Category: Missouri

Rioter vs. FedEx Truck: Guess Who Won?

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Here’s a helpful hint for young “social justice” activists — truck drivers have no obligation to surrender to armed hijackers:

Authorities said a man was hit and killed by a FedEx truck during protests over George Floyd’s death in St. Louis.
A preliminary investigation revealed that the driver of a FedEx double tractor-trailer was rerouted because protesters shut down certain areas near downtown St. Louis.
St. Louis Police said the driver stopped due to a large gathering of protesters. While he was stopped, several people gained access to the first trailer and started to remove items.
Two men, “while standing on the passenger side footboard of the truck cab, displayed guns to the driver. The driver, fearing for his safety, sounded the airhorn and drove off until he was stopped by police,” Sgt. Keith Barrett said in a statement.
The driver didn’t realize that a person was stuck on the converter dolly between the two trailers, police said. The man had been caught by the trailer tire, pulled under and was eventually run over by the tire.
Authorities are now investigating the incident but they believe the man who died appeared to be one of the protesters.

I’ve seen two different videos of the incident. The graphic nature required the local Fox affiliate to censor some images, but you get the idea:

 

The thing that struck me about this entire nightmare — here’s a good roundup of Sunday night’s anarchy — is how stupid and senseless it all is. Police in Minneapolis killed a guy who was caught trying to pass a counterfeit $20. Why does this require people to riot all over the country?

What purpose were the protest marches intended to accomplish? To express disapproval of racism? Yet if practically everybody is against racism — and it is quite difficult to find self-avowed racists in 21st-century America — who are the protesters marching against? Consider the case of Minneapolis, in particular. The city has long had a reputation as a bastion of liberalism. Hubert Humphrey, an outspoken champion of racial equality, was mayor of Minneapolis before winning three terms in the U.S. Senate and becoming vice president during the presidency of Lyndon Johnson. Minnesota is such a stronghold of the Democratic Party that not even Ronald Reagan’s historic 1984 landslide could tip the state into the GOP column. So if Minneapolis is now run by a secret cabal of racist officials determined to oppress the city’s black residents, these oppressors must be Democrats. Surely such an accusation cannot be what inspired the protest marches that followed the death of George Floyd, can it?
Whatever wrongdoing might have been committed by the police implicated in Floyd’s death, no one could plausibly assert that officials in Minneapolis endorsed it. . . .

Read the rest of my latest column at The American Spectator.


 

Incest in Missouri: 11-Year-Old Girl Gives Birth to Her 17-Year-Old Brother’s Son

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Must be some backwoods Ozark hillbillies:

An 11-year-old girl who was allegedly raped by her brother gave birth at home, and now he and their parents are facing criminal charges.
The girl gave birth to a boy in a bathtub in St. Charles, Missouri, according to a probable cause statement.
Her biological brother, who is 17, was charged last week with incest, statutory rape and statutory sodomy of a person younger than 12, while her parents were charged with child endangerment. Police say the girl’s parents did not provide medical care to their daughter after she gave birth.
NBC News is not naming the girl’s parents or brother because it would identify the victim.
Police started investigating on Feb. 11 after the girl’s parents brought a baby boy to a hospital. The baby still had the umbilical cord and placenta attached and a body temperature of 90 degrees, according to a probable cause statement.
The girl’s father initially claimed the baby was his and had been dropped off on their porch by an ex-girlfriend.
He later told investigators his daughter had given birth to the boy and that his son was the father, a probable cause statement states. The girl’s parents claimed they were not aware she was pregnant or that she was allegedly being sexually assaulted by her brother, according to the statement.

While NBC News did not name the suspects, local news did:

Norvin Leonidas Lopez-Cante was charged with statutory rape, statutory sodomy and incest after police said he admitted to having sex with an 11-year-old family member about 100 times.
Police started investigating after Lopez-Cante’s father, Francisco Javier Gonzalez-Lopez, brought an infant to St. Joseph Hospital on Tuesday. Gonzalez-Lopez told police someone dropped the infant off on his front porch. Charging documents said the baby still had the umbilical cord and placenta attached and had a body temperature of just 90 degrees.
Police interviewed Gonzalez-Lopez at his home two days later, where he told police the father of the child was his son, Lopez-Cante, and the mother was Lopez-Cante’s 11-year-old relative.
Gonzalez-Lopez said he did not know the girl was pregnant or that Lopez-Cante was raping her until she gave birth to the child in their bathtub.
After police read Lopez-Cante his Miranda rights, he told police he had sex with the girl about 100 times but did not know she was pregnant. He said he did not know when he first had sex with her but said it happened about twice a week.
Lopez-Cante was charged with first-degree statutory rape, statutory sodomy and incest. His bond was set at $25,000, cash-only.
Gonzalez-Lopez was charged with endangering the welfare of a child for his role in the incident. His bond was set at $10,000, cash only.

