Mr. Wolverton was working in his office and watching his guilty pleasure, Live with Kelly Ripa & Mike Stranahan this morning when the station preempted the broadcast. There was a shooting of two women in the Hammocks one dead and one air lifted to a trauma center. The shooter drove off from South Miami-Dade with an air pursuit following the shooter for over 30 miles at high speeds to U.S. 27 and Griffin Road in Weston where the shooter T-Boned a Mercedes, ejecting the Mercedes' driver spinning out both cars.
What was most chilling to my husband was that the police did not attend to the ejected driver at all for about 10 minutes. Over the course of the next hour a police cruiser pulled up beside (what looked like) the ejected man and ascertained the Mercedes driver was alive. They drug him behind the police cruiser. Called for air transport. Moved him again into the back seat of the cruiser to take him to the incoming helicopter. They called off the air transport. I surmise the (wo)man died.
UPDATE 3:00 EDT: The Mercedes Sedan driver was a woman.
The local station showed a tense perimeter of police surrounding the SUV for long minutes. We watched in horror not realizing the time stretched to over an hour...hour and a half, two hours. We had a report of shots fired. An SUV window broke. Apparently the incident ended with the SUV driver killing himself.
Three dead. One hanging onto life in a trauma center.
UPDATE: The daughter died too. Four dead.
Channel 10 showed the video live of the car crash and have posted it for anyone who wants to see it on their web site. Local 10's coverage showed the violence with minimal editing.
I'm passed wanting to know why. I want it to stop.
UPDATE 11:55 EDT: Another station reports sources said a mother and daughter were shot by the mother's boyfriend. Both were critically injured. The daughter was transported to Kendall Regional Hospital. Again, I don't care why the boyfriend thought shooting his girlfriend and her mother was a solution to his issues, I want this behavior to stop.
UPDATE 1:00 EDT: Our local affiliate showed this standoff live for 2 1/2 hours. For about 2 hours after the crash, the helicopter had the scene on camera. Nothing happened. 90 minutes of no activity other than police peering in without binoculars.
It was 1 1/2 hours after the crash before the armored SWAT vehicles arrived on scene in Weston which is a remote, upscale community just East of the Everglades. I suspect SWAT is located in urban Ft. Lauderdale and urban Miami-Dade, but that's only 45 minutes away from this intersection. We watched 2 1/2 hours of police SOP which was developed to serve and protect life.
Maybe if I hadn't watched a (wo)man die on a live feed for simply being in the right place at the wrong time, I'd not be affected by another senseless death. Maybe if I'd never driven that intersection, I'd feel safely removed. If I hadn't seen the shooter not even swerve to try and avoid the Mercedes sedan, I wouldn't feel anything. Maybe if the other driver had a chance to survive, I could ..... But, I did see it. It's making me ill.
I know the police will issue a report stating they did everything right. Too bad a guy (gal) died while they did everything right. I guess we can all go on with our lives now. Nothing to see here. Move along. No reason to feel anything other than, "Poor slob. S/He was just in the way."
The concept of "acceptable losses" and "collateral damage" is as abhorrent to me as the original crime. If we can't see that, feel that, then we got bigger problems than there are "too many guns".