2018: Georgia, Oregon and New York Self-Immolations

Self-immolations have been a form of political protest in modern times since a number of Buddhist monks (including the most famous case of Thích Quảng Đức) immolated themselves by fire in protest of the persecution of Buddhists under the administration of Roman Catholic President Ngô Đình Diệm in South Vietnam. The immolations spread through Asia and to America from 1963 to 1971.

In the third known high-profile fire suicide attempt of 2018, a man is fighting for his life at Atlanta's Grady Memorial Hospital with burns to 85 to 90 percent of his body.

Georgia Veteran

A veteran who was fed up with treatment by the Department of Veterans Affairs set himself on fire in protest outside of the Georgia State Capitol building (seen above) in downtown Atlanta on June 26, 2018.

The 58-year-old from Mableton, Georgia, who has not yet been identified, parked his car alongside the Capitol before walking toward the building, where he commenced self-immolation, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

“He was strapped with some homemade incendiary devices (and) firecrackers, and doused himself with some kind of flammable liquid,” Georgia State Patrol Captain Mark Perry told the Atlanta newspaper.

The Georgia immolation appears to follow the same pattern of the immolation of Charles Ingram, a 51-year-old Gulf War veteran, who grew increasing frustrated by the Department of Veterans Affairs. In March 2016, shortly before his VA appointment, Ingram went to the clinic in Northfield, N.J., doused himself in gasoline and lit himself on fire. The clinic was closed at the time. He died.

Chloe Sagal

Exactly a week before, on Tuesday, June 19, 2018, a person lit themselves on fire in Lownsdale Square (see above), the park located across from the Multnomah County Courthouse in downtown Portland, Oregon.

The person entered the park, on crutches, and barely able to walk, wearing a red scarf around the neck. Then the individual sat down and began reading a statement about homelessness and mental health issues. The person died at the hospital.

The local media reported some confusion about the gender of the person. It turns out it was video developer Chloe Sagal, 31, who identified herself as trans.

Variety wrote:

Sagal was best known for her horror game “Homesick,” which follows the story of a woman searching for her friends inside the house where her family was murdered. She also made headlines in 2013 when she ran an Indiegogo campaign that was ostensibly for metal poisoning treatment. But, according to Eurogamer, the money was instead used for gender alteration surgery.

David Buckel

Another self-immolation of 2018 occurred on Saturday, April 14, 2018, when David Buckel, 60, a prominent green activist and lawyer for LGBT rights, died after setting himself on fire in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park protesting ecological destruction and global warming. The famed 60 year old attorney left behind a suicide note in which Buckel told of his intention of burning himself to death with "fossil fuel" in a bid to show how mankind was likewise killing itself. Buckel also worked as an urban gardener and ecologist with the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, helping run what he called the largest composting program in the country to use only renewable sources of energy.

The New York Daily News headlined the story.

Other related immolation articles:

Burning Man 2017

Immolations 2017

Palace Self-Immolation 2015

Aurora Self-Immolation 2014

Colorado Self-Immolation 2014

D. C. Self-Immolation 2013: 1, 2, 3

h/t to Media Monarchy for GA news.

Zodiac Killer & Portland Stabbings

On May 26, 2017, in Portland, Oregon, two people were killed and one was injured after a stabbing on a local MAX train. On Saturday afternoon, police identified the two men killed as Ricky John Best, age 53, who died at the scene; and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai Meche, 23, who died at the hospital. A third man, 21-year-old Micah David-Cole Fletcher, is injured but expected to survive.

Heroes: Rick Best, 53, and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, 23.

Severely injured was Micah David-Cole Fletcher, 21, of Southeast Portland, Oregon.

The Friday afternoon disturbance began when a man on a light-rail train "began yelling various remarks that would best be characterized as hate speech toward a variety of ethnicities and religions." Among the subjects of his diatribe were two young women who appeared to be Muslim; one was wearing a hijab.

Portland police have charged Jeremy Joseph Christian with two counts of murder and one count of attempted murder, according to the Portland Police.

"In the midst of his ranting and raving, some people approached him and appeared to try to intervene with his behavior and some of the people that he was yelling at," Sgt. Pete Simpson told The Oregonian. "They were attacked viciously."

The suspect stabbed (in the throat area) the three men before fleeing the train; police located him and took him into custody.

Police identified the suspect as 35-year-old Jeremy Joseph Christian of North Portland, Oregon. He has been booked on two counts each of aggravated murder and intimidation in the second degree, and one count each of attempted murder and being a felon in possession of a restricted weapon.

