U of Alabama @ Hunstville shooting 2/12/10-Amy Bishop Anderson Sentenced LWOP

[MuffyBee]

http://www.whnt.com/news/whnt-president-uahuntsville-interview-021510,0,4394646.story
UAHuntsville President Addresses Tenure Questions

Rikki Klaus Videojournalist

February 15, 2010

HUNTSVILLE, AL - Not getting tenure at UAHuntsville means you're fired.

University President David Williams said the tenure process is long and involved. He said the decision to deny tenure goes from the department chair, to the dean, to the provost, who ultimately makes the decision. Throughout the process, various committees weigh in. He said teaching and research are a couple of considerations.

When accused shooter and UAHuntsville Professor Amy Bishop found out the University denied her tenure back in March, she appealed it.

"I get involved in that because I then look at the process, not the content of the tenure documents, but was the process followed appropriately by university standards," Williams said.

Williams would not say specifically why University officials denied Bishop tenure.

He decided it was followed correctly. In November, he denied Bishop's appeal.

Williams said most professors who are denied tenure leave within twelve months ... Bishop was just a month from that point when the shooting happened.

Williams said the faculty meeting, where the shooting took place Friday, had nothing to do with Bishop's tenure. The meeting was routine, he said.

Williams said professors from University of Alabama at Birmingham, local community colleges and the University of North Alabama have all offered to teach the remainder of the semester at UAHuntsville.

Interesting comments...

[MuffyBee]

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/opinions/view/opinion/What-Motivated-Amy-Bishop-2531
What Motivated Amy Bishop?

[MuffyBee]

http://www.cbs42.com/content/localnews/story/Did-Bishop-Fall-Through-The-Cracks/xUt9IZJuPUGX6MmMN4hAKw.cspx
Did Bishop Fall Through The Cracks?
There are many questions as to whether a background test could indicate such a violent outburst as what happened at UAH.

Amy Bishop's words as she's taken into police custody friday night following the shootings of six UAH professors. This tragedy isn't Bishop's first run-in with the law. We've learned that Bishop shot her 18 year old brother in 1986. In 1993, she was a suspect in an attempted mail bombing of a Harvard University professor. So, did Amy Bishop fall through the cracks?

Jon Blankenship is a local psychologist who's practice conducts psych tests for employers. He says they're looking for normal behavior.

"You could sit down and take a test and you could represent yourself as another person. The chances are that the results would come back strange and inconsistent," Blankenship says.

Inconsistency is one red flag that may lead to a background check.

"Some kind of issue comes up that we feel needs to be investigated and we might recommend a more thorough investigation."

Blankenship says everyone reacts differently to high stress situations, which is why each case is different.

"None of us really know exactly how we're going to react to a really surprisingly stressful situation until you're in the situation."

[MuffyBee]

http://www.wickedlocal.com/mansfield/archive/x228087669/From-the-Archives-Sister-kills-teenager-in-shotgun-accident

From the Archives: ‘Sister kills teenager in shotgun accident’


By Jim Kelly
The Patriot Ledger
Posted Feb 14, 2010 @ 04:18 PM
Last update Feb 14, 2010 @ 06:30 PM
BRAINTREE —


   This story appeared on page 1 of the Patriot Ledger on Dec. 8, 1986.

Sister kills teenager in shotgun accident at home

BRAINTREE – An 18-year-old who won prizes in science and music was killed when his sister accidentally fired a shotgun she was trying to unload in the kitchen of their Braintree home Saturday afternoon.

Seth M. Bishop, a freshman at Northeastern University in Boston, was shot in his home at 46 Hollis Ave., at about 2:20 p.m. Saturday, police said.

Police said his sister, Amy Bishop, was trying to unload the pump-action, 12-gauge shotgun when it discharged.

The fatal shooting was witnessed by Bishop’s mother, Judith, according to authorities.

The shotgun was registered to Bishop’s father, Samuel S. Bishop, a professor at Northeastern University.

According to investigators, Amy Bishop had been taught how to use the shotgun by her father. On the day of the accident, she was handling the loaded weapon in the home, although investigators said it was not clear why.

She pumped a round from the magazine into the firing chamber of the shotgun, then went into the kitchen and asked her brother and mother for help when she couldn’t eject the shell from the chamber, investigators said.

