The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Crazy People Are Dangerous

Posted on | July 19, 2022 | Comments Off on Crazy People Are Dangerous

Minneapolis has proved itself a lucrative source of income for Ben Crump, who got his share of a $27 million settlement on a wrongful death claim in the George Floyd case, so now he’s back for another bite with the case of 20-year-old Andrew “Tekie” Sundberg. It is unknown what led to Sundberg’s mental health crisis prior to the six-hour armed standoff that began about 9:30 p.m. when a neighbor (about whom, more in a minute) called 911 to report that Sundberg had fired a gun through the walls of her apartment. Sundberg then holed up in his third-floor apartment while police evacuated the building, set up a perimeter and tried to negotiate his surrender. This continued until about 4:30 a.m. Thursday, when two SWAT team snipers posted on a nearby roof shot Sundberg.

“Tekie” was 4 years old when he was adopted from Ethiopia by Mark and Cindy Sundberg, who said in a statement:

Like millions in America and worldwide, Tekle struggled with his mental health. While we have received very little information thus far, by all accounts, it sounds like our Tekle was suffering from a mental health crisis. . . . The family has been given very little information about why Tekle’s mental health crisis became a death sentence.

Was this basically a “suicide by cop” situation? Trust me, it’s not just black people that get shot by cops in such situations. How many YouTube videos have I watched of bodycam footage where the cops are trying to “de-escalate,” pleading with the suspect — “Just drop the knife, man, so we can talk” — before he finally charges at them and gets shot? This kind of scenario is common enough that I’ve seen it play out dozens of times on YouTube, and involves crazy people of all races and ethnicities, so I can definitely say Cindy Sundberg is wrong about this:

Cindy Sundberg, who is white, said she believes her son would still be alive if he was white like her biological children.
“Everyone knows had it been a white person in that building, they would have talked him out, they would have waited,” she said.

Not true, but so far, we don’t know what it was that prompted the SWAT team snipers to shoot, and it would be irresponsible to speculate. But what went wrong with Tekie?

Steve Scofield coached Sundberg for two years when he was in 7th and 8th grade, and remembered him as a “sweet” kid. Tekle and Scofield’s son were friends.
“He had a big heart, really sweet kid,” Scofield said. “When I saw him a couple years ago when he was an adult, we hugged. He always struck me as a really sweet, misunderstood kid.” . . .
“I just feel like he didn’t get the support he needed, because the Tekle that I knew was just the sweetest kid,” Scofield said. “Every time I saw him, we hugged and we just exchanged kind words. He seemed like a really sweet person to me.”
He last saw Sundberg a few years ago.
“A few years ago my wife and I were out eating and he just happened to work at the restaurant,” Scofield said. “As usual, I gave him a big hug. We talked for a few minutes, and just asked how he was doing. That was the last I saw him.”

His parents said he “struggled with mental health” without getting more specific, and Tekie’s former soccer coach said that Tekie was working at a restaurant “a couple years ago,” so what can explain this descent into deadly madness? When protesters held a “Justice for Tekie” rally outside the apartment building where he was killed, they were interrupted by the woman whose 911 call led to the SWAT standoff:

A Minneapolis mother of two was seen on video confronting protesters who gathered outside of an apartment building where a Black man, Andrew “Teckle” Sundberg, was shot and killed by police last Thursday.
“This is not a George Floyd situation. George Floyd was unarmed. This is not okay,” the mother, identified as Arabella Foss-Yarbrough, was seen on video yelling at a group of protesters on Saturday.
Foss-Yarbrough was the neighbor of Sundberg, and said he shot up her apartment Wednesday evening while she was cooking for her 2- and 4-year-old sons, Fox 9 reported. She said the bullets ripped through her apartment, and nearly left her family dead or injured. . . .
“My kids have to deal with this and probably have a mental illness now because they almost lost their lives. There’s bullet holes in my kitchen because he sat in the f–ing hallway watching me move,” she said while confronting the protesters. “He tried to kill me in front of my kids.” . . .
Foss-Yarbrough called police during the shooting on Wednesday, who helped the family escape. As police responded to evacuate the building, “officers started taking fire,” according to a search warrant. The incident led to a six-hour standoff between police and Sundberg, which ended when two Minneapolis snipers shot the 20-year-old.
“I have Black children; I am a woman of color!” Foss-Yarbrough, who is of Black, white and Native descent according to the star Tribune, yelled at the demonstrators. “If I would have lost my life, would you guys do this for me?”

Yeah, where’s her “social justice”? No matter how much sympathy one might have for “Tekie” Sundberg, the fact remains that he was armed and had fired shots that endangered this woman and her children. However, the incident that precipitated this standoff was not the first time Andrea Foss-Yarbrough had a problem with “Tekie” Sundberg. According to a GoFundMe page set up by her older sister, Sundberg “had been harassing her and stalking [Foss-Yarbrough] for months.” Gosh, isn’t it strange that the media covering this case haven’t followed up on that clue? If I were an editor at a local newspaper in Minneapolis, I’d be expecting my reporters to follow that lead and get to the bottom of it: What was the nature of Sundberg’s “harrassing . . . and stalking behavior” toward this woman? Was it some sort of erotic fixation? Were there other neighbors who felt threatened by Sundberg’s behavior? What about his employment situation? Was he still working? Had he been under psychiatric care? Was there a diagnosis of his mental illness? Was he off his meds?

But we don’t have answers to any of those questions, because apparently the local media in Minneapolis doesn’t know how to follow-up on leads, so all we can say now is what we’ve been saying for years:

CRAZY PEOPLE ARE DANGEROUS!




 

Category: Crime, Minnesota

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