rounds of ammunition.
It is insanity.
Some of the guns have to go.
Gun laws must be tightened.
If Barack Obama and the Democratic majority in Congress are worth their salt, gun laws will be drastically altered before the 2010 midterm elections.
D. Grant Haynes
You are not logged in, so your subscription status for this entry is unknown. You can login or register here.
No comments found.
Commenting has been disabled for this entry.