 

Apparently, they didn’t already have enough incest in Missouri, so they decided to import the Gonzalez-Lopez/Lopez-Cante clan to fill the quota.

My apology to Ozark hillbillies unfairly impugned.

(Hat-tip: Kirby McCain on Twitter.)




 

A Mass Shooting CNN Won’t Notice

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There was a mass shooting Sunday night in Kansas City in which one woman was killed and 15 other people were injured. Three of the injured victims were listed in critical condition Monday. Mass shootings have become part of propaganda campaign by Democrats and the media, who seek to blame President Trump for these crimes — a “climate of hate” supposedly inspired by the White House. However, not every mass shooting lends itself to this political narrative, and so CNN viewers will not be getting 24/7 coverage of the Kansas City shooting:

Jahron Swift was identified by authorities as the gunman in a mass shooting that left at least 16 people wounded, 1 fatally, at a Kansas City nightclub a couple hours after the Kansas City Chiefs won a spot in the Super Bowl.
The shooter also died at the scene. The shooting occurred outside at 9ine Ultra Lounge bar about 11:30 p.m. on January 19, 2020 in the 4800 block of Noland Road. . . . The bar was hosting a Chiefs’ party.
Kansas City.com reported that the shooter “started firing into a line of people waiting to get inside” the club. The motive remains unclear. Jahron Swift was 29 years old and a resident of Kansas City. . . .
In a news conference, Kansas City Police Chief Richard Smith said the first call came in at 11:27 p.m.
“This club had come up previously. We knew it was an issue at other points in time in the past. Officers had done a check of the parking lot and were less than a minute out when we got our first call,” he said. . . .
“No one fired a weapon other than the security guard and suspect. Police officers fired no shots at the scene,” Smith said. He said the shooting ignited after a “disturbance in the club…in the line waiting to get in. This incident unraveled shortly after that disturbance.” Police don’t know what caused the disturbance. The chief said he was aware of social media reports that people were cutting in line but said they haven’t confirmed that.
The guard was inside the club and “heard commotion. He went outside and that’s when he confronted the suspect,” the police chief said. . . .
Swift had a previous criminal history. According to Missouri state court records, he was accused of unlawful use of a weapon and possession of a controlled substance (marijuana) in 2017.
There are also some civil cases and a paternity action against him. A court ordered him to pay child support.

Further details about the killer:

We’re learning more about the suspect in Sunday night’s shooting at 9ine Ultra Lounge in east Kansas City. It turns out he never should’ve had a gun in the first place.
Jahron Swift just got off probation after a felony conviction. . . .
The 29-year-old was sentenced for unlawful use of a weapon and felony drug possession in 2015. According to court records, Swift and two other men were pulled over in a traffic stop. Officers uncovered thousands of dollars worth of pills, marijuana and cocaine, several guns, and almost $8,000 in cash.
That conviction means Swift couldn’t legally own a gun.

If more than a dozen people had been shot by an “alt-right” Trump supporter, CNN would be airing hourly updates, with politicians and pundits being asked to weigh in on the “climate of hate” that allegedly caused the mass shooting. However, when an angry dope dealer opens fire because people are cutting in front of him in the line to get into the club after the Chiefs won a trip to the Super Bowl? That’s just local news.

There were 149 homicides in Kansas City last year. None of them made the national news, because none of the killers was a known Trump voter.



 

Mexicans in Kansas

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Seven people killed in two separate crimes. Suspects are in custody:

Suspects in a mass shooting a Kansas City, Kansas, bar, and a recent triple homicide are now charged with capital murder and could face the death penalty, the Wyandotte County district attorney announced Wednesday.
Wyandotte County District Attorney Mark Dupree Sr. released the amended charges against three men in two separate cases during a news conference.
Dupree first addressed the mass shooting that killed four people and wounded five others Oct. 6 at the Tequila KC bar near 10th Street and Central Avenue.
Two men, Hugo Villanueva-Morales, 30, of Kansas City, Kansas, and Javier Alatorre, 24, of Kansas City, were initially charged with four counts of first-degree murder. The victims who died in the shooting were Everardo Meza, 29, Alfredo Calderon Jr, 29, Francisco Garcia Anaya, 34, and Martin Rodriguez-Gonzalez, 58.

(Not one gringo killed in this bar, not even by a stray shot?)