Her mother instructed Amy Bishop to pump the shotgun again, which ejected the first shell, according to an investigator. However, she apparently pumped the weapon again and unknowingly advanced a second shell from the magazine to the chamber.

Thinking the weapon was empty, she pulled the trigger, the investigator said. The blast struck her brother, who was standing three to four feet in front of her, authorities said.

Dr. William P. Ridder, an associate Norfolk County medical examiner, said Bishop was shot once in the lower right chest with bird-shot. He said Bishop showed faint signs of life when ambulance attendants arrived at the home, but attempts at reviving him were not successful.   Bish was pronounced dead at 3:08 p.m. at Quincy City Hospital.

The accident is under investigation by Braintree police and the Norfolk County District Attorney’s Office, but authorities said they don’t expect charges to be filed

Bishop graduated from Braintree High School this spring near the top of his class. He was a freshan at Northeastern University, studying electrical engineering.

Teachers say he was an accomplished violinist. He began studying music in elementary school and developed a broad repertoire. He was a member of the Greater Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra, the Braintree High School Orchestra and other student orchestras.

He received fine arts awards from state groups and the high school, including the Arian Award for Music. He won the Science Fair at the high school, second prize in the district science fair and third prize in the state science fair at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.

"He had great potential and he was interested in all aspects of science," said Paul Hogan, head of the high school sciences department. "I know he would have been very successful in whatever he chose to do."

Teachers recalled Bishop as a shy but friendly student who enjoyed school but kept to a small circle of friends who shared his interests in music and science.

"He was extremely gifted, so intelligent that I think many other students didn't understand him," said Dr. Katherine Dewey, head of the music department at the high school. "He was one of those genius kids who marched to the beat of his own drum.

"Once kids got to know him, they accepted him. They sort of looked after Seth, had him take part in whatever they were doing."

Dewey said Amy Bishop, who graduated from the high school two years ago, was also a talented violing who had gone on to study at Northeastern.

"They were very much alike, shy and pretty much out of the mainstream," she said.


 
   This story appeared the next day, also starting on page 1:

Gun fired moments before teen’s death

BRAINTREE – The shotgun that accidentally killed an 18-year-old college student in the kitchen of his Braintree home Saturday had gone off moments before in an upstairs bedroom.

After she accidentally discharged the gun into her bedroom wall, the victim’s sister, Amy, carried the weapon downstairs and asked for help unloading it. It was then that the shotgun discharged a second time, fatally wounding Seth M. Bishop, police said.

“It all happened in a split-second in front of me,” Judith Bishop, their mother, said this morning. “I keep seeing it over and over in my mind.”

Mrs. Bishop said Amy was trying to teach herself how to use the 12-gauge shotgun in case burglars broke into the house.

The family purchased the gun after their Hollis Avenue home was burglarized a year ago, Mrs. Bishop said.

When the shotgun went off in her bedroom, Amy Bishop, 20, became frightened and “highly emotional” and went downstairs to her mother and brother to find out how to unload it, Braintree Police Capt. Theodore Buker said.

“She came downstairs to the kitchen seeking help on how to unload it,” Buker said. “Her mother said something like, ‘Be careful where you point that’ and as she turned around (toward her brother) the gun discharged.” 

Seth Bishop, a 1986 Braintree High School graduate and an award-winning violinist, was struck in the lower chest by the shotgun blast.

His funeral was today at All Souls Church in Braintree and he was to be buried later today in Exeter, N.H. He was a student of electrical engineering at Northeastern University in Boston.

Mrs. Bishop said last year's burglary was followed by an attempted housebreak just before Thanksgiving. Buker confirmed those incidents.

"I think she (Amy) thought she should know how to use it in case she was home alone," Mrs. Bishop said. "She didn't know anything about it."

Buker said after the gun went off in her bedroom, Amy Bishop apparently pumped a second shell into the firing chamber, then went downstairs seeking help. He said she probably did not know she had advanced a second shell into the chamber.

"It is not an automatic weapon, so in order for the shell to be advanced, it would have to be pumped," Buker said. "It isn't particularly hard to do."