The suspect was found to have past associations with a free-flowing set of political ideas and causes based more in his own mental health issues than in any foundation beliefs.

As media accounts detailed, Christian had been a prominent and vocal participant in recent “alt-right” rallies in Portland, Oregon. At a “free speech rally” in Montavilla City Park on April 29, 2017, he was captured on video wrapped in an American flag, giving Nazi salutes. Earlier that day, police reportedly confiscated a baseball bat from him. Local reporters captured him yelling racial slurs and threatening to shoot “anyone who tries to disarm me.”

Cat Davila, who was among counter-protesters at the free speech rally, said Christian “showed up part way through the event and came striding straight toward the counter-demonstrator crowd very purposefully waving a baseball bat by his side and staring us down.”

As he drew closer, Davila said, police “blocked him and took his bat and from then on he just yelled a lot.”

Christian wore, during past demonstrations, a teeshirt showing the drawing of the Zodiac Killer.

The Zodiac Killer was a serial killer who operated in northern California in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The killer's identity remains unknown. The Zodiac murdered victims in Benicia, Vallejo, Lake Berryessa, and San Francisco between December 1968 and October 1969. Four men and three women between the ages of 16 and 29 were targeted. The killer originated the name "Zodiac" in a series of taunting letters sent to the local Bay Area press. These letters included four cryptograms (or ciphers). Of the four cryptograms sent, only one has been definitively solved.

A drawing of the Zodiac Killer suspect has become infamous in popular culture. On September 27, 1969, Pacific Union College students Bryan Hartnell and Cecelia Shepard were picnicking at Lake Berryessa on a small island connected by a sand spit to Twin Oak Ridge. A man approached them wearing a black executioner's-type hood with clip-on sunglasses over the eye-holes and a bib-like device on his chest that had a white 3"x3" cross-circle symbol on it. He approached them with a gun, which Hartnell believed to be a .45.

This is the drawing on the teeshirt worn by Christian.

Aurora Again

Aurora means "dawn," and another Aurora has been touched by tragedy. 

The Oregon State Police identified a teen who died around 4:00 pm, March 25, 2017, after getting pinned by a log at a Bandon beach, specifically South Jetty Park beach.

Aurora Genai Sheffel, 14, of Eugene died from her injuries after attempts by a Bandon police officer and paramedics to save her life.

Witnesses said the log had rolled over on top of her, and they were able to remove the wood after several attempts. She was rushed by crews to the hospital where she was pronounced dead.

Sheffel's stepfather, David Wederquist, told the Register-Guard on Sunday, March 26, 2017, that Sheffel and two friends were playing on the log and taking selfies at the start of their spring break. Her friends jumped off, but she did not.

"They were just taking pictures and posing," he told the newspaper.

Her father said Sheffel, a freshman who earned straight As, had recently been selected for North Eugene High School's varsity cheerleading squad.

PNW logs...

Catherine Elizabeth Coulson (October 22, 1943 – September 28, 2015) was an American stage and screen actress who worked behind the scenes on various studio features, magazine shows and independent films as well as acting in theater and film since the age of 15. She is best known for her role as Margaret Lanterman, the enigmatic Log Lady, in the David Lynch TV series Twin Peaks, based in the fictional Pacific Northwest location of Twin Peaks, Washington State.

Twin Peaks was broadcast for 18 episodes in 1990-1991. The story began in 1989, logger Pete Martell discovers a naked corpse wrapped in plastic on the bank of a river outside the town of Twin Peaks, Washington. The body is identified as homecoming queen Laura 

Palmer.

A reboot of Twin Peaks, in a limited series event, will consist of 18 episodes, premiering on Showtime on May 21, 2017.

Umpqua Community College Shooting: 10 Dead

Chris Harper-Mercer, a/k/a Christopher Sean Mercer

Update: Gunman was enrolled in class where fatal shootings occurred at Oregon's Umpqua Community College, sheriff says.

On October 1, 2015, at about 10:38 am (local time), a college shooting took place at the Umpqua Community College, in Roseburg, Douglas County, Oregon. Reports indicate that at least 10 (perhaps as many as 15) students have died and 20 have been injured. The shooter appeared to have engaged in an exchange of gunfire, been "neutralized" and is dead. The cause of death of the shooter in the deadly rampage at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, was suicide, Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin said on Saturday, October 3, 2015.

Nine victims were killed, the gunman died by suicide, resulting in ten deaths, and 9 others were injured.

