All his sons: three people shot during football game at Obama International Studies Academy
(Note: Be sure to see Paul K.’s brilliant
unpacking of a remark made by a black grandmother after the football game shootings, “This is ridiculous. If the police would’ve been there, doing their job, this never would have happened.” Paul’s comment is followed by several more readers’ comments that are equally pungent, and I, as the host, reply to each.)
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports today:
Three shot at youth football game in East Liberty
It was to have been the Homecoming game for the East End Raiders peewee football team—their fans decked out from their socks to their hats in breast-cancer pink as 7- to 9-year-olds took the field at Pittsburgh Obama International Studies Academy in East Liberty.
Instead, hundreds of parents and children found themselves running and ducking for cover Saturday morning as gunshots rang from the metal bleachers overlooking the field—the third shooting at a Pittsburgh youth football game in the last five years.
A statement released by Pittsburgh police said a 27-year-old man from Wilkinsburg was shot in the chest, a 64-year-old woman from Verona was shot in the stomach and shoulder and a 33-year-old woman was shot in the hand. The first two are in critical condition and underwent emergency surgery at UPMC Presbyterian. The third victim is in stable condition.
The shootings occurred at 10:08 a.m. Names of the victims were not released.
According to the police statement, “a fight broke out in the stands, which was related to an ongoing dispute involving the 27-year-old from Wilkinsburg and other males from Wilkinsburg. Gunshots erupted which appear to have been intended for the male victim.” The two women were not targets.
“I thought it was fireworks. We often do that,” said Garrett Barnett, coach of the Wilkinsburg “Baby Twerps” team of 4- to 7-year-olds that had just finished its game against the East End Raiders. “Everything got real quiet, and then real noisy. Kids were crying, they were all scared.”
The building at 515 N. Highland Ave. housed Pittsburgh Peabody High School until 2010. Pittsburgh Obama, serving grades 6-12, moved into the building this school year.
Cheryl Doubt, commander of Zone 5 police station in East Liberty said a dispute began Friday in Wilkinsburg, continued on Facebook overnight and culminated with the shootings at the football game.
Asked the nature of the dispute, she said she didn’t know.
“It doesn’t matter to me what it was about,” Cmdr. Doubt said. “I’m sure it was really petty.” [LA replies: Police Commander Cheryl Doubt’s remark actually represents a refreshing departure from the usual PC usage. Normally, the need to discover the “motive” for mindless Negro violence is treated with ritual solemnity by police and media, as though it were the most important factor in such violence, whereas the truth is that wherever there is a significant black population, mindless violence is simply a regular, predictable occurrence. Commander Doubt is the first police officer I have ever read of who suggests that the specific “reason” that drives blacks on any given occasion to get into fights and start shooting guns aimlessly at each other is unimportant.]
The children and coaches on the field ran toward basketball courts away from the high school, said Mr. Barnett, while spectators in the bleachers ducked for cover.
Hours after the shooting, the stands were still dotted with athletic bags and half-empty bottles of Gatorade. A mermaid Barbie doll lay surrounded by drops of dried blood.
Three later games, for older boys, were canceled as organizers scrambled to find freezer space to store the chicken and hamburger that was to have served as concessions. The East End Athletics Association—a group founded in 2008 to decrease violence in the East End—still planned to hold the teams’ Homecoming dance Saturday night.
Talk among parents after the game buzzed with angry complaints that there were no police officers present during the shooting. Security procedures implemented by police after a 2010 shooting during a break between midget football games at Stargell Field in Homewood require teams to hire police officers to be present at the games, they said.
“This is ridiculous,” said Tamisha Fuller, 40, of Homestead, whose 2-year-old granddaughter was at the game during the shooting. “If the police would’ve been there, doing their job, this never would have happened.”
Cmdr. Doubt said officers were “en route” to the games and were to have arrived between 10 and 11 a.m.
A shooting also occurred at a youth football game at Stargell Field in 2007.
Because of those shootings, coaches are required to get background checks and wear police-issued identification, in addition to hiring police officers.
Cmdr. Doubt said police were reviewing surveillance video from school cameras pointed at the stadium. She said police “have some information on one possible actor.” She believed that the altercation was between “young adults.”
Police Chief Nate Harper has taken a close interest in the football league, said Cmdr. Doubt. Last year, police officers removed three coaches from a game in Homewood because they lacked credentials or didn’t show them willingly.
She was unsure what Chief Harper’s next move would be in terms of safety for the thousands of children in the Allegheny County Midget Football League.
“This is something near and dear to him—he wants to keep it going, but he is not going to jeopardize the safety of the kids,” she said. “That’s what’s most important.”
East End Raider parents and grandparents on the sideline—dressed for their Homecoming game in pink Raiders hats, jerseys and socks—were equally concerned about the future of the league.
“If it doesn’t go on, where do these children go?” Ms. Fuller said. “My children wouldn’t be what they are without this league.”
- end of initial entry -
Paul K. writes:
I was struck by this quote from the article:
“This is ridiculous,” said Tamisha Fuller, 40, of Homestead, whose 2-year-old granddaughter was at the game during the shooting. “If the police would’ve been there, doing their job, this never would have happened.”