Buker's comments clarified a report in yesterday's Patriot Ledger which said Amy Bishop tried to unload the shotgun by pumping it and had ejected a shell, but inadvertently loaded a second shell into the firing chamber and pulled the trigger.

Both Buker and Mrs. Bishop said Amy Bishop did not try to unload the weapon because she did not understand how it worked.

After the incident, Amy Bishop ran from the house with the weapon. Police officers found her a short time later near Braintree Square in a "highly emotional state."

Samuel S. Bishop, the father of Amy and Seth, was not at home at the time of the accident, Buker said.


 
 
 

[MuffyBee]

http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/02/quincy_man_reca.html
Quincy man recalls Amy Bishop with gun

February 15, 2010 05:50 PM
Shortly after fatally shooting her brother in 1986, Amy Bishop held two men at gunpoint and demanded a getaway car at an auto repair shop near her family's Braintree home, according to one of the men involved.

Carrying a shotgun by her side, a 21-year-old Bishop walked intently across a car lot into the adjacent storefront, where she began searching for car keys. Coming down from the second floor, she was heading toward the garage when she ran into Tom Pettigrew and a friend, who had spotted her in the parking lot and came to investigate.

"Her gun hit me in the chest," Pettigrew, 45, recalled from his Quincy apartment. "I yelled, 'What are you doing?' and she screamed at me to put my hands up. So I put my hands up."

On Friday, Bishop, a biology professor at the University of Alabama, allegedly opened fire at a faculty meeting, killing three colleagues and wounding three others. Investigators soon discovered that Bishop had killed her younger brother in 1986 with a shotgun, a shooting that was ruled accidental.

But the Braintree police chief has cast doubt on that conclusion, and the armed confrontation at the garage provides new insight into her state of mind after her brother's death. The Boston Herald first reported Pettigrew's account of the events today.

Only minutes after that shooting, according to Pettigrew, Bishop frantically told workers at the garage she had been in an argument with her husband and needed a car to escape, nervously scanning the premises as she kept the gun pointed at their backs.

"She kept saying 'I need a car, I need to get out of here,'" Pettigrew recalled. "She said he would be looking for her, and that if he found her he would kill her. She seemed terrified."

Investigators said there were only three people in the Bishop home at the time of the shooting - Bishop, her mother, and her brother. Her father had left to go shopping after he and Bishop had a disagreement. In her statement to detectives, Bishop said she raced out the door after the shooting and believed she had dropped the gun behind her. She said she could not recall anything else that happened until she saw her mother at the police station after being taken into custody.

Pettigrew said he tried to defuse the situation by calmly asking her what was wrong, but she did not seem to hear him.

"At the time, I remember thinking she was out of her mind," said Pettigrew, who was stunned when he learned that the thin, mousy teenager who once held him at gunpoint had been charged in the Alabama rampage.

At times, Bishop held the gun loosely, and did not appear to be familiar with firearms, said Pettigrew, an experienced hunter. So he and his friend, moving on eye contact, fled in opposite directions. Bishop did not fire at them.

"She just looked around agitated," he said. "She didn't know what to do."

Seconds later, police surrounded the area, and quickly seized her, he said.

Later, Braintree police briefly questioned Pettigrew and several other employees, and authorities never contacted Pettigrew again. He read in the paper the family shooting had been ruled an accident, and that Bishop was not charged with a crime.

Now, after the deaths in Alabama, Pettigrew wonders why authorities didn't follow up more aggressively, and wonders whether things could have turned out differently if they had.

"It was almost like they wanted to put it on the shelf and forget about it," he said. "I think if that happened to me I'd be wrapping up a long prison sentence. But with this, it seems like they just wanted it to go away."

Peter Schworm can be reached at schworm@globe.com

[MuffyBee]

http://www.thebostonchannel.com/mostpopular/22571652/detail.html
Local Man: Accused Rampage Shooter Held Me At Gunpoint
Bishop Demanded Car After 1986 Shooting

(Video Available at Link)
POSTED: 3:45 pm EST February 15, 2010
UPDATED: 6:54 pm EST February 15, 2010
BOSTON --
Days after a former Massachusetts woman allegedly went on a deadly shooting rampage in Alabama, a local mechanic said the same woman pointed a gun at him and demanded a car after she shot and killed her brother nearly 25 years ago.