The names of the victims are:

-- Lucero Alcaraz, 19

-- Treven Taylor Anspach, 20

-- Rebecka Ann Carnes, 18

-- Quinn Glen Cooper, 18

-- Kim Saltmarsh Dietz, 59

-- Lucas Eibel, 18

-- Jason Dale Johnson, 34

-- Lawrence Levine, 67 (the teacher of the class in which the shooter invaded)

-- Sarena Dawn Moore, 44

Reader Cory Panshin writes: "The sheriff handling the case is a Sandy Hook truther."

About 3,300 students attend Umqua Community College attend in school there full-time, and more than 16,000 attend on a part-time basis.

ABC News reported that the gunman had three handguns and a long gun.

By 9:00 PM EDT, Thursday, the Umpqua Community College shooter was identified as 26-year-old Chris Harper-Mercer, law enforcement sources confirm to CBS News, Fox News, NBC News, and other media.

Soon thereafter, the profiling began. He is British-born, his last name is hyphenated because it is both of his parents' surnames, he posts IRA-related images, and more. Chris Harper-Mercer, only two days before the killings, apparently downloaded the documentary Surviving Sandy Hook, as well as in the past the "conspiracy" film Lost Secrets of the Illuminati, and the "occult magazine Phenomena," says the Guardian. 

The gunman, reportedly, posted online on September 30th, saying he would be shooting at a school.

A rather weird homophobic remark ["(all homosexual reddit users")] appeared on a brief initial description of the shooting on Umpqua Community College's Wikipedia page:

What does "Umpqua" mean? "Thundering waters" or "across the waters" are two popular translations for this surviving word of the Umpqua language. Another definition is "satisfied" -- as in a full stomach. Source.

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In my book, The Copycat Effect (2004), I discussed the Springfield, Oregon shooting, which took place on May 21, 1998. Two students were killed, 22 others wounded in the cafeteria at Thurston High School by 15-year-old Kip Kinkel. His parents were later found dead at home. Also,

On the same day, May 21, 1998, 200 miles due north, at the end of the school day, Miles Fox, 15, a student of Onalaska High School, Onalaska, Washington, took a young woman hostage from his bus to his home, and died by suicide from a shot to his head. As the story aired on radio and television, Ricardo Martin, 15, shot himself with a .38 caliber pistol and died on the campus of Rialto High School, in Rialto, California.

Roseburg had a previous school shooting on February 23, 2006.

Student Vincent Leodoro, 14, walked into Roseburg High School carrying a semi-automatic pistol loaded with hollow-point bullets and shot fellow student Joseph Monti four times in the back while they were in the school courtyard. Monti, then 16, survived.

Joseph Monti, 16, was shot four times during a shooting at Roseburg High School, in Roseburg, Ore., Feb. 23, 2006. (Photo: Roseburg School District via AP)

Is There Racism In Reporting School Shootings?

Deciding what was racist use to be so easy. Today, the media, sometimes due to law enforcement, sometimes not, is putting out confusing messages.

Take for instance news out of Portland, Oregon on Friday.

Four students were shot in front of a peace mural just outside of their alternative Rosemary Anderson High School in Portland, Oregon, at a North Killingsworth location. The gunmen fled the scene, prompting panic and a massive search on an otherwise quiet Friday on December 12, 2014.

Portland Police Department spokesman Sgt. Pete Simpson told the media that it could be “gang related.”

Describing those involved as AfricanAmericans, Simpson said, "The suspect may be affiliated with a gang but it's not known if the shooting was gang-related or 'a personal beef.'"

One victim, Taylor Zimmers, 16, was in critical condition. Two more, David Jackson-Liday, 20, and Labraye Franklin, 17, were in fair condition. Olyvia Batson, 17, was treated at the scene after a bullet grazed her foot.

The family of one of the victims told KATU News that he has “no gang affiliations.”

Confusing reports of a "drive-by" shooting turned into eyewitness accounts that the gunman or gunmen had "run away" from the scene.

Was it a school shooting or not? The media appears confused by how to handle shootings at schools involving blacks.

Portland, Oregon, police arrested a 22-year-old man, Lonzo Murphy (pictured), early Saturday in connection with the shooting.

Okay, let's review: The Friday shooting appeared to be gang-related, police said. Witnesses told authorities there may have been a dispute outside Rosemary Anderson High School just before the shooting occurred at a street corner. The victims are students or in affiliated job training programs.

Gang investigators "feel comfortable saying this is a gang-related shooting based on some of the people involved," Sgt. Pete Simpson said. Police believe the shooter has gang ties. 

But there's no real evidence of any of those statements.

