Posted on 12/28/2005 12:06:11 PM PST by Final Authority
Five years ago an elderly Los Angeles woman who had agreed to move out of her daughter's apartment bought a handgun.
She cleared the background check, passed the safety test and practiced on targets at the local shooting range. Then she shot and killed her daughter and her daughter's fiance - my brother David.
As someone who has lost a member of my family to gun violence, I see the new federal legislation to limit gun manufacturers' liability as unconscionable beyond my ken. But what troubles me most is that the gun control lobby is pouring its resources into battles that probably won't save many lives - and we're losing even those.
In the past decade, states have passed law after law to require safety locks, force gun-purchase waiting periods, trace bullets back to their sources and allow victims to sue manufacturers for negligence. That such measures have produced at best slight decreases in the rate of gun deaths is hardly surprising, because only 3 percent of gun deaths are accidents, and most murderers own their handguns legally and know how to use them safely.
California has passed a raft of such laws in the past five years and is widely praised as one of the most progressive states on gun control. In that same period, the number of handgun-related homicides has fallen and then risen again, with no correlation whatever.
The real problem is not that handguns aren't safe or well-regulated enough, or that you can't sue and try to bankrupt a corrupt manufacturer after someone you love has been killed.
The problem is that 60 million people in the United States own handguns. The gun used to kill my brother was a Glock 19, a light and portable semiautomatic.
These guns are designed to kill people: That's their sole purpose. Nearly 12,000 Americans annually use guns to do just that, and the majority use handguns.
Twelve thousand: that's comparable to the number of AIDS deaths each year in the United States. (Great Britain has about 100 gun deaths each year.) And if the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, which leads the gun control crusade, continues to assure us that it won't try to outlaw handguns.
Then new laws to restrict who can buy guns and where they can carry them might reduce the annual toll to 10,000. But that's optimistic. Wouldn't it make more sense to define the ultimate battle as one for a national ban on handguns - the sole gun-control measure that promises to save tens of thousands of lives' With an endgame that can actually achieve the ultimate goal, perhaps we'd acquire the logical and moral authority to win more of the smaller battles.
I can hear the gun lobby scoffing, "Guns don't kill people. People do." This ditty is familiar to all of us. Yes, and bombs and chemical weapons don't kill people either, but they're not sold over the counter to just about anyone without a criminal record who can prove that he or she can use them safely.
Of the 12,000 guns used to kill people every year, 160 are used in legitimate self-defense. Guns in the home are used seven times more often for murder than for self-defense.
I cannot say whether the woman who shot my brother was vicious or insane: I myself no longer understand the exact difference. But we all know that rage, vengefulness and deep alienation are hardly unusual in our society, and a handgun makes it horrifyingly easy for people to express them, on purpose or on impulse, by killing people.
If the National Rifle Association wants to pour its own considerable resources into creating a society ruled by absolute peace and brotherhood, I'm all for it.
But let's stop arming the populace in the meantime, which pro- and anti-gun advocates alike know for certain will create a mountainous death toll. Jenny Price is a writer in Los Angeles.
My question, as a soldier, bound by an oath to uphold the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, would I be required and obligated to remove the Government of San Francisco when the no ownership or possession of any firearm in city limits takes effect? This is a clear violation of the Second Amendment and the rights of the 2 or 3 Americans like myself that actually live in San Francisco.
And I can not believe New Hampshire, with it's state motto would propogate such a story.
last updated on 11-1-2005 |
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Nice Find! OOPS it's FOUR years ago!
In all hte replies and comments about this alleged "murder," has anyone thought that maybe, just maybe, it wasn't murder, but self defense?
The article makes no mention of actual motive or what led up to the killings.
I find it very strange that no one has been able to come up with any article about this "murder."
I did stumble across this one in the Social Security Death Records Index, but have been unable to find an actual obituary;
DAVID PRICE (born) 21 Dec 1968 (deceased) 31 Dec 2001 90230 (Culver City, Los Angeles, CA)(none specified)552-53-4249 California
What we need is to get an article that discusses the incident in more detail - probably unlikely since you've obviously done so much work and haven't found extensive documentation.
I mean the woman we're talking about supposedly killed her own daughter over an eviction - on the face of it, that's the act of a complete psycho.
There's more to the story, most likely.
The web site LA County Murders allows search of victims, but only has 2005.
The common definition of a Conservative, is a Liberal that has been mugged.
She Lied. I have searched the LA Times for quite a while and there is no crime fitting the descritption anywhere in the last five yeas.
The Social Security number for the David Price above, starts with 552, which is a California issued number. Jenny Prices brother should have a Missouri number if they grew up in St. Louis. The David Price above is thus less likely to be her brother.
There are no other David Price deaths listed in Los Angeles in the Social Security database that match Jenny Price's account.
Did you assume that Price is Jenny's maiden name?
Her brother's name could be anything at all, but it is strange that the mother killing her own daughter would not have lots of coverage regardless of what his name is.
Yup.
(1) The Princeton article uses Price as her name. If an alumnae has married and her name is changed, it will usually identify the maiden name as well.
(2) None of the bios on Jenny Price indicate she is married.
(3) There is no indication she used a different name earlier in her career, for example, in getting the Ph.D. from Yale.
(4) The UCLA Center for the Study of Women (CSW) , lists Jennifer Price as a Research Scholar. Such a group of rabid feminists would probably toss her out if they found out she was using her husbands name.
(5) A blogger I linked in a post above named a David Price as her brother.