Amy Bishop, now 42, a biology professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, is accused of fatally shooting three colleagues and injuring three others at a faculty meeting on Friday.

Tom Pettigrew, 45, of Quincy, said he was a mechanic at Dave Dinger Ford on a Saturday afternoon in 1986 when he and a coworker saw a woman, later identified as Bishop, with a shotgun enter the shop.

When Pettigrew went to investigate, he said he soon found himself face-to-face with Bishop, 19, with a gun pressed to his chest.

"She was like, 'Hands up!' So, of course, right away, we both put our hands up. And she was like, 'I need a car,'" he said.

Pettigrew said Bishop claimed she had been in a fight with her husband, feared for her life and needed a getaway car. Pettigrew and his coworker told Bishop that the cars in the shop were new and locked, and that his car was up on a lift with its wheels off.

Still gripping the shotgun, a nervous and agitated Bishop walked through the dealer's inventory looking for an unlocked car, Pettigrew recalled.

A few minutes later, police arrived at the lot and Bishop was arrested.

Pettigrew said he later learned that Bishop had shot and killed her 18-year-old brother, Seth, earlier that day.

Braintree Police Chief Paul Frazier said Bishop was detained after her brother's death on Dec. 6, 1986, but was released without being charged when the shooting was ruled accidental.

Bishop was never booked and all local police records of the case have disappeared, with the exception of an entry in a police log noting an accidental shooting, Frazier said.

Frazier said that he planned to meet with the local district attorney over the possibility of launching a criminal investigation into how the Bishop case was handled.

In 1993, Bishop was questioned in connection with a failed bomb plot at the Newton home of a Harvard University professor.

[MuffyBee]

http://www.wickedlocal.com/ipswich/news/x196134740/Friend-calls-triple-murder-charges-surprising-and-tragic

Amy Bishop's friend calls triple murder charges ‘surprising and tragic’
(Photos in article)
 By Dan Mac Alpine
Ipswich Chronicle
Posted Feb 15, 2010 @ 05:29 PM
Last update Feb 15, 2010 @ 06:35 PM
Ipswich —

Amy Bishop gave only glimpses of a violent past and flashes of triple murder charges lying in her future, said a longtime friend who met Bishop in local writer’s group 11 years ago.
ane from 1999 to 2003.

“The Amy I knew was impulsive, very sweet, very funny and very helpful,” said Hamilton resident Rob Dinsmoor, a freelance science writer and editor. “I’m also learning a lot more about her. Things she never disclosed.”

Bishop, who has a doctorate with a specialty in molecular biology, is charged in the shooting deaths of three fellow professors at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, Ala., over the weekend.

Dinsmoor said Bishop may have been upset at the prospect of not receiving tenure at the university.

Further investigation has connected Bishop to the 1986 shooting death of her brother, 18, in 1986 and a failed letter-bomb incident at Harvard University in 1993 when she was a doctoral candidate there.

Bishop, whose parents still live in Ipswich, but aren’t talking to the media, was never charged in either incident.

During the years in which he knew the 45-year-old assistant professor, Dinsmoor said Bishop wrote three novels and multiple short stories.

One novel was about growing up in Belfast during Northern Ireland’s civil war; a second was about a female CIA operative; and the third was a science-fiction novel in which Bishop used her science expertise.

“She was always very good at writing about violence,” said Dinsmoor.

At the same time she was pumping out novels and short stories, Bishop was conducting research into nerve-cell regeneration and into a computer built with living cells.

She had just started a fledgling company to further pursue her research and develop marketable products.

Dinsmoor also describes a woman who was willful and opinionated: “When she thought she was right, she wouldn’t back down.”

For all her imagination and brilliance, Bishop appears to have had trouble getting along with her Birch Lane neighbors, now hunkered down and hiding from the press camped out on their street.

In earlier interviews, before the media’s full-court press, neighbors had little nice to say about Bishop, and it appears Bishop had little nice to say about them when she lived in Ipswich.

“I got the impression it was an insular neighborhood,” said Dinsmoor. “She was always complaining about loudness and unruly kids. I got the idea from her they kind of ganged up on her. I got the sense she found them difficult to reason with.”