Another school shooting occurred about six months earlier in the Portland area. A 14-year-old freshman at the school, named Emilio Hoffman, was killed. A male teen gunman with a semi-automatic weapon (reportedly an AK-15) and one victim were both dead after shots were fired at Reynolds High School in Troutdale, Multnomah County, Oregon on June 10, 2014. The killer was identified as Jared Michael Padgett.

The Portland, Oregon, shooting of December 12, 2014, comes just two days shy of the second anniversary of the Sandy Hook massacre in Connecticut.

The syncs between the Aurora, the Clackamas, and the Sandy Hook shootings were strong. Most school shootings are traditionally seen as "white male students" killing their classmates or students at their former schools.

The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting occurred on December 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut, when 20-year-old Adam Lanza fatally shot 20 children and 6 adult staff members. Prior to driving to the school, Lanza shot and killed his mother at their Newtown home. As first responders arrived at the scene, Lanza died by suicide by shooting himself in the head.

On December 11, 2012, a shooting occurred at the Clackamas Town Center in unincorporated Clackamas County, outside the city of Portland, Oregon. The gunman, 22-year-old Jacob Tyler Roberts, ran into the shopping center wearing tactical clothing and a hockey mask and opened fire on shoppers and employees with a stolen Bushmaster M4 Type Carbine. He fired a total of seventeen shots, killing two people and seriously wounding a third person before shooing himself, dying by suicide.

Did everyone really think that racism would disappear just because an AfricanAmerican was elected President?

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The media loves the simplistic phrase "school shooting" to whip up interest in their stories. The problem is, they don't exactly know what to do when the shootings involve non-whites.

In the fall of 2005, there was a nonfatal "school shooting" in Saginaw, Michigan. According to the media, a probable "gang-member" Clarence Russell III, 15, was accused of shooting fellow sophomore Daniel Foster, 15, October 20, near a stairwell inside Saginaw High School. Foster did not die of his injuries, and some speculation occurred that it was a "gang-related shooting" (translate this from the media as "African-American"*). Days later, on October 24, in a drive-by shooting, three teens were targeted, with two hit. The one teen who was not shot was the 17-year-old half brother of Clarence Russell III.

On October 10, 2007, Asa Coon (above), a 14-year-old student at SuccessTech Academy high school in Cleveland, Ohio shot four people, including two teachers and two students. Asa H. Coon was a Caucasian going to a predominantly AfricanAmerican school. His was a face and personality that was the different one in that enviornment. He was a "death Goth" Columbine copycat in a trenchcoat, according to some media accounts. His shooting resulted in only one death - his own when he turned the gun on himself.

In 2007, I made these observations:

I've written in recent years of the diverse and ethnic underpinnings that must be acknowledged in these school shootings, and the shifting trend from white rural to white suburban to more ethnicities taking on the mantle of Columbine, over and above their own cultural background. This school shooting cries out for further analysis on that level too.
The [Cleveland's] shooter had a name that hardly can be ignored, and must have been a burden to carry. "Coon" is an insulting term for a black person. "Coon" is known as a derogatory term for AfricanAmericans, and is similar to the n-word. Its origins are traced back to a shortened form of the word "raccoon," used in reference to the animal. The black eye masks and noctural habits of the animal paralleled the characteristics of typical robbers and thiefs. The stereotype was then applied to black people. It was used extensively in the South, but then followed blacks into the Northern urban areas where they settled.
This young man named Coon was a white student living alone with a Goth Columbine mentality among AfricanAmericans. He is said to have liked Marilyn Manson versus God. Allegedly, the fight that resulted in his suspension was related to an argument about his Devil worship. Simplistic ways to describe a life, I know, but that is what you get from the media after a shooting.

*"Gang-related" incorrectly means "black teens," to the media: In 1996, 50 percent of gang members were juveniles (i.e., younger than 18) and 50 percent were adults (i.e., 18 and older). In 1999, these numbers were 37 percent and 63 percent, respectively. In 1999, respondents reported that 47 percent of gang members were Hispanic, 31 percent African American, 13 percent white, 7 percent Asian, and 2 percent "other" (Source: National Youth Gang Survey Trends From 1996 to 2000, 2002).

Troutdale High School Shooting

A male teen gunman with a semi-automatic weapon (reportedly an AK-15) and one victim are both dead after shots were fired at Reynolds High School in Troutdale, Multnomah County, Oregon early Tuesday, June 10, 2014.

The gunman walked into an Oregon high school and fatally shot a student.

The shooting started in a gym detached from the main school building. A 14-year-old freshman at the school, named Emilio Hoffman (pictured), was fatally shot in the boys' locker room. Physical education teacher Todd Rispler also was in the gym and was grazed by a bullet.

