Free Republic

A masked man waving an American flag and holding a handgun on a Santa Barbara freeway overpass has shut down Highway 101 for nearly two hours. Police Sgt. Lorenzo Duarte says the man is on the La Cumbre Avenue overpass wearing a ski mask and brown fatigues. He's waving an American flag in one hand and a handgun in the other. No shots have been fired. The freeway has been shut down in both directions...The police special weapons team and a crisis negotiation team is on the scene.

LOS ANGELES - A man with a semiautomatic rifle opened fire at a church festival Saturday, wounding his ex-wife and two bystanders before festival-goers grabbed him and held him for police, authorities and a church official said. Gunfire rang out on a grassy field where the festival was being set up at the St. John Baptist de la Salle Roman Catholic parish shortly before 11 a.m., said police Capt. Steven Ruiz. "We believe this is an isolated incident, a domestic-violence dispute," he said. Father Robert Milbauer, the parish's pastor, said a woman injured in the attack was the gunman's ex-wife....

Updated: April 8, 2008 05:26 PM EDT ALFRED, N.Y. (WIVB) - - Alfred University has cancelled all classes and closed the library per police request. ALFRED, N.Y. (WIVB) - - Police are on campus at Alfred University, investigating a report of a Hispanic male, possibly carrying a gun. He is described as wearing a green hoodie sweatshirt and carrying a back pack. Faculty and students are being advised to remain inside where they are, not to go outside. Update: The following email has been sent out to the campus: Alfred State College has been advised that the description of the...

Boone, N.C. — Appalachian State University has put all campus buildings on lockdown and is urging students and staff to stay away from an area near campus after reports of a masked gunman.

Sometimes I think my teenage neice is a better researcher, journalist, and patriot than even...gasp...fox news commentators. I just heard Neil Cavuto "confirm" that new updates were coming in that the NIU gunman had "legally bought his weapons and accessories from the internet". In addition , Cavuto specifically mentioned high-capacity "clips" (NOTE: THEY ARE CALLED MAGAZINES) and a "glock holster" from the same online retail gun dealer that the nut at V Tech used. However, with 5 minutes of searching on the internet, or even a phone call to a local gunstore (with an FFL) any "journalist" can find that:...

Police omitted one salient fact in their public statements following a shooting Saturday that killed five women at a Tinley Park clothing store: There was a sixth woman shot, and she lived, according to sources.

Gunman kills five women in Chicago store By Tim Shipman in Chicago Last Updated: 2:36am GMT 03/02/2008 Five people were shot dead at a women's clothing store in a Chicago suburb on Saturday. Police evacuated the mall and sealed off the car park after at least five shots were fired The victims, all women, were killed inside the Lane Bryant store at Brookside Marketplace shopping centre at Tinley Park, south of Chicago. Police evacuated the mall and sealed off the car park after at least five shots were fired shortly before noon. It is thought that the shooting occurred after...

LAUREL, Md. — An inmate who escaped from a Maryland hospital with a guard's gun and shot a driver in the head in a carjacking during his getaway is dead, Prince George's County Police told FOXNews.com Kelvin Poke, 45, was shot and killed during his capture, apparently in an exchange of gunfire with officers near Cedar Hill Cemetery in Suitland, Md., according to a spokesman for Prince George's County Police Department. Poke was pronounced dead at Prince George's Hospital Center, said Suzanne Almalel, a spokeswoman for Dimensions Healthcare System, which operates the hospital.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- Jeanne Assam appeared before the news media for the first time Monday and said she "did not think for a minute to run away" when a gunman entered the New Life Church in Colorado Springs and started shooting. There was applause as Assam went before reporters and TV cameras saying "God guided me and protected me." New Life's Senior Pastor Brady Boyd called Assam "a real hero" because Murray "had enough ammunition on him to cause a lot of damage." When asked by a reporter if she felt like a hero, Assam said, "I was given...

Police Chief Valerie Harris confirmed Friday afternoon that a Placer High art teacher hid a suspected gunman in his classroom during Monday's full-campus lockdown. "Our investigation did reveal that Evangelista was in Mr. Covich's classroom during the lockdown," Harris said Friday. "Information came to our attention after students were being released, and has in fact been a very concerning fact of the incident. Further investigation is being conducted and at this time I need to limit my response on the issue." Ceramics teacher Tobin Covich allegedly hid Francisco Evangelista in his classroom Monday during the lockdown. Officers arrested Evangelista late...