Ipswich Police report six incidents in which Bishop called them.

Five of the calls involved noise, mostly concerning neighborhood kids operating dirt bikes in their own yards.

One call involved a report of her children not coming home on time.

Despite violence erupting in her past, Bishop was never charged with a crime.

Braintree Police ruled Bishop’s brother’s death an accident, but a missing police report on the death has police in the town questioning the department’s handling of the investigation.

 A police investigation into the letter bomb resulted in no charges.

Dinsmoor met Bishop in 1999 through the writer’s group and kept up a friendship with her and her family, husband James Anderson and their four children — three daughters and one son — ranging in age from preteen to 18.

 “They are very nice, very fun kids. That’s what makes this all the more unsettling. I already sent a card to the family,” said Dinsmoor, who last contacted Bishop two weeks ago when she said she was upset about the prospect of not receiving tenure at the university.

“I think that was the main thing,” said Dinsmoor. “Not getting tenure at the University of Alabama was very big. She left for Alabama for the chance at a tenured position. There were also financial issues.”

However, Bishop’s research into the regeneration of damaged nerve cells and into a “living computer” had spawned a fledgling company backed by investors.

The company would likely have eased financial concerns and allowed her to continue her research, Dinsmoor said.

Bishop’s university Web page indicates she was researching the use of nitric oxide as a way jumpstart damaged nerve cells in the spinal cord, and also researching the use of neurons in computer construction.

“My laboratory’s goal will be to continue in our effort to develop a neural computer, the Neuristor, using living neurons,” writes Bishop on her Web page, which records she published three papers on her work in professional journals in 2009.

“She had a startup company she had investors in,” said Dinsmoor. “So she had a promising avenue that way. That’s why this is so surprising and tragic.”

 

[MuffyBee]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100216/ap_on_re_us/us_ala_university_shooting

Survivor: Ala. university shooter fired suddenly
(Video Available)
  By GREG BLUESTEIN, Associated Press Writer Greg Bluestein, Associated Press Writer   
February 16, 2010
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. – A survivor of an Alabama university shooting said the professor charged in the attack that claimed three lives methodically shot the victims in the head until her gun apparently jammed and she was pushed out of the room.

Associate professor Joseph Ng told The Associated Press on Tuesday he was one of 12 people at the biology department meeting Friday at the University of Alabama-Huntsville. He described the details in an e-mail to a colleague at the University of California-Irvine.

Ng said the meeting had been going on for about half an hour when Amy Bishop "got up suddenly, took out a gun and started shooting at each one of us. She started with the one closest to her and went down the row shooting her targets in the head."

Bishop, a Harvard-educated neurobiologist, was arrested and charged with one count of capital murder and three counts of attempted murder.

Killed were Gopi K. Podila, the chairman of the Department of Biological Sciences, and professors Adriel Johnson and Maria Ragland Davis. Two were wounded — professor Joseph Leahy remained in critical condition and staffer Stephanie Monticciolo was in serious condition Tuesday. The third, Luis Cruz-Vera, was released from the hospital.

Ng said the meeting was held around an oval table. The six people on one side were all shot.

"The remaining 5 including myself were on the other side of the table (and) immediately dropped to the floor," he wrote.

Ng told the AP the shooting stopped almost as soon as it started. Ng said the gun seemed to jam and he and others rushed Bishop out of the room and then barricaded the door shut with a table.

Ng said the charge was led by Debra Moriarity, a professor of biochemistry, after Bishop aimed the gun at her and attempted to fire but it didn't shoot. He said Moriarity pushed her way to Bishop, urged her to stop, and then helped force her out the door.

"Moriarity was probably the one that saved our lives. She was the one that initiated the rush," he told the AP. "It took a lot of guts to just go up to her."

Ng said the survivors worried she would shoot her way through the door, and frantically worked up backup plan in case she burst through. But she never did.

"There was a time when I didn't think I'd come out of the room alive," he said. "I don't think any of us thought we'd come out alive."

Investigators haven't commented on a possible motive, but Bishop was vocal among colleagues about her displeasure over being denied tenure by the university, forcing her to look for work elsewhere after this semester.

