So a guy, suspected of a murder a few days earlier, convicted of pimping 14 year old girls, accidentally shoots himself in the head while trying to have a gunfight with police. A most altruistic gift to all of society, and we thank you.

To prove that some of these thought processes must be genetic, the mother is suing the police department for, well, I’m not really sure? For letting her son shoot himself in the head? For not having first aid on hand to save his life after he lodged a bullet in his neck? Thats a pretty difficult wound to treat.

Mom, perhaps you would like to take a few shots at the police too….......

http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/Mother-sues-SF-police-over-son-s-death-3747717.php

Mother sues SF police over son’s death

The mother of a Washington state parolee who accidentally shot himself to death during a gunfight with San Francisco police last year has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city.

Kenneth Wade Harding, 19, fatally wounded himself while running away from officers who stopped him on Third Street in the Bayview neighborhood for failing to pay a Muni fare, police said. But in a lawsuit filed Friday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, Harding’s mother Denika Chatman said police have some responsibility for her son’s death and that officers failed to give him immediate medical care. Instead, they “left him writhing in pain with blood gushing out of his neck,” the suit said.

“He was literally allowed to drown in his own blood,” said Chatman’s attorney John Burris. “He was killed needlessly.”

Harding was trying to fire at the officers with a pistol and apparently shot himself in the neck on July 16, 2011, police investigators said. Officers Matthew Lopez and Richard Hastings also fired on Harding, striking him in the leg, authorities said.

...

Harding was a suspect in Seattle in the fatal shooting of a 19-year-old woman three days earlier. He was on parole for trying to pimp a 14-year-old girl in that city.

...

Because everyone knows - if you have a kiddie pimp with a gushing neck wound, you apply a tourniquet!

Where is the “Like” button for Robin’s comment?

Old skool. Stamp it on your monitor.

Robin Bobcat - 02 August 2012 03:33 PM

Because everyone knows - if you have a kiddie pimp with a gushing neck wound, you apply a tourniquet!

Perhaps they should have, wrapping it really really tight.

I’m still trying to figure out how in the heck you manage to shoot yourself in the neck while trying to shoot at the cops at the same time.  In my experience the barrel of the gun wouldn’t be pointed anywhere close to your neck.    Unless, of course, he was trying to commit suicide, in which case he succeeded admirably.

As for moms lawsuit, I’ll be quite surprised if it doesn’t get tossed out of court.

Good point Gray.  I think it more likely it was someone else’s bullet, not his own….unless, as you suggested, he was trying to commit suicide.  It’s unlikely the bullet actually lodged in his neck so unless there is evidence of powder burns etc. to indicate it was from his own gun, I’m unsure how they could find the right bullet that would lead to the right gun.  Unless the folks at TV’s CSI stepped in (we’re all aware that any other such group would never investigate so completely).

It is possible that he tried to shoot back by, while running and facing forward, simply raising his arm backwards over his shoulder and pulling the trigger. I can see how you can shoot yourself then.

You could be right LaMa.  I did a search using those parameters and other like-kind for any encounters of that sort and found one other person making that suggestion but it applied to the same news story. 

So I moved my arm from right to left to gauge the difficulty and where the barrel might be at the uplift while running.  If the trigger was pulled while the gun was being raised, it would sheer the carotid artery on the left side.  The gap opened could never be repaired in time.

Well, the guy *did* get shot in the leg. So perhaps he fell and the gun went off.

Realistically, no matter how it happened the world is probably a better place for it.