So, for all these reasons it appears likely (80%?) that her brother had the same last name.
Thanks for all your work trying to track this story down. I had some free time today and found this obscure article which seems to raise alot of other questions:
http://216.239.51.104/search?q=cache:coifLvFPJOoJ:www.riverfronttimes.info/issues/2004-07-21/news/feature_print.html+%22David+Price%22+%22Jane+Higgins%22&hl=en
Go at it...
Also this from Jenny herself as a reply to the aformentioned article:
"Flack Flak
A message from the other side: I am Jenny Price, the sister of Jane Higgins' ex-husband David Price. I read Chad Garrison's profile of Jane while visiting my family in St. Louis ["Star Flack," July 21].
Jane is a talented publicist and devoted mother. She deserves a profile that raves about her. But I am not impugning Jane in the least to point out that every divorce has two sides -- and the fact that anyone, much less any reporter, should understand this.
The fact that Garrison makes numerous claims about my brother's life and work and marriage and death that he couldn't possibly know to be true, with nary a quotation mark or "according to," is such obviously shoddy journalism.
The fact that he makes these claims about a man who has been dead for three years and cannot defend his memory is doubly irresponsible. The fact that Garrison has practiced such careless reporting on a subject of such pain and tragedy is unconscionable.
It would take several pages to rebut the assertions about my brother point by point. David, in any case, was much more forgiving than I am and probably would not want me to. Suffice it to say that David was a man of exceptional warmth and talent and integrity. He is one of the last people I can think of who deserves to have had his name sullied in his hometown media."
Jenny Price
Venice, California
Quite defensive, I say! What is the whole story?
Sorry, in my last post I meant to put the key grafs from the story. Here's one:
"It began the moment Higgins and her family moved from New York to St. Louis in August 1997. The move was supposed to benefit her son, Ian, who had recently been diagnosed with ADHD (attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder). Higgins and her husband, David Price, thought St. Louis would provide a safer, more secure environment. For David, a graduate of Clayton High School, the move was also a welcome homecoming. It wouldn't last long.
Six weeks after the family arrived in St. Louis, David packed his bags for California. In the Big Apple, he'd written material for "Good Morning America," and he found it difficult to get even remotely similar work in the Lou. Frustrated, he moved by himself to Los Angeles to find work in television.
In hindsight Jane Higgins should have seen the divorce coming. For the previous eighteen months, David had been suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome brought on when a small commuter plane he was aboard crash-landed on a small airstrip in Pennsylvania. Everyone survived, but David could never shake the vision of the plane going down. It wasn't long before Higgins noticed emotional changes in her husband. The man who had once been so jovial and carefree took on a distant, sour air. The only thing they had in common now was Ian.
Higgins doesn't blame David for the end of their marriage, but she was angry they had ever come to St. Louis ("How in the hell did I let him talk me into moving to St. Louis?" she asks). With her husband gone, Higgins didn't know a soul in St. Louis except for David's parents."
Here's another:
"Higgins has yet to begin dating since her divorce in 1997. David, on the other hand, wasted little time.
Soon after the divorce was finalized, he began seeing a woman in Los Angeles named Annette Metoyer. From the beginning Higgins sensed something was awry in David's relationship with the woman. Those thoughts crystallized when Metoyer began sending Higgins threatening e-mails. Even today Higgins says she doesn't know what sparked the e-mails. She was in no way jealous of Annette. In fact, she was happy David had found someone. Even so, the e-mails continued, with the warning to Higgins to "watch herself." Higgins soon grew frightened of the woman and sent the menacing missives to her mother.
"I said if anything ever happens to me, here's where to begin searching."
Little did Higgins -- or anyone -- know that it was Metoyer who should have feared for her life.
David's parents never suspected their son or his girlfriend were in harm's way. They weren't pleased that their son and Higgins had divorced but were glad he had again found love.
"David was happy in LA," recalls his mother, Madelon. "He mentioned once or twice that [Annette's] mother was difficult, but I didn't think much of it."
Apparently Annette's mother, who lived with the couple, was upset they were trying to move her out of the apartment they all shared, though that's speculation because she never lived to offer up a motive. After shooting her daughter in the chest and lodging seven bullets in David, Annette's mother turned the gun on herself.
Higgins was leaving a Make-A-Wish gala at the Chase Park Plaza when she got a call from the Los Angeles medical examiner.
At first she thought it was a joke. When the grim reality sank in, her first question was about Annette.
"She's been killed, too," came the reply. Amid the trauma Higgins felt a twinge of elation.
"I remember thinking, 'Good! That bitch!'"
In the Los Angeles Times, the story merited a news brief in the metro section, under the headline: "3 DIE IN SAN PEDRO MURDER-SUICIDE."
Authorities on Sunday identified a woman who police said fatally shot her daughter and a man believed to be the younger woman's boyfriend before turning the gun on herself Saturday in San Pedro.
Los Angeles Police Department spokesman Guillermo Campos said Carmen Foy, 70, shot and killed her daughter, Annette Metoyer, 43, and the unidentified 42-year-old man in the 1000 block of West 23rd Street.
Neighbors said they heard two series of shots come from the apartment.
Members of the LAPD special weapons and tactics unit forced open a door at the apartment after reports of gun shots.
Autopsies were to be performed this morning, officials said."
What happened to curious reporters?
With the difference in their ages, possibly David and Jennifer were the products of two different marriages. With two different fathers.
That was more common in California in the '60s than in most other places.
Disregard that theory. I just read post #218.
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