Colin Ferguson WAS taken down by three of the passengers when he stopped to reload. He had a knapsack full of bullets and could have done a lot worse without those three extraordinarily brave people.
He has been charded with second degree murder. First degree means murder that is planned and deliberate. Second degree murder is murder that is not first degee. Although he was carrying a really big knife, one can not be certain that he intended to kill someone with it, so the Corwn has a better chance at succeeding with second degree murder.
The sentence for murder is life, regardless of whether it is first degree murder or second degree muder. The difference in sentencing is in the period that must be served before the murder may apply for parole (and there is nothing that says that parole must be granted). For first degree murder, the murderer can not apply for parole for 25 years (although they can take a swing at the cat in reviewing this after 15 years). For second degree murder, the murderer can not appply for parole for between 10 and 25 years, depending on what the judge says after listening to what the jury recommends.
If he gets off for being bat shit crazy, he will simply end up in an institution until he is no longer crazy. For example, the fellow who rolled the bus a few years ago near Ignace (killing one person and injuring a lot of people), got off from the charges becauase at the material time he was wierded out on an overdose of prescription drugs. If the headhunter has a similar reason for being out of his mind, and measures can be taken to prevent futher occurances, then he too could walk.
My guess (and it is only a guess), is that either he will be locked up for life in jail and never get out, or he will be locked up in a psychiatric instution for life and never get out. Something about slaughter, gutting and decapitating a sleeping stranger might tend to make it difficult for him to convince anyone that he should be let free.
I’m sorry. I didn’t intend for it to be taken all that seriously.
How absolutely horrifying.
The headhunter was a 40 year old newspaper delivery guy with a wife: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/08/01/stabbing-victim.html
snicker Savaged by beavers snicker
Death by Snu-Snu!!
If so, would offering Communion before the state exercises the beaver penalty be considered …enabling?
I predict a lighter commute for the rest of the summer for you.
I will never bitch about those ‘starter’ newspapers being dropped tri-weekly on my lawn ever again. Really.
Yes, he was. And I agree that Ferguson would have kept shooting til he had used up all the ammo in his backpack. What the Wikipedia articles on the incident don’t mention was that the shot himself dry at least twice. The first time, when he shot the gun empty he stopped to reload, and then when the gun was reloaded, he continued shooting. IIRC it wasn’t until the second interruption in the shooting that the three passengers charged Ferguson, and stopped him. i.e. no one rushed Ferguson until the survivors had a reason to believe he’d keep shooting until he was stopped by other people.
I’m afraid that most of the articles about the LIRR shooting available on the Web for free access are about the trial which was, I think, even more bizarre than the shooting.
The one citation I can find that seems to give a detailed account of the attack comes from what appears to be a white supremacy web site. That site claims that Ferguson shot himself dry three times, and that no one charged him until he started reloading for a third time. http: // www. natvan. com/american-dissident-voices/adv122593.html (Link broken)
Apology accepted.
The perps name is obviously mainland chinese. immigrant?
There’s no mention of that in the article quoting his boss: Suspect’s boss in total shock, which seems to be the only article about his pre-bus life so far. Will have to wait for more details.
Possibly, but not necessarily. There are a number of Chinese people in Canada; while many are immigrants, many are also born here to immigrants (and children of immigrants, and so on). It is not uncommon for those born in Canada to Chinese parents to be given both a Chinese name and a western one. Those who immigrate from China will often adopt a western name to make things easier for their non-Chinese acquaintances. In short, the man’s name cannot be an indicator of his citizen or immigrant status.
Link to another story about him: no criminal record, no known mental health problems. Some suggestions of minor anti-social behaviour, like not talking to other tenants in the building, etc. Co-workers seem to have liked him.
The five dozen stab wounds sounds pretty newsworthy in itself.
That’s a National Lampoon/Onion headline right there.
Nonsense, it’s completely superfluous in a headline context. Five dozen stabs, a dozen stabs, five stabs-- in isolation, they are all equivalent. Can you recall the last psycho killer who got international attention purely on the number of times he stabbed a single victim? Would this thread have attracted this many responses if it did not include the “be-heading” detail? I know I wouldn’t have paid it a second thought. “Knife Killer Was Extra Thorough!” “Experts Comment: Did Killer have OCD?” These are not the sort of headlines that truly interesting killers inspire.
