Victims Sought Protection Prior To Shootings (Told to get restraining order; were murdered later)

OVIEDO, Fla. -- A man and woman who were fatally shot in Oviedo earlier this week had asked police for protection from the gunman hours before the shooting, Local 6 News reported.

Michael Ruschak, 22, and Tiffany Barwick, 19, met twice with Seminole County sheriff's deputies on Monday, telling investigators that they feared for their lives because Barwick's ex-boyfriend, Andrew Allred, 21, sent them a threatening text message. Barwick was told to seek a restraining order.

Late Monday night, she and Rushack were shot and killed by Allred, according to officials.

The Seminole County Sheriff's Office said there was nothing the could have done to prevent the shootings because they did not witness or hear the threat. Meanwhile, Allred confessed to shooting the two and injuring another person shortly after his arrest. He also asked police about the condition of the victims, according to Seminole County authorities.

Allred was being held on Wednesday without bail at John Polk Correctional Facility in Sanford. He has been charged with homicide, attempted homicide and armed burglary. Allred told detectives he went to Ruschak's house on Monday with the intention of crashing a car belonging to his ex-girlfriend, who was at Ruschak's house, a sheriff's report said. Allred entered the home by shooting out a sliding glass door.

Eric Thomas Roberts suffered a gunshot wound to the leg while trying to take the gun from Allred after the other two were shot, the report said. Allred was arrested at his home a short time later. The gun believed to be used in the shootings was recovered.

The “threatening message” may or may not even be a crime, but if it is, would be a misdemeanor, which, with certain exceptions, requires the person making the arrest to have observed the crime. The text messge by itself is, at best, hearsay.

Confront the sender and imagine the stories “i didn’t send it — someone must have been playing a joke using my phone” or variations of the above.

Thank you for your courteous, congenial and comprehensive answer :-)

How many people will have to die before it's recognized that restraining orders don't work against a determined aggressor?

Cops know they don't work, restraining orders are not expected to stop anything. Legally, the real purpose is to enhance prosecution after the fact. Sad, but true. And the cops are powerless to do much of anything about it.

Realistically, if you are in fear enough to ask for a restraining order, you need to be heading for a gun shop. Ultimately, the only person that can protect you before the crime is perpetrated upon you is yourself.

You obviously didn’t pay attention to what I wrote. If this text message were sent to the sheriff do you think his deputies would have told him to get a restraining order? People are “thrown in jail” frequently for irritating someone “important.” The victims in this case just didn’t qualify as important enough to get consideration. If I lived in this area I would certainly want to know why the so called law enforcement people couldn’t be bothered to check out a threat.

they were sissified, pantywaist liberals who thought that guns are evil and should only be used by the police.

Possible. But, knowing most kids that age nowadays, more likely they just were too ignorant of the reality of things. As frightened as they were, they probably still couldn't grasp the concept of what they really faced and what would be necessary to deal with it.

The television generation has an extremely unrealistic view of what cops can do. Ditto for life and death situations.

“The Seminole County Sheriff’s Office said there was nothing the could have done to prevent the shootings because they did not witness or hear the threat.”

You people keep telling yourselves that. The truth is you could have done something about it. Now 2 innocent people are dead.

Actually, I disagree with you. Remember, the police can't do anything until someone actually breaks the law, or makes a threat in their presence.

Thank goodness that someone can't just go up to a cop and say, "Joe threatened to kill me, I need you to lock him up" or "take away his guns!"

It's a terrible thing, but sometimes you have to be responsible for taking action to defend yourself. If the police didn't tell them that they might very well need to take up arms to do so, then the police were wrong. But remember that we don't live in a police state.

Mark

Odd. A text message can be saved, and shown later, it is tagged with the phone number of origin. That should have been sufficient.

Other posters have suggested that the text messages would not have been acceptable as evidence because the owner of the phone could always say that someone else had been using the phone or playing a joke.

I don't recall having heard of text-messaging logs being used in court, so perhaps they haven't been judged as being acceptable proof of anything at this point.

Unfortunately, these young folks placed their faith in the system rather than themselves.

Always a big mistake, but all too common in this age of instant gratification and Government largesse. Darwinism is out there, waiting to cull the weak, but endless layers of Government keep it at bay and make people weak and soft.

When true Evil raises it's head it's able to break through these superficial layers of protection quite easily. Most people live very sheltered lives and are never put to the test; so when the Devil is at the door they don't know what to do.

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Victims Sought Protection Prior To Shootings

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