Alatorre was arrested quickly after the shooting. Villanueva-Morales fled to Mexico, where he was arrested and was recently brought back to the metro area to face charges. Both remain in the county jail.
Dupree said Wednesday that Villanueva-Moreales and Alatorre are now each charged with capital murder for the four deaths. . . .
The district attorney’s office also announced amended charges against Ismael Caballero in the deaths of a Kansas City, Kansas, mother and her two children. Their bodies were found in a burning home at 29 N. Mill St. on Dec. 30. Kansas City, Kansas, police were investigating the deaths as homicides but have not said how the three victims died.
Caballero, 31, is charged in district court with capital murder for the deaths of the two children, Amerikha Rodriguez, 14, and Jean Carlo Rodriguez, 10, and is charged with second-degree murder for the death of their 31-year-old mother, Yazmin Rodriguez-Santilla.

Is should not be necessary to explain the point here, but I will: Some places in the United States have a long history of Latino settlement, with communities stretching back for generations, even centuries. One is not surprised by the large Mexican-American populations in California, Arizona or Texas, and we’re accustomed to Cubans in Miami, Puerto Ricans in New York, etc. However, on does not think of Kansas City this way, so when the headlines inform us that three guys named Villanueva-Morales, Alatorre and Caballero are charged with killing a combined total of seven people named Meza, Calderon, Anaya, Rodriguez-Gonzalez, Rodriguez and Rodriguez-Santilla in Wyandotte County, Kansas — well, what the heck is going on here? It appears, for example, that two gunmen can open fire in a Kansas City bar without risk that any of their bullets will hit someone who was actually born in America.

As evidence that our immigration problem is absolutely out of control, this situation in Kansas City is rather conclusive, but notice that this criminal mayhem in Kansas is just “local news.” If some deranged “alt-right” white guy had shot four Mexicans in Kansas City, CNN would be providing around-the-clock updates, but because it’s Mexicans killing Mexicans, nobody at the networks seems to care.

(Hat-tip: Kirby McCain on Twitter.)



 

Unexpectedly: ‘Get Woke, Go Broke’ Meets ‘The Higher Education Bubble’ at Mizzou

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Remember when left-wing students at the University of Missouri threw a massive temper tantrum on campus? Remember how the #BlackLivesMatter mobs were egged on by radical faculty members like Melissa Click? “Social justice” can be quite expensive:

The University of Missouri recently announced major budget and staffing cuts, the latest move the university has made in response to financial and political crises following racial protests that rocked the public system’s flagship campus in fall 2015.
The school has suffered from a negative public image and reduced funding in the wake of the protests. State funding cuts and continuing depressed enrollment resulted in a $49 million budget shortfall. To cope, the administration laid off 30 employees and permanently eliminated 155 vacant positions.
A Missouri state representative told The College Fix that the university is “more concerned about the money, and image, than the student.” College students who decided not to attend University of Missouri said that the environment created by the protests, as well as high costs and unfavorable funding options, caused them to turn to other schools.

This is the “Get Woke, Go Broke” phenomenon (e.g., plummeting attendance and shrinking TV audiences for the NFL) demonstrated in the context of Glenn Reynolds’ warning about The Higher Education Bubble.

“Unexpectedly,” you might say.

Exit question: What does this portend for Claire McCaskill’s re-election?

 

Can We Make #FactsMatter Trend?

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Jonathan Capehart (@capehartj) confronts #Ferguson truth:

[T]he Justice Department released two must-read investigations connected to the killing of Brown that filled in blanks, corrected the record and brought sunlight to dark places by revealing ugly practices that institutionalized racism and hardship. They have also forced me to deal with two uncomfortable truths: Brown never surrendered with his hands up, and Wilson was justified in shooting Brown. . . .
Wilson knew about the theft of the cigarillos from the convenience store and had a description of the suspects. Brown fought with the officer and tried to take his gun. And the popular hands-up storyline, which isn’t corroborated by ballistic and DNA evidence and multiple witness statements, was perpetuated by Witness 101. In fact, just about everything said to the media by Witness 101, whom we all know as Dorian Johnson, the friend with Brown that day, was not supported by the evidence and other witness statements. . . .

You can read the whole thing, and kudos to Capehart for owning up to the bogus narrative and the hateful liars who created it — the “Mardi Gras parade of nutbag racial opportunists,” as Regular Right Guy calls them. There is a world of difference between (a) calling attention to legitimate grievances and (b) dishonestly exploiting those grievances.

“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
— John Adams, 1770

“Truth is great and will prevail if left to herself . . . she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.”
— Thomas Jefferson, 1786

What has happened to our respect for facts and our love for truth? How is it that a proven liar like Dorian Johnson — who was wanted on a warrant for theft charges the day Michael Brown was shot — could be hired by the City of St. Louis? How is that, after Johnson’s lie helped spark riots and the shooting of police officers, there are so few journalists who care about the facts and truth in Ferguson? How is it that MSNBC can employ a liar like Al Sharpton and nobody else in the media will speak the truth about what a dishonest monster Sharpton really is?

Of course, if liberals weren’t willing to tell lies — and fools weren’t ready to believe lies — no Democrat could ever get elected.





