Posted on 10/22/2004 3:46:41 AM PDT by ninonitti
The sequence of events that led to the death of an Emerson College student began when a half-dozen officers on horseback were surrounded by rioting Red Sox fans on Lansdowne Street about 1:30 a.m. yesterday, witnesses said.
By the time armor-clad cops dispersed the crowd of some 3,000 in the shadow of Fenway Park's Green Monster, Victoria Snelgrove, 21, lay fatally injured. She had been struck in the eye by one of a number of pepper balls fired by police to quell unruly fans throwing bottles and bricks.
``The cops (on horseback) pushed in and the people closed in behind them,'' said Emerson student Brett Schweinberg, 18, who was struck by two pepper projectiles fired by police while trying to scale the Green Monster.
``They were surrounded by people and a bottle landed near a horse and it spooked it. It faltered and it got jittery and 30 to 40 seconds later, cops turned around and fired at a group of people about 20 feet to my left. People scattered except for one girl who was bleeding from the nose and mouth.''
A Herald reporter in the midst of the crowd saw revelry turn to mob mentality. Several people tried to scale the Green Monster, at least one of whom plummeted to the ground after being shot by a projectile.
Small fires burned, street signs were torn down and trash barrels were tossed about as police struggled to control the increasingly hostile crowd. Several cars became trapped by walls of people while drivers spun their tires and blared stereos - some with people riding on the roof. Several bottles were thrown, one of which reportedly struck a police officer, breaking his nose.
Theshot that killed Snelgrove followed a standoff between a cop on horseback and a young man wearing a gray knit hat. Standing by a bustling sausage cart, the man refused the officer's orders to move, prompting the officer to reach down and toss him to the ground. After getting up, the man hurled profanities at the cop and made several obscene gestures.
More bottles were thrown as at least one riot cop fired projectiles into the crowd, one of which apparently struck Snelgrove. She immediately fell to the ground while her friends tended to her, rubbing her head as blood streamed from her face. Horrified onlookers shouted ``get an ambulance'' as the girl drifted in and out of consciousness. One of the riot cops checked on the girl briefly. Approximately five minutes after she collapsed, mounted police cleared a path for an ambulance and the girl was taken away.
As cops cleared the crowd, one young man who had been standing near Snelgrove shouted at police, ``Are you happy? Murderers!''
One officer was stunned at the ferocity of the violence. ``I saw the horses surrounded,'' he said. ``It was like a vacuum. They got sucked in. I saw guys holding small trees they had pulled out of the ground like warriors. They were holding steel sign posts they had bent over and broken. We had to fight to get control.''
You must feel like an idiot by now.
We still have a ways to go before we rival Byzantium's Blue and Green riots.
I'd give it about another generation of publik skewl.
"If the Sox regularly won the Pennant the way the Yankees do, the cops may have had a better plan in place."
The cops are supposed to be professional. They shouldn't need a the Sox to regularly win to have a plan. Certainly they had some old plans from the DNC though.
"But these "fans" were nuts and what the cops had to do to control thems did not seem out of the question."
No argument here. The police were in full right to control and disperse the crowd. My beef is in the way they did it.
"It's too bad this girl died but as another poster stated, when cops are in the area, you should leave. There is no excuse for people to act this way whether their team wins or loses."
I guess I take the death of an innocent a little more seriously than you. I don't think there is a valid excuse, and if I were mayor the police chief would be gone, and the cop involved demoted to traffic duty. No, people shouldn't act like morons when their team wins or loses, but neither should the police. The police, here, did not do a good job of protecting the people.
Its in his excellent book "To Ride, Shoot Straight, and Speak the Truth".
308 might be satisfying but it will overpenetrate.
22 lr will ruin the perp's day but probably wont kill him, especially if judiciously placed.
Just pick'em up at the hospital.
I quake in awe of intellectual giants like yourself.
Yes, that's probably the right answer; I'm overdoing it for effect. And the Israelis were doing exactly that, I think with scoped, accurized 10/22's, for Pali riots, for a time. A .22 to the leg takes you right out of a riot.
This sort of thing will get worse.
At least in this case, from what I've read,
I don't fault the police at all.
Have you ever been in such a chaotic riot situation?
Are you sure you could have fired such projectiles 100% flawlessly and benignly in such chaos?
The officers lives were in danger. And not just their lives, the lives of other demonstrators were at hazard because of the chaos and crush of angry people.
They HAD to establish order.
"Small fires burned, street signs were torn down and trash barrels were tossed about as police struggled to control the increasingly hostile crowd. Several cars became trapped by walls of people while drivers spun their tires and blared stereos - some with people riding on the roof. Several bottles were thrown, one of which reportedly struck a police officer, breaking his nose."
If that isn't rioting, then what is?
It only makes sense.
If there was no baseball game, there would have been no victory.
If there was no victory, there would have been no riot.
The curse of the Bambino still lives.
Babe Ruth Killed this girl.
Babe Ruth's estate , baseball, Fenway Park, the police, and all of the players on the Red Sox team must be sued.We can also blame George Bush.
This was not in any way a serious post. BUT it does point out how a liberal would view this.
Perhaps the Bambino is upset.
Don't forget the sausage-cart factor here.
Sorry, someone hanging around a crowd throwing bottles & bricks at 1:30 in the morning gets no sympathy from me.
Hey niny,
It was 1:30 am; fires burned; street signs torn down; bottles, bricks, and trash cans were being thrown; cars trapped by walls of hostile people; and,one of the officers had his nose broken by a bottle.
It was a MOB of 3000 drunk, hostile people versus 6 policemen who had become totally surrounded. What did the mob plan to do with bricks, bottles, and steel posts in their hands? They weren't there to make a campfire and sing Kumbaya.
I support law-enforcement on this one especially - because that's what they were trying to do: enforce the law. So sorry a young girl got killed - but I will never believe that the police's intent was to kill anyone. If I was ever around something like that I wouldn't wait for the police to show before I'd leave - I would've gotten as far away as I could long before that. But this young girl didn't leave - and now she's dead. A tragic mistake on HER part.
I get so tired of these harmful critiques from people like you AFTER incidents/accidents happen. Given what they know now, I'm sure those 6 cops might have chosen to do something differently - but they did their best considering it was 3000 to 6.
Who truly had the intent to harm here? The 3000 rioters or the 6 policemen? Open season on young women - how dare you say such a thing! It appears it was open season on private and public property, unarmed drivers and 6 policemen.
A PERSON IS SMART; PEOPLE ARE DUMB, PANICKY, DANGEROUS ANIMALS - AND YOU KNOW IT!
The Hound Passer: "The issue is that the police overreacted and an innocent girl was killed because of it."
The POLICE were very restrained, and more "innocent" girls would have been killed if that were not the case.
The Hound Passer: "The police knew the crowd that would appear if the Sox one. They clearly did not prepare for the celebrants or how they would control the crowd."
No, dumb libs like you are to blame. There's a term for it: enabler. Crowds are not supposed to behave this way and you should be happy that more orcs didn't perish in their chaotic and destructive "celebration".
I do have trouble with them firing wildly into a crowd resulting in an innocent bystander being killed. The BPD commissioner has already copped a plea on this.
Lets not try to blame the victim here....shes dead and can't respond to your posts.
You've never owned a .22 have you? Neither has this Jeff Cooper apparently.
I fire one daily.
Neither has this Jeff Cooper apparently.
LOL....You've never heard of Lieutenant Colonel Cooper have you?
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