Some victims' relatives have also questioned how Bishop was hired at the university in 2003 after she was involved years ago in separate criminal probes. University of Alabama officials were meeting privately to review the files concerning her hiring.

In 1986, Bishop shot and killed her 18-year-old brother with a shotgun at their Braintree, Mass., home. She told police at the time that she had been trying to learn how to use the gun, which her father had bought for protection, when it accidentally discharged.

Authorities released her and said the episode was a tragic accident. She was never charged, though current Braintree police Chief Paul Frazier questions how the investigation was handled. Frazier said she also fired once into a wall before hitting her brother, then fired a third time into the ceiling.

Her husband said Monday he had known about her brother being shot, but said "it was an accident. That's all I knew about it."

In another incident, The Boston Globe reported that Bishop and her husband were questioned by investigators looking into a pipe bomb sent to one of Bishop's colleagues, Dr. Paul Rosenberg, at Children's Hospital Boston in 1993. The bomb did not go off, and nobody was ever charged.

Anderson defended himself and his wife as innocent people questioned by investigators casting a wide net. He said the case "had a dozen people swept up in this and everybody was a subject, not a suspect."

"There was never any indictment, arrest, nothing, and then everyone was cleared after five years," he said.

Huntsville police spokesman Sgt. Mark Roberts said his department didn't find out about either of the older cases until after the shooting on campus. He said police were checking to confirm details of the pipe bomb probe.

Anderson said his wife had practiced at a shooting range not long before the shooting. Anderson said she acted normally while they were at the range and none of her behavior in recent days foreshadowed Friday's rampage.

"She was just a normal professor," he told The Associated Press during an interview at his home Monday.

Anderson said his wife didn't reveal why she took an interest in guns. He knew she had a gun, but didn't know when or where she got the weapon.

"I really don't know how she got it, or where she got it from," he said.

Police have said Bishop had no permit for the gun they believe she used in the campus shooting, and investigators said they didn't know where she got it. It's unclear if it was the same gun that her husband knew about.

[Anna]

MuffyBee,

Thank you for all the news of the day on this tragedy.  I haven't seen or heard anything more than what you have posted so I think you have it all covered.

I do note with particular sadness that Amy Bishop is the mother of four children of her own, the youngest just 8 yeras old. 

Drudge has a link to the article on her "oddball behavior" and is calling her a "far left extremist" but notice how the opinions do vary.  Some describe her as being perfectly normal, pleasant, helpful and friendly while others just the opposite.

And note, too, that failure to get tenure means basically that the person is fired.  Did not realize that part before so this was the equivalent of her being fired.

Evidently, abundant amounts of education is no safe-guard against a violent eruption.  She will face a mandatory death penalty.  I expect an insanity defense because at this point in time, can't think of anything else she could plead.

Insanity defenses are not often successful in Alabama as the requirements are hard to meet.  I am thinking of the case of Judith Neeley who also used that defense with no success.

Obviously, a review of hiring practices is in order for the University.  Perhaps for all universities because I don't think any of them do more than the extensive background check that was conducted on this woman but it failed to turn up her past brushes with law enforcement because no charges were ever filed.

[trimmonthelake]

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/02/16/ex_ada_no_reason_to_question_bishop_police_probe

The Associated Press
Ex-ADA: No reason to question Bishop police probe
February 16, 2010
BOSTON—The former assistant district attorney who reviewed the Massachusetts police investigation into the 1986 shooting of Seth Bishop by his sister, Amy Bishop, said there was nothing time to indicate the death was anything but accidental.
John Kivlan said Tuesday that a joint investigation by state and local police as well as the medical examiner's office all came to the conclusion that Seth Bishop's death was an accident.

His sister, Amy, is accused of fatally shooting three colleagues at the University of Alabama-Huntsville on Friday and injuring three others.

Kivlan, who is now retired from the Norfolk District Attorney's office, said he was not aware of reports that Amy Bishop went to a nearby auto body shop after the shooting and demanded a car. He said that may or may not have changed his assessment of the case.

