Posted on 03/26/2002 9:25:28 AM PST by Tumbleweed_Connection
Now..I find that interesting.
Citizen!! Your papers please!!
Yup,sure sounds like a killing offense to me! After all,there was "nothing else they could do" but kill him.(sarcasm)
So the guy was home, off the road, but they still just couldn't let it go. Idiots.
They killed him in HIS OWN HOME. Was he still obstructing traffic from his living room??? What law was he breaking once he got home??
Officer Sterner, who hasn't a FReeper screen name, would like to respond:
The citizen did not stop and stay put when pulled over by security forces. It is the duty of security to determine the identity and validity of each and every person who raises suspicion of security personnel. The citizen fled the scene of the initial stop, making imperative a chase to ensure the citizen (now suspect) did not escape security forces. Regardless of where the suspect ended up, the suspect was sought for numerous violations of the public order. When the suspect resisted apprehension, security forces were obliged to use whatever force necessary to subdue the suspect. The domicile the suspect fled to became a crime scene upon the suspect's entry into it. The suspect does not "own" his home, he merely leases it from the state. Failure to pay tribute (taxes), on a yearly basis, can lead to eviction from the leased property. State security was well within its right to subdue the suspect. Let this be a lesson to all who fail to heed the requests of security forces. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.
Thank you, Officer Stern. May I be released now, Sir? These cuffs are very tight.
In other words he was a Libertarian Party member.
That's like saying Andrea Yates was persecuted merely for bathing her children.
By Alicia A. Caldwell and Charlene Hager-Van Dyke |
Sentinel Staff Writers
Posted March 26, 2002
Mar 26, 2002
Standoff ends in man's killing
DELTONA -- A daylong standoff between authorities and a man described by neighbors as a nuisance and by family members as mentally ill ended with police killing 69-year-old Vincent Zirakian during a shootout.
Negotiators with the Volusia County Sheriff's Office tried for hours to talk with Zirakian, who a deputy said had armed himself with a samurai sword and what appeared to be a shotgun.
Deputies pitched a cell phone with an open line onto Zirakian's garbage-strewn lawn and later tossed it into the house, pleading with the U.S. Army veteran to answer.
"Vincent, just call us and let us know you are OK," a police negotiator said through a bullhorn. "Let me know that you are OK. That is my main concern."
The pleas became demands for his surrender. As the day neared an end, police started shooting tear gas canisters into the concrete block home in a modest neighborhood where Zirakian had lived for nearly 10 years. He responded by firing several shots, prompting a crowd of onlookers gathered several hundred yards away to cheer the police and curse the neighbor with whom they had battled through the years.
Deputies responded by approaching the home in a small armored vehicle, which began shooting more tear gas into the home. Zirakian responded with more gunfire, shattering a windshield on the vehicle and nearly hitting a deputy. That's when police began firing with automatic weapons, which they think killed Zirakian.
Police lobbed in more tear gas, but no more shots were fired. There were no sounds coming through the cell phone inside the home. Soon afterward, about 6 p.m., deputies used a tank-like vehicle borrowed from the Seminole County Sheriff's Office to clear a path through the trash in the front yard and crash through the door. Zirakian's body was found near the front of the house.
Nora Watts, one of Zirakian's six children, said Monday that her father, whose jobs ranged from selling religious books to writing technical manuals for weaponry, had long been a troubled man. She hadn't spoken to him in about a decade.
Watts, a social worker in Tampa, said her father suffered from mental illness that probably went back as far as 30 years. Zirakian's problems seemed to be compounded by a head injury he suffered in fall down a flight of stairs about 10 years ago in Washington state, his daughter said.
According to Watts, her mother, Beverly A. Zirakian, and several other family members tried to have him committed to a psychiatric hospital after that. But doctors said he did not meet the conditions for commitment, and after a few days he was released.
"He's almost always been extremely paranoid," Watts said. "He thinks the rest of the world is against him. I heard that since he's lived there, he even brought some furniture outside and slept. I can understand why his neighbors felt the way they did about him."
The city, too, had numerous run-ins with Zirakian, who had been investigated by code enforcement officers 15 times in the past two years for everything from leaving debris in his yard to having abandoned cars to failing to mow his grass, according to city records.
Most of the times he complied with orders to clean up, but twice he was fined by a county judge.
The standoff began after deputies went to Zirakian's house Monday morning because of a report that he had failed to stop for a deputy who tried to pull him over on State Road 44 for driving too slow. Deputies said Zirakian then sped up and fled.
When a deputy came to the house about 9:45 a.m. to make an arrest, Zirakian struggled with the officer, then fled into the house where he armed himself with a 36-inch sword, Volusia County Sheriff Ben Johnson said.
End of article.<p. Seems to be more to this than the 20 MPH problem.
Guess he's OK now that you shot him dead.
Yep. Thems some VERY serious charges. Now I'm glad this menace to society is neutralized. /sarcasm.
They should have just let him go. The old codger wouldn't have hurt anybody.
For instance, I just heard Whoopi Goldberg isn't going to be making any appearances in Cincy because of the police brutality. (I was really depressed when I found out-NOT) LOL
I think that alot of these people should not be out in society, living on their own because they are not capable of doing so. Instead they are put in an apartment complex or duplex and they are a real problem in the neighborhood. They are often afraid of and combative toward the police. So, unfortunately, these types of incidents are going to keep occuring.
The last day I worked we got sent to a call of a mental subject, who frequently walks around the neighbood nude, doing the same thing. We figured he was hiding in his apartment somewhere because he wouldnt answer the door. In the front yard were his clothes and a torn up Bible and a torn up Playboy book.
I did get a zinger over the radio, one of the guys asked me 'what's this guys name?', I said "Williams, and I think he goes by Running Bear(Bare) too." It was early sunday morning so no brass was around.
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