Two people were wounded in a Las Vegas Strip casino Saturday after a man knocked down in a fist fight retrieved a gun and opened fire, police reported. The gunshots rang out soon after a fight involving several people began about 4 a.m. near an elevator leading to a parking garage at the Caesars Palace hotel-casino, said Officer Ramon Denby of the Las Vegas Metro Police Department. "Blows were landed, one guy was knocked to the floor," Denby said. "The gentleman who was knocked to the floor got into the elevator, went upstairs and got a firearm." The man returned...

A crazed gunman was shot dead near Governor "plea bargain" Bill Ritter's office in Denver's City Capitol around 2:10pm today. The man brandished a handgun and said, "I am the emperor, I am here to take control of city government." As the man lay dead on the floor, tours of the building continued for nearly forty minutes; many tourists and children saw the body. "It was like business as usual," said reporter. The building was not evacuated immediately, in fact many lawmakers were not escorted to their vehicles for an hour. There is no metal detector in the State Capitol...

RICHMOND, Va. -- Virginia's governor said Monday he has closed the loophole that allowed a mentally disturbed Virginia Tech student to acquire the guns he used to kill 32 classmates and faculty on April 16 in Blacksburg. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine said he issued an executive order requiring immediately that the names of persons found dangerous and ordered to undergo involuntary mental health treatment be entered in a database barring the sale of firearms.

MARGARETVILLE, N.Y. — A state trooper was shot to death and another was wounded in this Catskill Mountains town Wednesday as police chased a suspect in the shooting of a third trooper hours earlier, authorities said.

Long before he boiled over, Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui was pushed around and laughed at as a schoolboy in suburban Washington because of his shyness and the strange, mumbly way he talked, former classmates say. Chris Davids, a Virginia Tech senior who graduated from Westfield High School in Chantilly, Va., with Cho in 2003, recalled that the South Korean immigrant almost never opened his mouth and would ignore attempts to strike up a conversation. Once, in English class, the teacher had the students read aloud, and when it was Cho's turn, he just looked down in silence, Davids recalled....

THIS is the face of the girl who may have sparked the worst school shooting in US history. Eighteen-year-old Emily Jane Hilscher was one of the first two victims to be identified in the Virginia Tech massacre, along with 22-year-old Ryan Clark. The pair were neighbours in rooms 4040 and 4042 on the fourth floor of the West Ambler Johnston Hall dormitory where a gunman began the first of 33 campus shootings on Monday morning just after 7am, US time.

One possible source of the gunman's reference to "Ismail Ax" on inside of his arm is... James Fenimore Cooper's The Prairie. Character Ishmael Bush had an axe. "And the axe, which created and transformed through destruction, clears the figurative way for the deflowering of the New World." The axe is apparently both literal and symbolic, and references are made about the character's having moved from the east to the west, creating change through the destruction (using the axe), and the like. Just a possibility, esp. for someone who was an English major?

HICAGO - The gunman who went on a deadly shooting spree in a downtown high-rise law office went to the building in search of an attorney because he felt cheated over an invention, authorities said Saturday. ADVERTISEMENT Joe Jackson, 59, made at least one other attempt Friday to enter the offices of the intellectual property law firm Wood, Phillips, Katz, Clark & Mortimer, but was turned away because he didn't have an appointment, said Chicago Police Superintendent Phil Cline. The next time he returned, Jackson had a revolver, knife and hammer hidden in a manila envelope, Cline said. He forced...

11 49 am School district teaches students to fight back 10/6/2006 2:52 PM By: Associated Press BURLESON, Texas -- With school defense in mind, the Burleson school district is training students and teachers to fight back with everything from books to scissors. Officials say the “critical incident response'' training for teachers and students instructs them to disrupt attackers by barraging them with classrooms supplies. Dallas-Fort Worth television station KTVT reports that about 600 teachers in the Burleson Independent School District have been trained in response tactics. The district recently received a $95,000 federal grant to continue the training. Lisa Crane,...

Dozens of Amish neighbors came out Saturday to mourn the quiet milkman who killed five of their young girls and wounded five more in a brief, unfathomable rampage.Charles Carl Roberts IV, 32, was buried in his wife's family plot behind a small Methodist church, a few miles from the one-room schoolhouse he stormed Monday.His wife, Marie, and their three small children looked on as Roberts was buried beside the pink, heart-shaped grave of the infant daughter whose death nine years ago apparently haunted him.About half of perhaps 75 mourners on hand were Amish."It's the love, the forgiveness, the heartfelt forgiveness...