[trimmonthelake]

http://www.kltv.com/Global/story.asp?S=11993548
Witness to UA Huntsville shooting recounts events in email
Posted: Feb 16, 2010 2:52 PM CST Updated: Feb 16, 2010 2:57 PM CST
Posted by Dana Franks - email

HUNTSVILLE, AL (WAFF) - An assistant biology professor who was at a meeting at the University of Alabama at Huntsville where a professor allegedly opened fire Friday recounted his experience in an email to a colleague.

According to a report in The Orange County Register, Joseph Ng, who had attended the University of California at Irvine before taking a job at UA Huntsville, sent an email to a former graduate school professor describing the shooting.

"I'm still in complete shock that we were shot at during a faculty meeting," Ng said in the email.

According to Ng's recounting of events, 12 professors and staff members were gathered in a conference room when Amy Bishop-Anderson allegedly stood up about 30 minutes into the meeting, took out a gun and methodically started shooting people at the meeting.

"Six people sitting in the rows perpendicular were all shot fatally or seriously wounded," Ng wrote. "The remaining [five] including myself were on the other side of the table immediately dropped to the floor.
Ng wrote that the people who weren't wounded in the shooting tackled Bishop-Anderson as she attempted to reload her gun, pushed her out into the hallway and barricaded the door. He said campus and local police, ambulances and a SWAT team arrived about five minutes after the shooting began.

"We were in a pool of blood in disbelief of what had happened," he said.

Ng said the five people in the room who remained mostly unhurt spent the weekend at Huntsville Hospital looking after the three who were wounded in the attack, as well as the families of the three professors who were killed.

"It is hard to have this image out of my mind and I have mixed feelings of guilt and relief that I am alive or unharmed," Ng wrote.

Bishop-Anderson has been charged with one count of capital murder and three counts of attempted murder.

[trimmonthelake]

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hf_Cw1b1x1D
mRrdG4hiu4P55yZTgD9DTG0K80
Survivor: Ala. prof in slayings shot methodically

By GREG BLUESTEIN (AP) – 37 minutes ago

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — A professor who survived a deadly university shooting rampage said the colleague charged in the attack methodically shot her victims in the head until the gun apparently jammed and she was pushed out of the room.

Associate professor Joseph Ng told The Associated Press on Tuesday he was one of 12 people at a biology department meeting Friday at the University of Alabama-Huntsville. He described the details in an e-mail to a colleague at the University of California-Irvine.

Ng said the meeting had been going on for about half an hour when Amy Bishop "got up suddenly, took out a gun and started shooting at each one of us. She started with the one closest to her and went down the row shooting her targets in the head."

Bishop, a Harvard-educated neurobiologist, was arrested and charged with one count of capital murder and three counts of attempted murder.

It's not the first time Bishop has been accused in a killing. In 1986, she killed her 18-year-old brother with a shotgun at their suburban Boston home. She told police she had been trying to learn how to use the gun, which her father had bought for protection, when it accidentally discharged.

The killing was ruled an accident, but John Polio, who headed the Braintree, Mass., police department at the time, now has questions about the investigation.
Polio, 87, at first defended the handling of the case. But he said Tuesday he has "myriad" concerns about a report on it, which he saw for the first time over the weekend.

Polio said the district attorney's office was not obligated to provide him with the reports, but as a common courtesy, he usually received them. He did not in Bishop's case.

"When I first read them, from a police standpoint and a professional standpoint, I would have wanted a lot more questions answered," he said.

He said there were no ballistics tests included, and he also thought it odd that there was an 11-day gap between the death and interviews with family members, apparently because they were too distraught to talk sooner.

The Norfolk County district attorney at the time was William Delahunt, now a Democratic congressman from Massachusetts. He was traveling in Israel and could not immediately be reached for comment on the case.

John Kivlan, the former assistant district attorney who reviewed the case, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that there was nothing then to indicate Seth Bishop's death was anything but an accident. He said a joint investigation by state and local police as well as the medical examiner's office all came to that conclusion.

But current Braintree police Chief Paul Frazier questions how the investigation was handled. Frazier said Amy Bishop also fired once into a wall before hitting her brother, then fired a third time into the ceiling.

