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  • Eighth grader was armed with a pellet gun

    Eighth grader was armed with a pellet gun

    8th grade student had pellet gun, on Advanced Life Support:

    It turns out that the eighth-grade student that was shot by Florida law enforcement for brandishing a firearm at them was using a pellet gun…

    “He was suicidal,” Eslinger said Friday morning, and while deputies attempted to establish a dialog, he raised his gun to his neck and said he would kill himself or “die one way or another,” Eslinger said. When the boy raised the pellet gun at one point, a deputy shot him, apparently unaware it wasn’t a real gun.

    Now the kid is on Advanced Life Support and might die. I hope you kids remember this if you ever think about bringing a gun, real or otherwise, to school.

  • Louis Jourdain Sentenced

    Louis Jourdain Sentenced

    Red Lake Teen Sentenced for Threats:

    A tribal chairman’s teenage son, once accused of conspiring with a 16-year-old friend who killed nine people on the Red Lake Indian Reservation, was sentenced behind closed doors Friday on a lesser charge of sending threatening messages.

    The sentence for Louis Jourdain, 17, wasn’t revealed, and his father, Floyd Jourdain Jr., said he would not disclose it.

    “The judge’s ruling will reflect what I’ve said all along … my son is a good kid,” the elder Jourdain said.

    Attorneys left the court without commenting.

    I’ll let you know if the sentence itself ever becomes known.

  • Eighth Grader Shot In Standoff

    Eighth Grader Shot In Standoff

    Deputy Shoots Eighth-Grader:

    An eighth grader from Milwee Middle School near Longwood, Florida was shot by local law enforcement during a standoff at the school.

    Investigators said students at Milwee Middle School on 1341 South Ronald Regan Blvd., near Longwood, Fla., noticed a Beretta gun in a backpack of a student at about 9:30 a.m. Friday.

    The two students confronted the boy and a fight broke out, officers said. The two students then told a resource officer.

    When the officer confronted the boy about the gun, he fled and was eventually cornered near a bathroom on campus.

    “During the situation the student said he was going to kill himself or die, one way or another,” Seminole County Don Eslinger said. “Deputies attempted to establish dialog. He raised a firearm and lethal force was used by the sheriff’s office.”

    The student was transported to a hospital with life-threatening injuries. Several reports indicated that the boy had died from his injuries but those reports were not confirmed.

    According to this article, the student pulled the gun in class and held another student hostage.

  • NJ Death Penalty Moratorium

    NJ Death Penalty Moratorium

    N.J. lawmakers vote to suspend executions:

    New Jersey lawmakers voted Monday to suspend executions while a task force studies the fairness and costs of imposing the death penalty.

    The measure now heads to Gov. Richard J. Codey, who has indicated he will sign it before leaving office on January 17.

    So, basically, New Jersey is putting a moratorium on the death penalty for now. Well, that’s all well and good, but you have to actually execute someone before you can have a moratorium. No one has been executed in New Jersey in over 40 years.

    “By its action today, the Assembly joins the Senate in signaling deep concern that the state’s death penalty system isn’t working,” said Celeste Fitzgerald, director of New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

    How do you know it’s not working when you don’t use it?

    Do you know who is on New Jersey’s Death Row? Jesse Timmendequas. For those of you who don’t know who Jesse Timmendequas is, he’s the scumbag that raped and killed 7-year-old Megan Kanka, the girl who Megan’s Law was named after. Here’s what the scumbag did to her…

    After raping her, Timmendequas killed her by slamming her head onto a dresser and putting a plastic bag on her head. He then strangled her with a belt. He later raped her body in his car. He discarded the body in a toybox and dumped it into a park.

    Does that sound like someone who the death penalty was applied to, unfairly?

    Anyway, don’t act like you’re doing some great humanitarian thing by calling for a moratorium when you haven’t used the damn thing in over 40 years. Use it or don’t use it but don’t act like that New Jersey has been this unstoppable killing machine of the wrongly accused when it hasn’t.

  • The 2005 Trenchie Awards

    The 2005 Trenchie Awards

    I wasn’t going to do one this year since the site has become more focused in its subject matter, but by popular demand I bring to you the 5th annual Trenchie awards.

    Best Movie I saw in 2005: Without a doubt, it has to be Sin City, which will probably cause at least one person to stop reading my site. It was the only movie that actually got me out of the house to go see a movie in the theaters.

    Worst Movie I saw in 2005: Strawberry Estates. This was an independent horror film that was absolutely painful to watch. It looks like it was filmed by 13-year-olds with their parents’ video camera. It introduced me to the evil That is Ron Bonk. Jade’s honorable mention was the remake of the Amityville Horror. She said no matter how many times Ryan Reynolds takes off his shirt, she still couldn’t watch that movie all the way through.

