Phantom Clowns: Pied Piper of Hamelin

As I mentioned previously, one of the benefits of all the current media interest in the Phantom Clowns this time around are the historic overviews that are being revealed.

An old article that is being revisited is one by folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand.  Brunvand had just published a new collection, Curses! Broiled Again, and then wrote the following review of 1981 and 1985 cases, plus taking a then-contemporary look at some new 1991 Phantom Clowns encounters. While the article is important as it did review past recent events, it also reminded people that these stories go back to the Pied Piper of Hamelin folktales, dating from 1300 A.D.

Killer-clown rumors surfaced briefly again in 1985, then faded until this June [1991] - exactly 10 years after the first cycle of similar stories [in 1981].
This time the setting is New Jersey. My first report of the return of the phantom clowns came in a letter from West Orange, N.J., postmarked June 12 [1991]. I haven't been able to decipher the signature, but I did manage to make out the message:
"My mom teaches school in South Orange, N.J., and the kids at school are all terrified by the rumor that there is someone dressed as a clown driving around kidnapping children. The story has grown to the point where the clown has a name, Homey, and now they are saying that there are a whole bunch of clowns riding around in a van."
The next day I got a note from Joseph Zarra of Belleville, N.J., enclosing a clipping from the Newark Star-Ledger of an article headlined "Child-abducting 'clown' rumor persists in plaguing Essex towns." It's the same old story.
First-, second- and third-grade children in several communities were claiming that a van containing a clown, or several clowns, was cruising the streets looking for young victims to kill or abduct. The name "Homey" came from a character who frequently appears on the Fox network series In Living Color.
An East Orange police officer commented, "It just spread, from one kid to another, and continued until there was a kind of a hysteria."
One child, who later retracted his story, told police that a clown holding a machete in one hand and an Uzi machine gun in the other fired five shots at him before he drove him off with his bookbag.
New Jersey police questioned 700 schoolchildren, many of them "petrified" by the rumors, but concluded, "We couldn't substantiate the existence of a clown. We have no sightings, no assaults, no homicides."
Mysterious America, a 1983 book by Loren Coleman, gives a good account of the 1981 phantom-clown scares. In May, reports of clowns riding in vans and threatening children surfaced in Boston and some of the surrounding communities. Shortly afterward the same story showed up in Providence, R.I.; Kansas City, Mo.; Kansas City, Kan.; Omaha, Neb.; Denver; and Pittsburgh.
Many of the children's stories included specific details: They said that the vans were black, green, blue or yellow, and that the clowns were armed with swords, knives or guns.
The only other clown scare I'm aware of since that time occurred in late March 1985, when the Phoenix area experienced a brief period during which similar stories spread among local schoolchildren.
Although no police authorities anywhere have verified the existence of the phantom clowns, some people take the threat seriously. A warning circulated in a 1986 newsletter claimed that clowns were responsible for children being "spirited away to join the throngs of missing children whose pathetic faces peer at us from milk cartons, shopping bags and telephone bills."
If child-abductors disguised as clowns exist, why do they cease their nefarious activities for such long periods of time? Who is sending in these clowns, and why don't the police ever catch them?
Probably the source of the stories lies more in folklore than in actual crimes. Loren Coleman suggests a connection to the Pied Piper of Hamelin who, according to legend, lured away all the children of the German town, never to be seen again. ~ Jan Harold Brunvand, "Someone Keeps Sending in the Phantom Clowns," Deseret News, August 9, 1991.

For more on the Pied Piper of Hamelin, see also here.

"Pied" refers to clothing "having two or more different colors," the attire of a clown.

As has been noted by some comment makers, it is intriguing that a concentration of the recent reports have been in the Piedmont Triad in North Carolina. (See here and here.)

Cosmic Joker's Card Games? Faro, Trump, Tarot, and Bridge

Wreckage of a cargo ship believed to be the El Faro has been located in about 15,000 feet of water, the NTSB announced, media reports noted on November 1, 2015.

S. S. El Faro was a United States-flagged, combination roll-on/roll-off and lift-on/lift-off cargo ship. Built in 1975 by Sun Shipbuilding & Drydock Co. The vessel was renamed Northern Lights in 1991 and finally El Faro in 2006. It was lost at sea with all hands on October 1, 2015, after losing propulsion during Hurricane Joaquin.