I find Tamisha Fuller’s indignation entirely understandable. Who ever heard of a game of peewee football that didn’t involve an eruption of gunfire? The police have totally abdicated their responsibility. This sort of violence wouldn’t occur if there were a patrolman standing behind each young black male at peewee football games, as well as at shopping malls, amusement parks, rap concerts, wedding receptions, fireworks displays, beaches, state fairs, graduation parties, West Indian Day Parades, Black College Reunions, and children’s birthday celebrations.
It’s time society fulfills its duty to end black violence by the only means possible.
LA replies:
Good one. I feel embarrassed that I didn’t pick that one out myself. :-)
I think I once said that the ideal of liberalism is that every black person be accompanied by his own white homunculus in order to perform all his needed tasks. But now it’s more specific: Every young black male must be accompanied by his own police officer in order to protect him from other young black males and to keep him from shooting other young black males or whoever else happens to be in the vicinity. Anything less than that is an abdication of society’s responsibility to blacks, and further proof (as if any further proof were needed) of how far this country still has to go to overcome its legacy of racism.
October 15
David B. writes:
One Princeton Harlan, a star high school quarterback, has been charged with raping a 12 -year old girl in Mt. Pleasant, Tennessee. I live in a neighboring county.
Maybe it wouldn’t have happened if Harlan had had a police officer following him everywhere he went.
LA replies:
Clearly, Harlan was depraved on account he was deprived—of his own personal police officer.
James P. writes:
Tamisha Fuller became a grandmother at age 38! How many white women can say the same? These days white women are lucky to be mothers at that age.
The fans were “decked out from their socks to their hats in breast-cancer pink”—how progressive and enlightened! What color should they wear to raise awareness of pervasive, pettily motivated, and poorly aimed black gunfire?
LA replies:
Maybe, in order to underscore the fact that members of a certain demographic periodically commit mindless mayhem whatever the circumstances, the headline, instead of saying, “Three shot at youth football game,” should have said, “Three shot at breast cancer consciousness-raising event.”
Also, Paul K. should have added “breast cancer consciousness-raising events” to his list of the activities and places where society has a duty to station a police officer behind every young black male. And Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton should have a demonstration in Pittsburgh with signs saying, “No Police Officers at Breast Cancer Consciousness Raising Events, No Peace.”
Max P. writes:
The story about the shooting at the youth football game was carried in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Since I am not from Pittsburgh, I do not have much experience with this paper. However, two articles in the past year featured in that paper come to mind, and seem to be somewhat related.
If you recall the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette featured a story last year lamenting that the Pittsburgh metro area was named one of the nation’s least diverse.
In March of this year, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette published an article proclaiming that Pittsburgh had been named as the most livable big city in the United States.
Now we have this story of a shooting at a black youth football game. And according to the story this is not the first time such an event has happened. A shooting occurred in 2007 at the same location.
So is there any lesson to be learned from these articles? Pittsburgh is the least diverse big city, and it is the most livable big city, and what few blacks they have engage in gun violence at youth football games. I wonder if the staff of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette will connect the dots.
LA replies:
The fact to be brought out by the connecting of the dots being, that wherever blacks exist as an identifiable urban demographic, no matter how small, there will be periodic outbursts of mindless mayhem.
Paul K. writes:
You wrote, “Also, Paul K. should have added “breast cancer consciousness-raising events” to his list of the activities … “
Compiling a more comprehensive list would be a prodigious undertaking, limited only by one’s imagination. To compile my list, all I had to do was think of an activity, then do a Google search of its name plus the word violence, and I was immediately confronted with a news story about that activity ending in violence involving blacks.
LA replies:
How about that. You were really looking into the heart of darkness!
Terry Morris writes:
Ha, ha. I noticed Tamisha’s complaint right away last night when I read the article. Of course,—and as I mentioned to my wife and son and daughter in law—law enforcement is supposed to be provided at these games at no expense to Tamisha, so that she and other blacks are never confronted with the reality that there’s not enough money to go around to fund every single “need” these people can identify, and thus are afforded no practical reason to govern themselves within their own race, even if they would.
If it’s any consolation, I don’t think that, without your bracketed interjection, I would have noticed the police captain’s “I don’t care what the motive was” as a departure from the usual police approach to such mindless acts of violence. And your explanation provided an excellent opportunity for further discussion with my family.
We had a similar discussion regarding your thesis that “Madonna’s sleazy strip tease, and a fourteen year old girl’s expression of a desire to be educated, is the same thing to liberals.” That one confused both my wife and our daughter-in-law at first. But in the end they understood it and agreed.
Jeanette V. writes:
I found Tamisha Fuller’s Facebook page. Not surprising she is a large black woman with a huge ugly tattoo of flaming hearts below her right shoulder. I can see this tattoo because this large obese woman is wearing a strapless dress.
She also has a photo of one of her dread locked sons with his underwear showing. I will assume from these photos that her kids most likely will need their their own private policeman to keep them in line as well.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 14, 2012 08:56 PM | Send
