Another "shocker"

There was a shooting this evening around 7pm in Kirkwood. Nice, fancy, white-bred Kirkwood. Home of the kidnapper of the two kids a while back. Now home of a man who went outside an Imo's and killed a cop, then proceeded into the city council meeting and killed 6 more people and injured one other.

Check the St. Louis news, and I have already seen it on the cover page of Yahoo!.

I really am looking forward to hearing more information about the "disgruntled man". He is a person with melanin in his skin. He is said to have come to the meetings on several, repeated occasions trying to get some sort of zoning issues resolved as well as to address his civil rights.

All people are saying right now is that the people in the town knew of him, that he was known to constantly be sharing his greivances, that he had made threats prior to this day.

From the news I've heard so far, his family has said that the city was basically giving him tickets and trying to get him to not run a business out of his home -- in a nutshell.

Fortunately, I have not heard him being addressed as "a black man went into the city council and killed people." Have only heard race brought up once, and that was by a interviewee who said something like this may be about groups, but I don't know.

I don't know the whole story, but I can say that people need to listen to people's problems. People need to find out how to help people feel welcome in their neighborhoods. People need to not take threats lightly.

People need to not think that their neighborhood is beyond metal detectors just because it is "a nice neighborhood" where "things like this don't happen" where you "used to be able to walk from one side of [plug in city] to the other without fear".

Since it is a black man killing in a predominantly white area, be ready to hear stories of the need for people to have guns in their neighborhoods for protection.

My heart goes out to the families and friends of the victims -- both the the ones shot by Cookie, and Cookie's family, as well. If you have seen local news, you can see that it touches many people's lives; several anchors are from the area and knew the people involved.