El Faro departed Jacksonville, Florida, bound for Puerto Rico on the early morning of September 30, 2015, when then-Tropical Storm Joaquin was several hundred miles to the east. The following morning, after Joaquin had become a Category 3 hurricane, the vessel likely encountered swells of 20 to 40 ft (6.1 to 12.2 m) and winds in excess 80 kn (150 km/h; 92 mph) as it sailed near the storm's eye. Around 7:30 a.m., the ship had taken on water and was listing 15 degrees; however, the last report from the captain indicated the flooding to be contained. Shortly thereafter, the El Faro ceased all communications with shore and was declared missing on October 2.

The U.S. Coast Guard believes the missing cargo ship S.S El Faro sank.

The search for the 33 people aboard continued for several days. But it ended with no live survivors were found. Contact with El Faro was lost on Thursday as Hurricane Joaquin, a Category 4 hurricane, passed the Bahamas.

Authorities have found one body and debris (including a life ring), but have not seen the ship nor any survivors since the cargo vessel lost contact, until November 1st.

Three former crew members of El Faro, that apparently sank during Hurricane Joaquin, told CNN the ship had structural problems and questioned whether it should have sailed with a major storm in the region.

As it turns out, Faro is a card game.

Faro, Pharaoh, or Farobank is a late 17th-century French gambling card game. It is descended from basset, and belongs to the lansquenet and Monte Bank family of games due to the use of a banker and several players. Winning or losing occurs when cards turned up by the banker match those already exposed.

It is not a direct relative of poker, but faro was often just as popular, due to its fast action, easy-to-learn rules, and better odds than most games of chance. The game of faro is played with only one deck of cards and admits any number of players.

N. M. Arthur then shares these observations:

Well, my thoughts are that the recent maritime calamity, supposedly the worst in 60-70 years, had some of the hallmarks of fishiness, no Dagon pun intended, to begin with. 

So I eventually researched the name. I just think it's amusing in a macabre sort of way how many incidents have strange themes and physical, reported, agreed upon details, and then, ex-post-facto, other details emerge or are verifiable, which seem to confirm my more mystical, unreportable suspicions.

The two things I think are odd about the name "Faro" are its obvious connection to occult theocratic states, Pharaohnic systems that is...and the very fact of western card games being drawn into the twilight language mix of it all. Cards are quite the mystery in themselves, as I understand them, and have their known connections to Masonry and esoteric belief systems, Tarot, etc. The whole substance of the actual supposed loss of the cargo ship does indeed seem to be unlikely. But I proceed from the unpopular bedrock stance that we live in completely messed up times where there is more hidden than seen, and one of the fundamental notions of this view is that what passes for major news media events are in reality, religious rituals - occult religious rituals. This can be proven, and it has been amply enough if one knows how to analyze and where to look for objective info. 

Two critical aspects of such rituals are human sacrifice, needless to say, and numerology. Oh, and I had put off looking up the etymology of "Joaquin" until just now. You may suspect I find it creepy but totally unsurprising that the name is from "Joachim," which is one of the sacred twin pillars before the Temple Of Solomon, which is the central obsession and symbol of World Freemasonry, which is the entire obscured meaning of the events of Nein-11. Then there's the death toll number 33, always a fine indicator of foulness. Nothing to see here, move along.

The "Joachin" etymology point is solid enough for me, though the many different spellings imply some cloudiness of the kind typical for etymology. Both the (sacred by its precise definition) translation of the common male name, and the name of one of Solomon's pillars, are from Hebrew, which is the kabalistic point I'm half-heartedly making. These are kabalistic Hebrew expressions we seem to constantly be dealing with: ceremonial, topical, lexical magic workings that partake of gematria. One other detail I immediately sensed was pure theatrical, symbolic fishiness: The recovery of One, Solitary bit of refuse or debris from the ship's disappearance. It was a "life ring," and the reporting i read stated something about Two Letters only being visible on it, somehow. Don't recall what they were, and I don't really care. Im not interested in wallowing in black magic ceremonies, though it may seem otherwise to those that read this or know me. What i would suggest is that, as the pillar of Jachim is associated with, among many other concepts, the masculine force, possibly this (Saturnian) "life ring" is just a ham-fisted icon intended to imply The Feminine, and as such, we find represented here some sort of alchemical sex-majik ritual at Sea, the alleged matrix of all Life. It's frankly quite silly that the ring was made a big deal of, as bodies in emergency suits were also found, but apparently not yet recovered. And there are some connections between these sacred pillars and the planetary body Saturn, indicated by the images of ubiquitous Masonic tracing boards, and by general cosmology that anybody can read up on. "Saturn as relates to the pillars" is a subject i'm not very familiar with, at all, but possibly this strangely important life preserver/"ring" is a cognate of saturnian rings. Anyway, just another tragedy in deeply tragic times.