    Best Album of 2005: Advance and Vanquish by 3 Inches of Blood. This actually came out in late 2004, but 2005 was not a good year in albums for me and I bought it in 2005, and it’s the album I listened to most in 2005. If you like old school metal like Manowar, you’ll like 3 Inches of Blood.

    Worst Album of 2005: Angel of Retribution by Judas Priest. Maybe there was too much hype leading up to the release of the album where Rob Halford was reunited with Judas Priest, but it was definitely a disappointment. Only two good songs from what should have been the Album of the Year was disappointing.

    Best TV Show of 2005: House. Duh. Honorable mention goes to Bones and How I Met Your Mother.

    Worst TV Show of 2005: Law and Order. The entire franchise. I never liked CI. Regular L&O has gone seriously downhill since Jerry Orbach died. And SVU has been having these inane shows that start off with SVU type crimes and go off into these weird liberal preachy tangents that have nothing to do with SVU crimes.

    Best Wrestling Moment of 2005: The Night Matt Hardy returned unexpectedly to the WWE to attack Edge. Too bad they screwed up the development of the angle from there on out.

    Worst Wrestling Moment of 2005: The death of Eddie Guererro. Vaya Con Dios.

    Best Video game of 2005: Suikoden Tactics. A strategy game from the makers of the RPG series. It kept me addicted for weeks.

    Worst Video game of 2005: Suikoden IV. I’m a huge fan of the series but unless you’re using a cheat disc like Codebreaker, this game was painful to play.

    Dumbass of 2005: All the people who rushed to the gas pumps in the wake of Hurricane Katrina due to fears of a gas crisis. Thanks to you, we actually had a gas crisis for a while.

    Most Inane Political Agenda of 2005: All the “Free Tookie” idiots.

    Biggest Jackass Celebrity of 2005: Like there was any doubt on this one. Between the couch jumping and the personal attack on psychiatry and Brooke Shields, it has to go to Tom Cruise.

    That’s it for 2005 kids. Who knows if there will be a 6th annual awards entry.

  • Michelle Dohm backstory

    Michelle Dohm backstory

    I received an e-mail from someone in the Thurmont, Md. community about Michelle Dohm, which gives us a little backstory on Ms. Dohm herself. The e-mail has been edited slightly to protect the sender’s identity…

    In Sept. one boy found 2 knives and beer in his locker in the morning. He went to the office to tell and Michelle was there turning in a note she stated a woman in a white van with a blonde ponytail gave her. It stated 2 boys were bullying her son and had knives in their locker. Surprise, surprise. Michelle, known as nice but a busy body who has taught there and lived in Thurmont (a small town) for about 15 years did not know the woman or ask any questions. No signature on the letter either. People in town started asking why her? Why couldn’t she give a better description? She is personal friends with both families and emailed the one mom about the knives in her son’s locker before the administration could call them. As time goes on more letters…and then she starts insinuating a 12 year old boy wrote the letters. A friend of all the boys. He is then targeted by other the students. His locker was even vandalized with graffiti. All because this teacher stated he did it. Then that seemed to calm down and I assume the school started to suspect her and did their own investigation. The rest everyone knows. She was removed from the school and so on. We hear there is a lot more to come out and that is frightening in itself. What more could there be? Someone had to know the boys combination to place those things in there, including the letters. The school stated teachers could get access to those combinations which are kept on file in the school. Plus you would need to know where all the lockers were located. Come on, if it is not her then someone else in the school? She is the only one with ties to all 4 boys. Two others listed as getting letters were the janitors…men who claim to have seen her when school was out and then noticed letters sticking out of lockers after she went down the hall. Surprise…who would know that but her? Then they get threatening letters? Too weird for those of us hearing all the rumors. Which they all may be. Everyone needs to draw their own conclusions. We will all have to wait until Jan. 23 when they present all their evidence.

    Like the sender said, draw your own conclusions, and I guess we’ll find out more on the 23rd.

  • Michelle Dohm Transcript

    Michelle Dohm Transcript

    Thanks to L. from Lost in Lima Ohio, I now have the transcript of Michelle Dohm appearing on MSNBC. For those of you just joining us, Michelle Dohm is a Maryland teacher accused of stalking and threatening some of her own students. The transcript itself can be found here.

    She really didn’t say anything of consequence, but I do have to take her and her lawyer to task for two quotes from the transcript.

    First, from her lawyer…

    MORROW: Well, I think the explanation is probably a lot simpler than it would appear. I think that if you look at the rather juvenile nature of a lot of these notes, it would appear to be someone who is in the 6th-grade range. The fact of the matter is that it was probably something that was intended initially as a practical joke and unfortunately has been blown out of proportion. I think that’s what we may find when all of the dust settles in this case.

    I think the odds of the notes being written by a 6th grader are slim to none, and slim just left.