I fully expect that there have been murders involving far more stab wounds, that we’ve either never heard of, or have since forgotten-- simply because the victim was not decapitated, or turned into furniture, or used sexually before or afterward. Nobody finds “random killer who stabbed his victim an excessive number of times” suitably titillating water cooler chat.
No, there has to be something extra before the story really captures the public attention-- a remarkably large body count, an extremely attractive victim, clown paraphernalia: that sort of thing. One guy stabbing another guy to death just isn’t particularly interesting; it’s too common an occurence, probably even in Canada. As the saying goes, “Dog bites man” isn’t news.
Terrifiel, I disagree. The fact of the beheading did ensure that the story would be even more thoroughly covered. But without that curlicue, the story is still sensational enough that it would have been major news:
[ul][li]Guy murders complete stranger - some of the most dramatic and scariest kind of violence. There is nothing that the victim in this case could have done to prevent this attack. The emotional response from many people will be along the lines of, “Why can’t this happen again? Or to me?” Which would have made it bad enough.[/li][li]While on a Greyhound bus - which is perceived to be a universal condition. Lots and lots of people have ridden the bus, or ride the bus. That they may be thinking city transit buses doesn’t change that this is a prosaic venue, not where people expect to have to worry about knife wielding maniacs adds to the shock value.[/li][li]By stabbing him with a hunting knife. - IMNSHO most people viewing the news don’t own such tools. So have the image of these knives as being weapons, only. They appear to be exotic or outre. Just look at the posts in this thread lampooning various gun control arguments to see how many people are reacting to a perceived equivalence between the two types of weapons. [/li]
I know that I tend to think of knife killings as being less common than firearms killings. Which would just add to the shock value. Including the number of wounds to the victim just continues the theme.
[/ul]
I don’t deny your claim that it’s going to be the beheading that will keep this story in the public mind for longer than the less outre crime I’d described above, but to claim that without the beheading this wouldn’t be news in the US as well as across Canada seems naive.
I dunno about that. Just glancing at the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting stats, the number of people killed in the USA by “knives or cutting instruments” appears to hover comfortably around 1800 murder victims per year. How many got international coverage?
I didn’t make clear that I’m treating hunting knives, as opposed to penknives, or cooking knives, as being somewhat more outre. OTOH, looking at those stats, firearms murders outnumber knife murders by about five to one. So I will stick by the claim that for murder a knife is the less usual weapon.
I think that the personal relationship between victim and attacker (i.e. complete strangers) and the location of the attack have as much to do with the publicity as any other single factor.
I don’t have a cite for it, but my guess is going to be that most knife killings will involve domestic disturbances, using the weapon at hand - the kitchen cutlery. Which doesn’t really make news - it’s a ‘dog bites man’ story. 
Well, I suppose it’s possible that I am just exceptionally callous in this regard. (I’m certainly not discounting that possibility-- “Man beheaded in Canada? Must click on that link… NOW!”) But to me, “weapon: hunting knife” + “location: bus” + “victim: stranger” is more or less equivalent to a rather prosaic mugging-gone-wrong scenario, not an exceptionally lurid crime worthy of international attention. Remember also, there was only one death, and the killer was taken into custody. It’s not like he’s still lurking around out there waiting to strike again.
Granted, five dozen stab wounds is an unusual detail, but I don’t see it holding the public’s interest by itself in the same way that decapitation or immolation would. I certainly don’t see such a detail provoking national attention, let alone international attention, for a story that otherwise boils down to “Random Guy Killed on Bus.”
As it happens, the FBI site also breaks down its murder victim stats by various other parameters, including “Circumstances X Murder Weapon”. They’re not a lot of help in this regard though; most knife murders appear to fall into the “Other” category. I’m not sure whether that means most knife killings are provoked by random arguments, or whether the reporting authorities just didn’t bother to fill out that category. Probably a little of both.