It was a tragedy that became comedic to some.

One of the most discussed presidential candidates is Donald Trump. "Trump," of course, is a term from card games.

The Bell Curve takes on the Sanders and Trump name game (here).

  

The Tarot card became significant in the Beltway Snipers. And there have been others. (See here.)

How about the frequent use of "Bridge" too? (See here.)

11 in 11: USA Highways Report Multiple Shootings

Someone is going to be killed, soon, in a highway shootings. The handwriting is all over this one.

We've seen times like this before. Highway shooters and snipers targeting apparently random individuals from along roadways, hillsides, and who knows where.

In the case of the Beltway Snipers of October 2002, the hidden agenda may have been that the wife of one of the shooters was going to be killed or, to the AfricanAmerican conspiracy theorists, it was that the high profile Kenneth Bridges was the covert target. (See, "Snipers Fall," Chapter 3 of The Copycat Effect.)

Who will be the person killed in the distractions of all the highway shootings happening now?

The media, in early September 2015, has focussed on I-10, near Phoenix, Arizona. "Eleven shootings in 11 days" read reporters on their newscasts, and the news headlines on September 10, 2015, told us "Phoenix Sniper Strikes Again: Arizona Cops Confirm 11th Freeway Shooting."

CNN proclaimed "Phoenix Interstate-10 shootings: Copycat may have struck."

"11 shootings in 11 days along busy Phoenix highway," says the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

But beyond Arizona, did you realize that during the end of August and September 2015, car shootings have taken place in Ohio (Akron, Cleveland, Cincinnati), North Carolina (Durham, East Charlotte), and Michigan (near Grand Rapids), in addition to the Arizona shootings along Phoenix's I-10?

Two vehicles, a commercial truck and a car, were shot about 3:20 a.m. Tuesday, September 1st, on Ohio 8 in Akron. A 35-year-old man in a car was hit in the leg. Witnesses told police the gunman fired shots from an SUV driving in the same direction.

In Cleveland, Ohio, an officer reported that someone shot at his police van about 11:30 p.m. Saturday, August 29, 2015, as he drove along St. Clair Avenue between East 140th and East 148th streets. The officer reported hearing two shots fired.

Shortly before midnight on Sunday, August 30, 2015, a car was shot by someone traveling in another car as they drove along I-75, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. Three people were shot, including one who was severely injured from shots fired from a rifle. The passengers in the car that was hit were on their way to a nightclub.

 
In southwestern Michigan, at least five cars were struck by what investigators believe were bullets from between July 29 and Aug. 21, CNN reported. Most of those shootings — on I-94 and I-69 in Calhoun County — happened during the daytime, according to Channel 8 in Grand Rapids. No one was injured, but police believe the shootings are related. 

In Durham, North Carolina, a man was shot in his torso about 3:30 a.m. Saturday, August 29, 2015, according to WRAL-TV. A woman riding in the passenger seat was shot in the leg. 

In East Charlotte, North Carolina, a man driving about 6 p.m. Saturday, August 29, 2015, was shot. The man told WSOC-TV that the shooter's car swerved up behind his car, then fired one shot that hit his car. 

And, as you know, in Phoenix, Arizona, someone or some people have shot at 11 cars driving on Interstate 10, according to the Arizona Department of Public Safety. One injury, a 13-year-old girl suffered a cut to her right ear occurred. 

Expect more.

In April 2015, there was a shooter or shooters along highways in Colorado.

With the Phoenix media attention, needless to say, there will be copycats. And it will get deadly. Killers have tended to hide their true motives in the midst of waves of shootings like these.

Where is all of this leading? I'm afraid to say someone is going to be killed on a highway from a mystery sniper, if the past is any indication.

See also:

The I-81 Killer

Listen To The Fates: Bushmasters Measure How Long Life Will Be

Tarot Cards As Criminal Twilight Language

Kroger Shooting

SM Smithfield recently left a comment tied to a January 27th school shooting near the Phoenix High School: "The Phoenix is the city symbol for Atlanta. And Lawrenceville is very much part of Atlanta."

