The girl with the gun

I was in the newsroom when this story came over the police scanner.

Four officers had opened fire on a teenager. She was dead.

These details are not disputed:

She was drunk and stoned. She was passed out in a locked car with music blaring inside. The car was running. Police could not rouse her by banging on the windows. She had a semiautomatic pistol in her lap.

These details are murkier:

She was frothing at the mouth. She snapped awake when officers broke a window. Her hand moved toward the gun.

As the story gained fame, so did the side picking. Everyone sat in judgment over somebody in this story.

I’m on the side of the officers, who fired 27 shots into the Nissan Sentra and hit that 19-year-old with 12 of them.

Here’s why. This kid drank booze, smoked pot and went to a public convenience store with a loaded gun.

Using the same roads my loved ones and I use with babies in the back seats, she drove a vehicle so under the influence that she passed out and was unwakeable.

She sat armed and mentally altered where I might have been stopping with my children.

I’m going to come right out and say it. When someone makes those choices and becomes that level of a danger to the community, the officers should fire. Her rights, I believe, ended when she tried to take away everyone else’s right to safety in public.

I call open season on drunk people at gas stations with guns.

Apparently I’m in the minority.

I was also in the newsroom when the wire announced the four officers lost their jobs.

Tags: 1998, december