Does anybody read these?

The saga continues...

Apparently other passengers on the plane who were eye witnesses to Rigoberto Alpizar getting shot by federal air marshals said that Mr. Alpizar never said the word "bomb."

From this article:

McAlhany said he "absolutely never heard the word 'bomb' at all."

"The first time I heard the word 'bomb' was when I was interviewed by the
FBI," McAlhany said. "They kept asking if I heard him say the B-word. And I said, 'What is the B-word?' And they were like, 'Bomb.' I said no. They said, 'Are you sure?' And I am."

Added another passenger, Mary Gardner: "I did not hear him say that he had a bomb."

Officials say there was no bomb and they found no connection to terrorism.

I am still very upset about this. I feel so awful that this man got killed because he was mentally ill. I know that a lot of folks in the United States do not understand mental illness or are frightened by those who are mentally ill. I'll be honest, I've been in situations where someone was having an episode and I was uncomfortable. But when you know someone is mentally ill that's what you try to deal with. You don't kill them. It'd be different if there hadn't been someone telling the marshals the man was sick and needed meds. To me, it became a different situation then. And I also wondered why they didn't use a taser or shoot him in the leg to take him down. As I read further in this article, they tell that all federal marshals in any situation like this are trained to kill, not to maim.

This is a statement from the National Alliance on Mental Illness on the shooting.

posted by Laura at 10:56 AM