Today, February 10, 2014, a new incident occurred in Lawrenceville:

Police are investigating a reported shooting inside a Gwinnett County Kroger, authorities said.
Witnesses told Channel 2 Gwinnett Bureau Chief Tony Thomas they heard gunshots inside the store on Grayson Highway in Lawrenceville.
Lawrenceville Police said two people have been transported to the hospital and two people have been taken into custody.
A police spokesman said there may have been an altercation before the shooting.
News Chopper 2 showed a large police presence and crime tape in the parking lot in front of the store entrance.
Kroger issued a statement on Monday afternoon.
"Our thoughts and prayers are with them and their families. No Kroger associates were injured. We are working closely with the Lawrenceville police department and providing information to assist with their investigation. Our store has been evacuated and will reopen at a later date." Source.

This appears to not be a shooting spree or mass shooting, but the result of a fight between two groups of people. Details will be forthcoming.

Self-Immolation + More School Incidents

Colorado. A cafeteria. A school. Violence. We have heard this all before.

The wave of recent school violence situations continued on Monday, January 27th. The epidemic of shootings has not gone unnoticed by the media. See the Los Angeles Times, "5 Days of School Shootings, Lockdowns, Scares Jolt U.S. Campus."

Now, for today...

Colorado ~ Self-Immolation

A 16-year-old boy (identified as Vince Nett, above, from Facebook) set himself on Monday in the cafeteria at a suburban Denver high school. Westminster Police Department spokeswoman Cheri Spottke said the boy didn't make any threats before starting the fire at about 7:15 a.m. at Standley Lake High School. A custodian was able to use a fire extinguisher to put out the blaze before it could spread. Several other students were in the cafeteria at the time, but none were injured. There are fire-related injuries over 80% of the body of the suicidal boy.

Two self-immolation attempts took place on Friday, October 4, 2013 (see here). One was on the Washington D.C. mall (with a resulting fatality) and the other in downtown Houston, Texas (with a survivor).

Monday's incident was the latest to affect a Denver-area school in recent weeks.

On Thursday, Columbine High School, where two gunmen killed 13 people in 1999, went on high security alert after receiving a series of threatening phone calls. The alert applied to a half-dozen other schools in the area, in the same school district as Standley Lake, but was lifted the same day.

On December 13, 2013, student gunman Karl Pierson, 17, fatally shot Claire Davis, a 17-year-old classmate at Arapahoe High School in Centennial before killing himself in the school's library.

Westminster, Colorado, was home to 10-year-old Jessica Ridgeway, who was abducted on her way to school and killed in 2012. Austin Sigg, who was 17 at the time of the crime, was sentenced to a life sentence plus 86 years. Jessica's disappearance put Westminster and neighboring Denver suburbs on edge as police, aided by an army of volunteers, searched for her and then her killer.

Iowa ~ Lockdown

Police were called to a Des Moines school and it was placed on lockdown Monday. Officers were at Lincoln RAILS Academy at 1000 Porter Avenue, which is just off Southwest 9th Street. Des Moines Schools officials said the lockdown ended about 12:15 p.m. It started less than an hour before that.

"This was due to a report we received from a parent indicating their student may have posed a threat to the school and our students," said a statement from the district.

District officials said officers and staff "thoroughly searched the school building. It was confirmed that the student had not been on campus today, and there was to be no threat to our school or students."

Illinois ~ Shooting

Carbondale Police say one juvenile is in custody following a shooting Monday at Carbondale Community High School’s Rebound school. Carbondale Community High School's Rebound program locates on North Oakland Avenue.

The Rebound program is located at the old high school campus on North Oakland Avenue. Police responded to the school around noon after a report of gun shots. One adult male was taken to Memorial Hospital of Carbondale. Police say they are still looking for another suspect.

Carbondale Community High School officials placed the main campus on East Walnut Street on lock-down for a period of time this afternoon. A school official said the lock down was a safety precaution but would not confirm if the action was related to the shooting at Rebound. An investigation continues. Carbondale Community High School’s Rebound program provides alternative education for students 16-years and older who need to complete their secondary education.

Georgia ~ Fatal shooting

Perhaps marginally related to school violence, but grouped as such by the media, a fatal shooting also took place in Georgia.

The Phoenix High School (its logo above) is located at 501 West Pike Street, Lawrenceville, Georgia.

