Samuel Moreno-Carranza, age seven, was injured after his mother fired a rifle inside church and police responded, killing her
A boy who was shot in the head at celebrity pastor Joel Osteen’s Houston megachurch on 11 February has lost “a portion of his frontal lobe” while recovering at the hospital, according to his grandmother.
In a Facebook post three days after the shooting, Walli Carranza said her seven-year-old grandson, Samuel Moreno-Carranza, “has lost a major part of what makes us who we are” after “half of his right skull [had] to be surgically removed during two surgeries done in less than 24 hours”. Samuel had endured “cardiac arrest multiple times, and no one can determine whether he has significant brain activity because his scalp tissue is too friable” to let doctors attach electroencephalogram wires to him, Carranza added in a post that doubled as a criticism of the US’s lack of meaningful gun control.
Wow the article worked really really really hard not to tell you it was the police who shot the boy. It wasn’t until near the last 2/3 of the report, and lookit:
Samuel – whose mother had brought him to the church – was struck in the head during the exchange of gunfire that killed Moreno. A 57-year-old man was also hit, in the hip.
It appears the only people injured in this were shot by the two off-duty officers. I’m not even saying those two are in the wrong, but i have a real problem with the way its reported here
I have questions about how necessary it was to fire at the woman in the first place.
•if she’s in an empty lobby with her and her son, and two security officers, could they not have tried to negotiate and get the kid away first?
•Did security actually see “materials consistant with manufacturing explosives” inside her trenchcoat before firing, or is that something they alleged after they shot a 7yo in the head. There were no explosives found on her body or at home.
I know it’s hard to judge these situations, but I feel like there could have been a resolution where the kid doesn’t sacrificed by everyone involved.
The police opened fire after the mother did. It is notoriously difficult to negotiate with someone who is actively shooting - aside from needing absolutely every target to be in excellent cover, you have to make yourself heard over the gunfire.
How many rounds did the child fire before taking a police bullet to the brain?
I have questions about how necessary it was to fire at the woman in the first place.
You don’t believe the police should engage in gunfights with active shooters? Are you perhaps a member of the Uvalde Police Department?
Lemmy users try really hard to blame cops for everything.
Have they said how many rounds the woman was able to get off before she was killed? I’m starting to wonder if the answer is 0.
I had to look around for any mention of it but i did finally find this.
Wearing a trench coat and backpack, she entered the converted sports arena between church services and opened fire in a hallway with an AR-platform rifle, Hassig said. One federal law enforcement source told CNN she fired around 30 bullets. (emphasis mine)
Two off-duty officers were at the church: a 28-year-old Houston Police Department officer and a 38-year-old agent with the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, both with less than five years of service. The two officers engaged the shooter and she was fatally hit, the police chief said.
It was zero, she shot zero times.
Source?
Edit: genuinely asking, I can’t find anything saying that.
That guy is full of sh.it:
Shit, I thought it was the nother - edit: mother, how the fuck did autocorrect get that
“Guns aren’t the problem.”
They’re a pretty massive part of it. Abolish the second amendment.
“But how are we going to defend ourselves against all the other people with guns?”
The US is messed up.
That’s it right here.
As a person of color, removing the second amendment affects us more. Gun control was considered when the Black Panthers armed themselves. During the more chaotic weeks of BLM protests, armed protesters were the reason cops behaved.
We would need a thanos-level snap to change - from cops, to people’s minds - everywhere all at once.
But while cops are killing dogs, shooting shoplifters in the back of the head, and emptying their gun when they hear an acorn fall… Disenfranchised communities will be the most affected by this.
That’s also true about a lot of non-shot members of Osteen’s church.
Poor kid though. He didn’t deserve any of what he got.
So the good guys with the guns may have shot and killed a 7 year old? Great argument to justify not doing anything resembling gun control.
On another note, Houston has an excellent Medical Center and I wish the little boy the best of luck. How awful for the entire family.
The ,“good guys with guns” shoot and kill a lot of Innocent people.
The guys who shot were off-duty police officers. Don’t wrap gun owners into this when it’s not relevant.
Was the woman with a rifle they shot at, subsequently hitting her son, also an off-duty cop? Maybe she was a relevant gun owner.
You’re talking about the woman wearing a trench coat who entered the church and started shooting, right? In this case she’s a criminal, not the “good guy with a gun”.
You’re still blaming the general population of gun owners for something the police did, lmao.
EDIT: My point is, the parent-commenter is calling the off-duty cops the “good guys with guns”, but they’re not because they’re police officers (and let’s be real, even if there was no 2nd amendment, cops would still be able to carry while off-duty).
You could argue that the woman who did the shooting was a “good guy with a gun” before the incident, but that’s irrelevant to what I’m saying because I’m responding to the person calling the off-duty cops the “good guys with guns”.
Am I saying anything about the general population’s right to own a gun? Am I even implying anything about it? No. Nor am I equating the shooter to the “good guy with a gun”, or saying that anybody other than the cops directly had anything to do with the child being shot.
What I am pointing out though is that either this woman came into legal and rightful possession of a gun, or otherwise obtained it illegally, both of which are relevant to a conversation on gun control.
Am I saying anything about the general population’s right to own a gun? Am I even implying anything about it? No. Nor am I equating the shooter to the “good guy with a gun”, or saying that anybody other than the cops directly had anything to do with the child being shot.
No, but the user I first replied to is by saying that “off-duty cops” are “good guys with guns”- they’re not the same. Your response was seemingly backing up the parent-commenters comment, making me think that you were agreeing with them.
What I am pointing out though is that either this woman came into legal and rightful possession of a gun, or otherwise obtained it illegally, both of which are relevant to a conversation on gun control.
Agreed 100%, but again the parent commenter didn’t mention anything about the woman, they mentioned the off-duty cops that they called “good guys with guns” that shot the 7-year old.
So yes, I will agree that the woman had legal possession of a gun and committed a crime with it, that IS relevant to a conversation on gun control.
However, the off-duty cops shooting the 7-year old is NOT relevant to a conversation on gun control because they are cops.
If the cops directly shot the child without there being the presence of a firearm near the child, then that would be a fairly different conversation. And yeah, the parent comment may have assumed the “good guy with the gun” was not a cop, but instead a citizen. However, with these being cops, and their decision to shoot spawning from a citizen with a firearm who had intent to use that firearm to harm innocent people, it is still valid for there to be a gun control debate, because if you take her gun out of the equation, there likely was not going to be a police initiated shooting in this situation.
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Sounds like they were just gun owners
This is EXACTLY what God wanted because God is a GOOD PERSON!
A small price to pay so that the NRA can earn more money.
Religion is dangerous to the proper functioning of one’s frontal lobe.
Boy, I really had a tasteless reaction to that one.
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Dude. He was seven. How much did you know about the world when you were seven? You probably mostly knew what your parents told you.
The kid had plenty of time to realize the church was lying to him. He probably never will now.
See below, fellow human.
Nope. It was something about becoming a republican
Hey, at least you weren’t wrong about it being tasteless, eh? Lookit them downvotes. (It’s alright, I have intrusive heckling thoughts, too, and sometimes it helps to point them out for what they are: kinda deflates their power in a way, to laugh at them instead of with them)
So, like “in poor taste,” but also “totally spot on” at the same time? Yeah, I have those thoughts sometimes too.
