One of the most popular TV shows of all time is about a man who turns to a life of crime because his insurance company won’t cover his cancer treatments. Healthcare CEOs aren’t exactly sympathetic figures in the public eye.
My sympathies to his wife and children.
This tracks with my understanding. Since I believe he walked up behind the victim at close range in plain sight, how would a suppressor help?
The whole point is to attract fewer eyewitnesses at the moment. Folks all around in every direction who all turn towards the sound of a heard unmuffled gunshot. No matter which way you run, it’s towards somebody who’s already aware a shooting just happened and can get a face-on look at you.
Far better if your suppressor reduces and ambiguates the noise enough that over all the other noises in a city, maybe 5% of the nearby people even notice any noise, and only a small percent of those recognize its significance and switch into crime witness recording mode. After they figure out where it came from.
When the movie “John Q” came out in the 00s, TPTB told people not to do this themselves. IIRC, it was about a irate father who goes into a hospital and takes a department hostage when his child is denied a heart transplant.
I saw a video promoting a five-inch long suppressor being used on an AR-15 style rifle. With the suppressor, the shot registered (I think – history is on a different computer) 120 db six inches away from the ejection port with (I believe). IIRC, just the sound of the bolt snapping shut, again, at a measured six inches, was 80 db.
I saw another video testing to see if subsonic ammunition was worth the price. Tests were with different weights of projectiles fired from a 9mm CZ-something. The heavier projectiles were the quietest, ranging from about 78 db for the subsonic to almost 82 db for the supersonic ones.
“See? I told you smoking was bad for your health!”
I just saw on another site that a candy bar wrapper and a water bottle were found at the site, and if they were left there by the shooter, my guess is that whoever did this WANTS to be caught, after leading a wild goose chase, of course.
Fraudulent claims account for about 10% of Medicare’s budget, an amount that I personally could cover quite a bit of un(der)insured people’s medical bills.
I was pretty shocked. But what is there to say about that?
It might prevent others from quickly being able to determine where the shot came from. Not people in the immediate vicinity of the shot, but people further away, who you might be passing as you make your escape. It might also prevent some people from realizing it was a gunshot at all. When I hear gunshots from inside my house (welcome to Arkansas), sometimes I’m not sure if they’re shots, fireworks, or something else because the sound is distorted because of my walls. Last year my neighbor shot someone (again, welcome to Arkansas), and I wasn’t absolutely sure it was a gunshot until I went outside and heard someone screaming.
The suppressor really didn’t help with the murder itself but may have aided in escape and evasion.
CNN now reporting that the bike the killer fled on was not a rented CitiBike like originally thought, which will probably make tracking him harder.
I don’t think this guy wants to be caught - but I do think he was trying to send a message. If I were a CEO of a company with a reputation for screwing people over I’d be pretty worried right now.
I’m holding out for “1970s-style paranoid conspiracy thriller” myself.
“Quit showboating, Addison, the man is gone.”
You gotta remember; while the detectives are interviewing witnesses, they’re thinking about rhe boxes they need to unload or the flowers that need arranging. (Based on years of watching openings to Law & Order episodes.)
Which is probably why they’ve taken down their websites listing the board members.
This whole angle makes me think it’s less likely to be someone that’s upset about a coverage decision for themselves / a loved one. Someone like that would, IMHO, not go to such lengths to avoid being identified and caught.
The “Law and Order” music is playing in my head.
I wonder if it is this or he was caught up in very bad things and paid the consequence.
Or if it there are some spurned lovers or other betrayed people just in his personal life and they took him out.
But, yes, my initial guess is vengeance for insurance denials, etc.
Maybe.
If my late wife had been screwed by UHC (she was not), I might be inclined to do the most professional hit I could. Me ending in jail would just make my problems worse. The challenge is that performing a professional-style hit & getting away with it is not as easy as it looks on TV. Many will try; most will fail.
Now somebody who’s blinded by rage or numb with depression won’t even try to not get caught. Our killer is, IMO, not that.