One person was dead and two others were injured in a shooting near a suburban Atlanta high school Monday afternoon, police and school officials told NBC News. Phoenix High School in Lawrenceville, about 30 miles northeast of Atlanta, was in "soft lockdown" as investigators tried to determine whether any students were involved.
The shooting occurred partly in the roadway and partly in the parking lot at an address about 200 yards across a street from the school, which is on the busy main highway through Lawrenceville.

Destiny's Child Reappearance Predicts Future? [Darkness Update]

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Darkness Update:

Breaking News

"Officials: Superdome outage occurred when sensing equipment detected an 'abnormality'," according to the Associated Press.

This is what it looked like:

Below was what was written before the event. Did Enki's written insights and my imagery choices sense what was to occur??

Live blogging updates at the end too.

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Rumors are developing early on February 3, 2013, that Beyoncé's Destiny's Child may reappear to perform at the NFL's Super Bowl XLVII's Halftime Show. What does it mean? What if it is only Beyoncé?

Enki sent in the following earlier, and I reproduce it below as a guest blog at 8:30 AM on February 3, 2013:

The day before the Phoenix shootings, another high-profile shooting took place. In Alabama, Jimmy Lee Dykes shot a school bus driver and took a boy hostage. The name Dykes originally referenced Hadrian's Wall (also known as Hadrian's Dyke), the most heavily fortified border in Roman Britain. This resonates with what RDR mentioned about Hummels's concern about border security.

The ongoing Alabama standoff is near Destiny Church. Destiny's Child has been in the news recently, as there has been speculation that the three woman singing group [which syncs with Anon's Singer (sing), Hummels (hum), Harmon (harmony) observation] will make their first (phoenix-like) public reappearance during the Super Bowl halftime show.

Destiny's Child's Beyoncé Knowles was in the news recently when she performed at Obama's inauguration. Public attention on this event increased when it turned out that she had sung along to a recording of the national anthem. Obama and football are also linked by a statement he made in a recent interview in which he criticized football as being dangerous.

The trailer for Scientologist Tom Cruise's new movie Oblivion shows a bombed-out football stadium. The "Birthplace of Scientology" is Phoenix, Arizona. The Dark Knight Rises also had a scene where a football field is destroyed. As mentioned in this post, the Phoenix Police Media Relations Officer is named James Holmes.

Obviously, my attention has been drawn to the upcoming Super Bowl game. In some of my writings on this blog, I have used the metaphor of an alchemical current connecting Red Dawn events, and alchemical symbolism is to be found in this year's Super Bowl match-up between the Ravens and the 49ers.

Alchemists used the raven to symbolize the nigredo, or blackening, stage of the alchemical process. The alchemist experiences a dark night (Dark Knight) of the soul during this phase as he begins the journey of creating the Philosopher's Stone, a substance which can turn base metal into gold. Gold resonates with the Ravens' opposing team, as the 49ers were named after the prospectors who arrived in California around 1949 during the Gold Rush.

In the Downard/Hoffman reality tunnel, one of the primary goals of alchemy was the creation and destruction of primordial matter, a feat which was accomplished with the detonation of an atomic bomb at the Trinity Site. Destiny's Child recently released their first song since 2005: "Nuclear."
The alchemical current seems to be winding its way to New Orleans.

Let's hope it does not spark yet another tragedy.

Footnote:

Jim Brandon, author of Weird America, emailed me a message after this was published: "Referring to the fourth paragraph [above]: Hummel is bumble-bee in German. I wonder if that adds anything."

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Sunday Night Blackout Update

At 8:37 pm Eastern/7:37 pm Central, the Superdome experienced a blackout of half of the dome's lights during the Super Bowl game. This seemed to be an interesting event, in light of Enki's predictive notion that an "alchemical" dark k/night might be in play on this February 3th. Various people shared the following reactions and insights.

Brizdaz wrote in "Black Sunday: Loren Was Right, Sort Of," about the Black Sunday image I'd posted (before the game) above: "I remember seeing this poster that he used and thought, 'What's he saying that half the stadium lights would be knocked out on the night?' Well it turns out that they were, more or less."

A tweet from tobadzistsini noted this from Bane, in The Dark Knight Rises: "I was born in the darkness, molded by it, I didn't see the light until I was already a man."

