Army reject kills five, self, in Seattle
Ian Stawicki, a 40-year-old former soldier, shot five people in Seattle yesterday before killing himself as the Seattle Police Department closed in on him. He started his shooting spree in a cafe in the University District by shooting five people, one of whom survived, before heading downtown and killing a seemingly random woman in a car jacking. His family didn’t express any surprise and described him as having mental problems and “a lot of anger”. According to the local ABC News affiliate, KOMO, Stawicki did a brief stint in the Army in the early 90’s and was based at Fort Drum before being discharged as “unsuitable” for the military.
When his identity first broke and before any history of his time in the Army came out KOMO ran the picture of him above, wearing a gray Army PT shirt. KOMO also went out of their way to mention that he suffered hearing loss from a grenade going off near his head during training, presumably to set up the narrative of Stawicki suffering from some sort of service induced PTSD. This narrative is already being diligently picked up on by some commentators. We’ll see if there’s any further attempt to beat this meme to death.
And, in the tradition of never letting a good tragedy go to waste, Jonathan Golob and the always petulantly fussy David Goldstein, both of alt weekly Seattle paper The Stranger, used the “opportunity” to attack “right-wing propagandists” and the Second Amendment, quite literally while the bodies were still warm. Their solutions are, of course, right down the center of The Stranger’s extremist, left-wing Progressive statism, calling for a larger welfare apparatus (but not “inhumanly” institutionalizing crazy people) and restricting law abiding people’s access to guns. Stay classy, guys.
Category: Breaking News, Crime, Gun Grabbing Fascists, Shitbags
it’s always the objects fault, never the person’s. Bad gun!! Bad gun!!!
“He started his shooting spree in a cafe in the University District by shooting five . . .” —
Obviously, all College Professors and College Students
SHOULD BE ARMED TO THE TEETH .
I had an 81 MM mortar go off next to my head about a few hundred times…and an M60 and a M2 50 cal, and an M203….what’s that ringing???
this dipshitturd might have tossed his gernade like a littel fucking girl and had the drill sgt jump on his ass…what’s wrong with that. too bad he’s dead, now we can’t fuck with him.
Yet again, even the briefest association with the military somehow becomes the cause of nutjob behavior. This is just like when people throw around the statistic that most serial killers have spent time in the military. What they always fail to mention is that just about every single one that did never saw combat, and were booted out within two years of the day they got to boot camp for being their sociopath psycho selves.
His own father called him “volatile.” Translation: he was threatening, to the point where everyone who knew him was scared to attempt an intervention.
Of course, if he had just shot himself first, he’d be added to the veteran suicide rate. He might be anyway.
“PTSD.”
Again, and again, and again.
Jeezus
A car backfired on me once decades ago. The loud noise startled me tremendously, caused me to shake a little from the fright.
Can I claim PTSD now?
Did the barista mistake his latte for a cappucino?
It’s Starbucks, and Bush’s, fault!
DaveO some barista screws up my coffee that shit better watch their ass…
So I guess now they are just going to say lets lock up all vets because they are a danger to society. You know how good ol chucky shumer wants to look into people rejected from the military for gun ownership. Keep this meme going and some dipshits keep mixing up wolves and sheepdogs…
It just seems to me that there is a world of difference between “Army washout” and “Army retiree.”
I still find it interesting that the Washington State Legislature is looking into New York-style laws regarding guns. Believing that if they keep the guns out of law-abiding people’s hands, they’ll stop the number of deaths.
Who cares that the no-longer-an-oxygen thief was using an unregistered firearm.
Wonder how many of these idiots spent a semester (or more) at college. How do we encourage the media to report with equal vigor a direct association between college attendance and violant behavior?
Or maybe how many are home schooled, raised in the Roman Catholic Church, or pick something, anything else, to relate to lunacy.
Please pass the skittles.
If a grenade had caused that kind of hearing loss wouldn’t he have been medically discharged instead of washed out as “unsuitable”?
Old Tanker: if an investigation was conducted and it was determined that the incident was due to his own misconduct, I’m not sure one qualifies for a medical discharge. Perhaps one of those here who has experience/knowledge of the ins/outs of medical discharges can give us a definitive answer here.
And I’m skeptical about that hearing loss claim anyway. If a grenade went off close enough to his head to cause permanent hearing loss, I’d think he’d have other problems as well. Like maybe a missing head. And a simulator would have to be pretty damn close to cause permanent hearing loss, too.
And sorry, loud noises will not scramble your brain to the point you kill five people 20 years after the fact.
What’s next? Going after a presidential candidate for giving someone a wedgie 50 years ago? Oh wait–already been done. Move along.