 

The Riot Ideology in Ferguson

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Ginning up racial strife is bad for business:

Fusion, a Website that’s an, err fusion between Univision and ABC/Disney is shocked that Ferguson real estate prices are “Down nearly 50 percent since Michael Brown’s death.” There’s more than a hint of bias in that subhead, as the cause wasn’t Brown’s death after he slugged a convenience store clerk and attempted to steal a police officer’s gun, but the riots and looting that followed — which were another kind of media fusion, ginned up by via the minicams of CNN and fueled further by NBC anchorman Al Sharpton’s corrosive presence . . .

Read the whole thing by Ed Driscoll, who includes a quote by Manhattan Institute urban policy scholar Fred Siegel. Two years ago, when the itinerant race hustler Sharpton was inciting hatred in Sanford, Florida, I mentioned Siegel’s The Future Once Happened Here in connection with the Trayvon Martin case:

Siegel’s book is one of those timeless classics — like Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism and Thomas Sowell’s The Vision of the Anointed — that I frequently recommend as guides to understanding important social phenomena more deeply.
The Future Once Happened Here recounts how liberal policy turned three once-great American cities — New York, D.C. and L.A. — into dangerous urban nightmares, and one of the things Siegel describes is the “riot ideology” whereby organized violence (or the threat thereof) is used to intimidate officials into doing the bidding of “community leaders.”

Fools can’t be bothered to learn a damned thing about history, however, so disgraced charlatans like Sharpton are always able to find a mob of fools who buy into their bankrupt ideology. These fools are always mystified by the result. The race hustlers get rich off their “social justice” scam, but when the media spotlight turns away and the protest carnival leaves town, the people left behind are in no better condition than they were before the protests began. In fact, as in Ferguson, communities suffer more harm from the riot ideology than they did from whatever “oppression” the race hustlers were supposedly protesting against.

Alas, some fools never learn, and so hate remains a lucrative industry from which vicious liars like Al Sharpton get rich.

UPDATE: When Jeffrey Williams was arrested and charged with shooting two cops in Ferguson, liberals tried to claim Williams was not one of the protesters. Yet now the suspect’s own family confirm he was: “After Michael Brown, he was out there protesting. . . . He had his shirt on. He had his signs up.” Williams, 20, has a criminal record, a pregnant girlfriend and “made money by placing bets on the basketball and football video games he played with others, relatives said.” Which is to say, he is an outstanding example of the Obama Age lifestyle.




 

Ferguson Update: Three Questioned After Shooting of Two Police Officers

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We reported this morning that two police officers were shot in downtown Ferguson, Missouri. The investigation into that shooting led to what police called a “tactical situation” at a home in Ferguson. KTVI reports:

Police swarmed a house in Ferguson, just four blocks from the Ferguson Police Department, where the shooting took place ,according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. A tactical team scaled the home and tried to break in through the attic, where they believed one of the suspects may have been hiding. The house is located on Dade Avenue, near Tiffin Avenue.
After breaking through, there was no one found. Two men were however escorted from the home in handcuffs, as well as the woman who rents the home. Police would not comment on the situation.
Raw video from the scene showed protesters pointing to a nearby hill after shots rang out at about midnight. Police say they officers were shot from about 125 yards away.

Meanwhile, the two wounded officers have been released:

Two area police officers seriously wounded after they were shot while standing along S. Florissant Road directly in front of the Ferguson Police Department Thursday morning have been released from the hospital.
The officers are from St. Louis County and Webster Groves. . . .
St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar says at least three shots were fired. The Webster Groves police officer, a 32-year-old who has been on the force seven years, was shot just under his right eye, in the high-cheek area. The bullet is lodged underneath his right ear. . . .
The St. Louis County officer, a 41-year-old with 14 years of law enforcement experience, was shot in his right shoulder. The bullet traveled through his back and out between his scapula and spine.

Warner Todd Huston comments:

The “BlackLivesMatters” rioters insisted that the shooter wasn’t with them as they gathered outside the police station.
But other witnesses note that there were two distinct groups of protesters. One group marching and chanting peacefully and another one getting increasingly mean spirited, loud and violent. In fact, as the cops were lying on the street shot, one protester is heard on video saying that they deserved what they got.

Obviously, expect more updates as this breaking story develops.

UPDATE: Shell casings were found at the scene, indicating a semiautomatic handgun was likely used in the shooting.

UPDATE II: Ace of Spades comments:

The left is having spasms that people on the right are suggesting that these shootings just might be the result of a viciously false narrative peddled by the radical left, the President, and their fellow travelers in the media.
In every other shooting, the left goes looking for the toxic politicsthat animated the shooting, and tries to connect it with a politician’s words; here, they’re aghast that anyone would be so gauche to do that.

We will continue monitoring developments in the investigation.