    Usually, 6th graders are usually around 12 years old. I really don’t think a 12-year-old would write a threat like “Tick-tock, tick-tock, is it a bomb or is it a clock? You ignored my note on the van. Now I will carry out my plan.” They would sooner write something like “Im gona kil yew”.

    More than likely, these notes were written by an adult. Now, remember, some of the notes were traced back to Dohm’s printer. Now, whether or not the notes were written by another teacher or other school employee remains to be seen.

    And Ms. Dohm had this to say about herself…

    DOHM: In all the years that I’ve been teaching, I’ve been the kind of teacher where a lot of kids like me. Parents like me. I have a lot of friends in the community, people who are really supportive of me, even right now. And I really can’t think of anybody in particular. All I can think is that it’s somebody who—maybe there’s jealousy involved with the boys and with me. I really don’t know.

    Not according to the comments I’ve been receiving from people in the Thurmont community. The opinion is from the comments I’ve received is that she’s a very pushy and overprotective parent and these threats are the result of some kind of social ostracizing against her son by members of the little league team.

    That’s all I have for now. More details to follow as they become available.

  • More on Michelle Dohm

    More on Michelle Dohm

    Md. Teacher Denies Threatening Students:

    This is a follow-up to the story of Michelle Dohm, the Maryland teacher accused of threatening and stalking some of her students.

    According to the article, she appeared on MSNBC last night to defend herself. I checked the MSNBC website but couldn’t find any mention of her. So if anyone saw the program she was on, could you let me know what she had to say because this article is severely lacking in details.

    Basically, the article says, “she was framed”. The article doesn’t say by whom, though. Well, she did say that there is no connection to her son not making the school baseball team.

    It seems we have means and motive, but again I’d like to hear about more of the evidence, besides some of the threatening notes came from her printer. However, the notes themselves seem too literate to be from your typical teen who usually uses all caps, no caps, and internet shorthand in their actual writings.

  • Md. teacher threatens to blow up students

    Md. teacher threatens to blow up students

    Middle School Teacher Arrested On Bomb Threats, Stalking:

    I think this is the first time I’ve ever heard of a teacher threatening to attack a school. A teacher by the name of Michelle Dohm, formerly of Thurmont Middle School in Maryland, has been charged with nine felony counts of threatening to explode a destructive device and two misdemeanor counts of stalking. She could get 100 years and be fined $100K. What did she do?…

    Dohm is accused of leaving or delivering threatening notes on at least five occasions from Sept. 28 through Nov. 21. The last note, found in the boy’s bathroom, prompted an evacuation of the school. It read: “Tick-tock, Tick-tock, now you’ll know it’s a bomb and not a clock. At 12 o’clock you’ll know I wasn’t kidding,” Rolle said.

    The messages targeted four male students, two of them repeatedly, Rolle said.

    In the first incident, on Sept. 28, Dohm is alleged to have given school administrators a note that she told them she got from a parent. It named two school baseball players and claimed they had been bullying the writer’s son, Rolle said. He said the note also suggested searching their lockers for a knife.

    Attached to the note was a message made of letters cut from magazines that spelled the words “suffer,” “bound,” “tied” and “die,” Rolle said.

    The next day, the boys named in the note reported to the school office that they’d found a knife and bottles of beer in one of their lockers, Rolle said.

    A week later, a student’s father found a threatening note on his van: “Play No. 20 and 24 and die,” Rolle said. Those were the uniform numbers of the baseball players mentioned in the earlier note, he said.

    On Oct. 17, Rolle said, four students found typed notes on their lockers, reading: “Tick-tock, tick-tock, is it a bomb or is it a clock? You ignored my note on the van. Now I will carry out my plan.” Investigators learned that the notes had been printed from Dohm’s school computer, Rolle said.

    On Nov. 1, custodians found folded-and-stapled notes stuck in two school lockers, followed by the discovery the next day of virtually identical notes in two other lockers, Rolle said. He said each of the computer-written notes was titled “Hit list,” and contained the names of at least two students, some teachers and the words, “Boom. Boom. Kill.”

    Dohm was removed from the classroom after those notes. In her exit interview with Superintendent Linda D. Burgee, Dohm said that if another note were found, it would prove she wasn’t to blame. The last note was found in the boy’s bathroom a week later, Rolle said.

    If all they’re basing this on is the notes came from Dohm’s school computer printer, then that’s pretty flimsy evidence. However, there could be more than they are letting on too. So I will be watching this one with interest.

  • Jourdain sentencing postponed

    Jourdain sentencing postponed

    Sentencing for Jourdain postponed, no new date set:

    The headline pretty much says it all.

    Louis Jourdain, the alleged co-conspirator in the Red Lake shootings, had his sentencing postponed. If you remember, Jourdain pleaded guilty to threatening interstate communications and charges of conspiracy to commit murder, and conspiracy to commit offenses against the United States were dropped.

    No new date has been set.

    The threatening interstate communications charge carries a maximum five-year sentence.