Memphis police said Friday that a 24-year-old man was shot to death Thursday night during an argument with a friend as the two watched wrestling.
Patrick Howard was shot several times at his apartment at 3486 Winchester Park No. 101 about 9 p.m. Thursday.
Police said Howard and another man were watching WWF Smackdown and got into a fight. The suspect pulled out a handgun, shot Howard, then ran from the apartment.
Howard was pronounced dead on arrival at the Regional Medical Center at Memphis.
Could be true, but that article doesn't specifically say the fight was over wrestling. It just says they started a fight during the show. I'm just saying, thats all. Maybe there's another article somewhere that makes it a little clearer.
"When this bogus term alternative rock was being thrown at every '70s retro rehash folk group, we were challenging people to new sonic ideas. If some little snotty anarchist with an Apple Mac and an attitude thinks he invented dance music and the big rock group is coming into his territory, [that's] ridiculous." - Bono, 1997
For those who may be interested, here's the link to the original article (gomemphis.com) .
As Furry Hippie pointed out:
Originally posted by Furry Hippie...that article doesn't specifically say the fight was over wrestling. It just says they started a fight during the show.
Also left unsaid is how the police knew that the men were fighting prior to the shooting. Since the article said that the police were still searching for the suspect, it's obvious that they received no information from him. The article also states that the victim was pronounced dead on arrival, making it unlikely that he was able to provide the police with any details of the shooting. Therefore, the details of the crime had to have been provided by an outside witness or witnesses.
Now, if the witness(es) were in the apartment with the victim and the assailant at the time of the fight and subsequent shooting, one would, first and foremost, hope that cooler heads would have prevailed and prevented the shooting. Secondly, if someone or someones were in the apartment with the victim and the suspect during the fight, it would be safe to presume that the witness knew both men personally and could threfore provide the police with (at the very least) a physical description of the suspect, not to mention the suspect's name. However, no name or any other description of the shooter appears in the article, something quite odd in a murder case when the suspect is still at large. A third point is that if the witness was in the apartment with both men at the time of the shooting, why didn't the suspect shoot the witness? Why would a murderer leave a witness behind?
Let's now consider that the witness was not in the apartment with the two men but rather, say, in an adjoining apartment. It's possible that a fight in an apartment building could be loud enough for the people in the neighboring apartments to hear. But how would the neighbors know what the men were watching? If the TV the two men were watching was loud enough to be heard in adjoining apartments to the point were the program could be identified, then how would neighbors be able to hear what the men were saying over and above the din of the television, to know that the men were fighting and not, for instance, cheering and/or jeering at the television? More importantly, why would you give that information to the police (i.e., what the men were watching on TV) rather than giving the police details of what you heard the two men fighting about? And even more important than that, have I finally reached the point where I'm so incredibly bored with my life that I'm trying to play Columbo with a murder that I just read about on the internet?
Anyway, one final point. Memphis is in the Central time zone of the U.S., meaning that Smackdown is on the air from 7-9 pm (see also the program guide (upn30memphis.com) from the Memphis UPN affiliate). If the story is accurate that the shooting took place at 9:00 pm, and the two men were in fact watching the WWE program, it means that the shooter at least had the decency to wait until after the end of the iron-man match before pulling the trigger.
Originally posted by Downtown BookieFor those who may be interested, here's the link to the original article (gomemphis.com) .
As Furry Hippie pointed out:
Originally posted by Furry Hippie...that article doesn't specifically say the fight was over wrestling. It just says they started a fight during the show.
Also left unsaid is how the police knew that the men were fighting prior to the shooting. Since the article said that the police were still searching for the suspect, it's obvious that they received no information from him .....
Things over-turned, torn clothing on the ground. Maybe a couple holes in the wall or something. When people fight in a house, it's not a jab contest, they throw each other around and break stuff. Maybe the other guy has blood on him that's not his, and if his knuckles are red, then he was fighting back (as opposed to if his hands are cut up elsewhere, which would mean he was covering up and it was more of a vicious beating). If the cops saw anything like this, then they would be able to tell they were fighting.
The time of death would be able to tell them what the were watching (the channel would be on the channel they were watching when the guy was shot) unless the guy was deranged enough to change the channel afterwards for some unknown reason ("before I run, I must switch to the Iron Man Match") but then again, the buttons would have at least some blood on them. You don't need any neighbours for this part, but to find out what started it, you'll have to wait until they find the guy.
ps. And my parents thought I wasted my time in criminal psychology once I dropped out of school. I guess the joke's on them! That's right! They can't laugh at the drop-out anymo.... oh.... shit....
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I want to be surprised and floored at this. I really do.
But I've also seen so much in the way of incredibly deranged chicanery in Memphis, this really doesn't surprise me. Also what's surprising is that the Commercial Appeal (the local paper that feeds GoMemphis) didn't put anything else other than that up; as much as I joke about it, murders in Memphis aren't so common as to not deserve their own story. (Of course, with the top local story being "Take $25 and find the oddest thing at a garage sale," maybe I shoudn't be surprised.)
As much as I'd love it for stuff to be made clearer, the Memphis paper doesn't have their act enough together in order to make matters clearer for everyone else. Also, from the context of the story, they may not consider it "public interest," since the murder does seem mostly premeditated, and hence the subject might not be as much of a threat to the community as, say, someone who randomly shot another person on the street. (Mind you, this isn't how I feel on the subject; I'm just guessing at the minds of the CA editors.)