Cory Panshin wrote, "Power outage? Well, I guess it's a more benign form of 'dark night' than many....It seems that only half the lights went out in an exact semi-circle. How yin-yang -- or Manichaean -- or something."

One of the more popular ads was one that goes into a blackout midway through it: "Wheat Thins - Night Vision Googles."

How about the links to the movie trailers appearing during the Super Bowl? Or the others mentioned or not mentioned?

Various movie trailers shown during this Super Bowl seemingly picked up on the "dark theme," included Iron Man 3 (May 3, 2013), Star Trek into Darkness (May 17, 2013), The Lone Ranger (July 3, 2013), and with this one mentioned, Thor: The Dark World (November 8, 2013). 

Intriguingly absent from the Super Bowl was a trailer for Man of Steel, producer Christopher Nolan's and others' dark film opening June 14, 2013.

Then there were these attempts at fast marketing, post-blackout:

Phoenix Shooting: 3 Dead & the Other James Holmes

Phoenix police confirmed that Steve Singer died from his injuries in the shooting. Singer owned Fusion Contact Centers, LLC, a local call center business.

The Aurora shooting suspect is named James Holmes.

But there is another James Holmes.

For several months before the July 20, 2012 theater event, a Phoenix police officer played the sync in his several media appearances. 

His name game name is James Holmes.

I wrote the paragraph above on December 22, 2012, and put it away in a draft on this blog. It seemed unnecessary to bring attention to this man, doing his duty, just because he happened to share two parts of the name of the Aurora suspect. 

"They're all around the high schools, and don't think that it's just south and west, because it's happening up north," Phoenix police Officer James Holmes 

said about teen fight clubs in June 2012 .

On January 30, 2013, events conspired to bring Officer James Holmes to the fore of another mass shooting. One person was dead and 70-year-old William Arthur Harmon III was declared the suspect. The person bringing this information to the media? James Holmes.

Phoenix Police Media Relations Officer James Holmes is shown on the scene of another local crime event over two years ago.

Today, headlines shouted out, "Six people injured in Phoenix, Arizona mass shooting."

The shooting occurred around 10:30 a.m. MST (12:30 p.m. EST) at an office building in Phoenix, Arizona. Police believe that the shooter is a white male in his 60s, who was seen fleeing the scene in a white SUV.... After being questioned by reporters, Officer James Holmes said the shooter appears to have been working alone and that the reason behind the attack remains unknown. Source.

In a breaking report, Yahoo News posted this early:

Phoenix Police spokesman James Holmes said the people who were shot were taken from the scene to a local hospital, and there was no immediate word on their condition.

Changing their story later to delete Holmes' first name entirely, and leaving this awful reference, it appeared in their later article:

Police said they were searching for a white man in his sixties with gray hair. "Some say he left the building in a vehicle, and some say that he was still inside, so that's kind of where we are at," police spokesman Holmes said.

The gunfire occurred at an office complex on 16th Street north of Glendale Avenue.

The Arizona Republic reported that Mark Hummels, a partner with Osborn Maledon and president of the Phoenix chapter of the Federal Bar Association, is among the wounded. He was shot after leaving a mediation session, and was reported to have a strong pulse after surgery.

2nd Victim Dies: Mark Hummels (Source: omlaw.com)

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UPDATE:

Mark Hummels, the attorney gravely wounded in a downtown office shooting Wednesday, died Thursday night after being taken off life support, according to his colleagues at the law firm of Osborn Maledon.

Hummels, 43, was one of three people police said were shot by Arthur Douglas Harmon, 70, apparently over a long-running financial dispute.

Steven Singer, 48, a call-center company CEO, died from his wounds Wednesday; Harmon’s body was found Thursday in Mesa, dead from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound; a third victim shot in the hand, Nicole Hampton, 32, is expected to be released from hospital Friday.

Doctors declared Hummels to be brain-dead as a result of his injuries, according to the Arizona Republic on February 1, 2013.



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Steve Martos, also of the Phoenix Police Department, said officers staged outside a home in the area of 14600 block of North 28th Street in Phoenix in connection to the shooting. Police have said they believe the home is connected in some way to the office shooting.

The timing was another one of those "coincidences," for the Phoenix shooting was mentioned during today's first day of congressional hearings about gun violence by victims from the Tuscon, Arizona shooting. Mark Kelly (a twin), the former shuttle astronaut and husband of former Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, told the Senate panel that there had been "what seems to be a shooting with multiple victims with multiple shots fired."