Sparky,
I would think the concussion could cause a TBI but it would have been well documented….and no, I’m not trying to make an excuse, not for this douche
you all know david goldstein molested his daughter right.
Monster: serious charge. Documentation, please?
This is one stereotype that will never, ever go away. That of the damaged and crazed military veteran that is a ticking time bomb.
Perpetuated by Hollywood and the mainstream media with movies like ‘First Blood,’ it just never seems to go away.
It doesn’t help that we have a whole new group of veterans that have served during the war on terror. Many have not seen combat.
Yet, I can’t help but think that some veterans themselves are to blame for this stereotype. Some claiming PTSD that have never even set foot outside of the U.S., let alone the wire on a FOB.
And to make things more confusing, PTSD is not confined to combat veterans, or those that are, or have been, in the military. A wide variety of situations / events justify the use of the PTSD diagnosis by psychiatrists for civilians also.
Army is saying they can’t find any records of him serving:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2018328041_stawicki01m.html
“Walter Stawicki, a self-admitted draft dodger in the 1960s, said his son was stationed at Fort Drum, N.Y., and did training in Panama. But Ian Stawicki suffered a head injury from a grenade concussion during a training exercise and was discharged two years later, his father said.
The Army has no record of his ever serving in the Army, spokeswoman Lt. Col Laurel Devine said Thursday.”
No! The Army spokesman must be wrong! His father, a Vietnam-era draft dodger, claims Stawicki served in Panama! A bereaved parent would never lie about their child’s background to shift scrutiny and blame away from his or her own failings – or in an attempt to rationalize or “justify” their child’s actions – when their kid did something evil like this! Stawicki’s dad is obviously an “honorable” man telling the truth! The Army’s to blame! They’re responsible for what his son became – and for what he did!
Yeah, the above is precisely what Stawicki’s dad is trying to claim. And it appears to me to be 100% bullshit.
My guess is that the elder Stawicki is wrong, and that the Army spokesman is absolutely correct. And I’d further guess that the elder Stawicki knows the truth, too.
But I could be wrong.
It’s also possible that the son lied to his father and claimed to be in the military, injured, etc. People lie all the time.
Peggy: that is indeed a possibility. However, I’d bet the other way. The elder Stawicki’s history IMO argues against it.
I can grudgingly respect Vietnam-era draft resisters who stood by their principles, refused induction, and served time. I don’t agree with their conduct – but they at least had the guts to follow their conscience, even when it hurt.
However, I have absolutely no respect for draft dodgers. In my book, they simply had neither the guts to resist nor to serve when called. And very few draft dodgers are forthright enough to admit the obvious: in most cases, they were simply too much of a moral coward to resist and were too chicken to serve, and chose to “beat feet” instead.
A moral coward will lie whenever he sees benefit in doing so, and about anything, if he thinks he can get away with it. In my book, by being a “self-admitted draft dodger” the elder Stawicki has already admitted he’s a moral coward. It’s no great stretch for me to believe he’s deliberately lying about his son’s military service.
If the elder Stawicki later allows that his son claimed to have served but might have been lying – or if other evidence that he was hoodwinked by his son emerges – I’ll reevaluate my opinion about whether he’s lying in this case. But not until then.
Reminds me of the seventies , those boneheads in the media will make another false attempt to sell this scrabble to the sheepeople of america and the leftists wil push their agenda upon the good citizens of the northwest .
Hondo- I can understand your point of view on this and agree that both are possibilities. Irrespective of issues related to his personal character, the father’s own background is one of the factors that makes me think he would more easily accept a lie that others would see through.
The article linked by Katser in #22 indicates that the son has had multiple violent altercations over the years and likely suffers from a serious mental illness. The time when he supposedly entered the Army is within the range when the early symptoms of many of the SMIs will start to appear. What better way to “explain” your behavior and problems to your father/family and gain their sympathy than by laying the blame at the feet of one of their own personal villians?
His father’s personal beliefs and attitudes toward the military and government would have made him likely to overlook holes in the story and accept explanations that other parents might balk at.
Peggy: it’s also plausible that either guilt (over not having done enough to prevent his son’s rampage) or denial (“My son was a good boy – something must have made him do this!”) could well induce the elder Stawicki to lie about his son’s service in the Army as a way to shift blame onto his old bête noire.
Sorry, about this we’ll have to agree to disagree. I’ll need to see more before I cease believing the elder Stawicki isn’t deliberately dissembling.
Hondo- Like I said, I see both as possible explanations. I guess I’m just more of a “wait and see” type person than a “have an opinion and see if new information comes out to change it” person. This might be because I tend to be a little bit stubborn and changing my mind down the road would take a lot of new evidence if I firmly decided on either position right now.