Authorities found the shooter, a male teenager, dead a short time after the incident began. Authorities did not say whether the gunman was killed by police or took his own life.

On Wednesday, the killer was identified as Jared Michael Padgett*. He was a 15 year old freshman, in ROTC, who liked guns. This continues the Jared/Jerad/Jared lexilink we have seen lately.

Police responded to reports that shots were fired at the school at 8:07 a.m. local time as the situation unfolded in the small town east of Portland, Oregon.

At 10 a.m. local time, Troutdale Police Department Chief Scott Anderson said at the first televised press conference to follow the incident that the shooter entered the school and fatally shot one student before being neutralized. He was found dead.

“Today is a very tragic day,” Anderson said.

Reynolds was put on lockdown immediately after shots were first fired, though some students were soon after evacuated from the building.

Troutdale had a population of roughly 16,000 as of the 2010 census, and is situated just south of the state’s border with Washington. Around 2,800 students were enrolled at the school during the 2008-2009 academic year, and the school is presently the second-largest high school in the state, according to Troutdale Mayor Doug Daoust.

Troutdale was incorporated on October 2, 1907. It was named after the country home of Captain John Harlow, a former sea captain from Maine, and a successful Portland, Oregon businessman. According to an article in the Oregonian in 1959, he named his home Troutdale because it had a "small dale near his house where it had a fish pond which he stocked with trout."

Troutdale is a quiet tourist town of 15,000 near the Columbia River, about 16 miles east of downtown Portland.

It will be recalled on June 5, 2014, a 19-year-old man was killed and two other people wounded when a gunman opened fire in a building at Seattle Pacific University.

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*Name Game:

Jared (Hebrew root YRD) means "he who descended" and "a ruling, commanding, coming down."

Michael (Hebrew) means "who is like God" (mi-who, ke-as or like, El-deity), which in Talmudic tradition is interpreted as a rhetorical question: "Who is like God?" (which expects an answer in the negative) to imply that no one is like God. In this way, Michael is reinterpreted as a symbol of humility before God.

Plaggett (French) is a diminutive variant of Page, meaning a "page, a young boy in training as a personal assistant to a knight," "an attendant."

Two Washington Workplace Shootings In 2 Days

Vancouver, Washington State, is located across the river from Portland, Oregon. In two days, two workplace shootings have occurred.

The first shooting happened on Monday, February 3, 2014, when a paint company driver fatally shot a company manager and then killed himself at a Vancouver business park.

Police found the manager, Ryan E. Momeny, 45, lying dead in front of the Benjamin Moore Paint distribution center, authorities said. Robert R. Brown, 64, a company driver, was found inside a vehicle in the parking lot, dead from what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Vancouver police said.

Then on Tuesday afternoon, February 4th, a 46-year-old woman was taken into custody after the shooting of a 45-year-old man. She also was injured.

Tuesday's shooting happened just before 4 p.m. at the Center for Community Health on the Department of Veterans Affairs campus, Neiman said.

A spokesman for the VA Medical Center in Portland, Oregon, said the man is a VA employee of the regional Veterans Integrated Service Network, a network of medical centers, vet centers and outpatient clinics. Spokesman Daniel Herrigstad described the man's injuries as "non-life-threatening."

Vancouver shares its name with the larger city of Vancouver located 305 miles (491 km) north in the Canadian province of British Columbia. Both cities were named in honor of sea captain George Vancouver, although the Canadian city was incorporated 29 years after the incorporation of Vancouver, Washington. This occurred more than 60 years after the name Vancouver was first used in reference to the historic Fort Vancouver trading post on the Columbia River. City officials have periodically suggested changing the U.S. city's name to Fort Vancouver, Vancouver USA, or even Old Vancouver to reduce confusion with its northern neighbor. Many Pacific Northwest residents distinguish between the two cities by referring to the Canadian city as "Vancouver, B.C." and the United States one as "Vancouver, Washington," or "Vancouver USA." Local nicknames include: "Vantucky" (though the nickname is often used as a derogatory term)" and "The 'Couv(e)". In 2013, the nickname "Vansterdam" surfaced as a result of the legalization of marijuana in the state of Washington. This name is a clear reference to Amsterdam in the Netherlands. (Source)

Statue at top: George Vancouver, found at King's Lynn, Norfolk, Great Britain. 

Statue directly above: George Vancouver, found at Vancouver, Washington, USA. Corner of 6th and Esther Steets, across from Esther Short Park.