An auto mechanic who worked at a dealership near Bishop's home in 1986 told the Boston Herald and The Boston Globe that Bishop ran in after shooting her brother, waved a gun and demanded a getaway car.
Tom Pettigrew, 45, recalled that Bishop said she had had a fight with her husband and he was going to come after her, so she needed to flee. Pettigrew said Braintree police briefly questioned him and several other employees, but authorities never contacted him again.

Kivlan, who is now retired and living in Sarasota, Fla., said he did not recall that element of the case.

Some victims' relatives have questioned how Bishop was hired at the university in 2003 after she was involved in her brother's killing and another, separate probe.

In 1993, Bishop and her husband, James Anderson, were questioned by investigators looking into a pipe bomb sent to one of Bishop's colleagues, Dr. Paul Rosenberg, at Children's Hospital Boston. The bomb did not go off, and nobody was ever charged.

Anderson defended himself and his wife as innocent people questioned by investigators casting a wide net. He said the case "had a dozen people swept up in this and everybody was a subject, not a suspect."

"There was never any indictment, arrest, nothing, and then everyone was cleared after five years," he said.

University President David Williams said Tuesday that a review of Bishop's personnel file and her hiring file raised no red flags. He said a criminal background check after Friday's deadly shooting turned up neither of the previous cases because charges were never filed.

Huntsville police spokesman Sgt. Mark Roberts also said his department didn't find out about either of the older cases until after the shooting on campus. He said police were checking to confirm details of the pipe bomb probe.
Killed in Friday's shooting were Gopi K. Podila, the chairman of the Department of Biological Sciences, and professors Adriel Johnson and Maria Ragland Davis. Two were wounded — professor Joseph Leahy remained in critical condition and staffer Stephanie Monticciolo was in serious condition Tuesday. The third, Luis Cruz-Vera, was released from the hospital.

Ng, the professor who survived, said all six of those shot were on one side of an oval table.

"The remaining 5 including myself were on the other side of the table (and) immediately dropped to the floor," he wrote.

Ng told the AP the shooting stopped almost as soon as it started. He said the gun seemed to jam and he and others rushed Bishop out of the room and then barricaded the door shut with a table.

Ng said the charge was led by Debra Moriarity, a professor of biochemistry, after Bishop aimed the gun at her and attempted to fire. When the gun didn't shoot, Moriarity pushed her way to Bishop, urged her to stop, and then helped force her out the door.

"Moriarity was probably the one that saved our lives. She was the one that initiated the rush," he told the AP. "It took a lot of guts to just go up to her."

Ng said the survivors worried she would shoot her way through the door, and frantically worked up a backup plan in case she burst through. But she never did.
There was a time when I didn't think I'd come out of the room alive," he said. "I don't think any of us thought we'd come out alive."

Anderson said his wife had practiced at a shooting range not long before the shooting. Anderson said she acted normally while they were at the range and none of her behavior in recent days foreshadowed Friday's rampage.

"She was just a normal professor," he told The Associated Press during an interview at his home Monday.

Madison County District Attorney Robert Broussard said Bishop was arraigned in jail Monday but no court date has been set. He also said no decision has been made on whether to ask for the death penalty if she is convicted. She is on suicide watch, which is routine in such cases.

Associated Press Writers Jay Reeves in Huntsville, Bob Johnson in Montgomery, Mark Pratt in Boston and Stephen Singer in Hartford, Conn., contributed to this report.

[MuffyBee]

MuffyBee,

Thank you for all the news of the day on this tragedy.  I haven't seen or heard anything more than what you have posted so I think you have it all covered.

I do note with particular sadness that Amy Bishop is the mother of four children of her own, the youngest just 8 yeras old. 

Drudge has a link to the article on her "oddball behavior" and is calling her a "far left extremist" but notice how the opinions do vary.  Some describe her as being perfectly normal, pleasant, helpful and friendly while others just the opposite.

And note, too, that failure to get tenure means basically that the person is fired.  Did not realize that part before so this was the equivalent of her being fired.

Evidently, abundant amounts of education is no safe-guard against a violent eruption.  She will face a mandatory death penalty.  I expect an insanity defense because at this point in time, can't think of anything else she could plead.

Insanity defenses are not often successful in Alabama as the requirements are hard to meet.  I am thinking of the case of Judith Neeley who also used that defense with no success.

Obviously, a review of hiring practices is in order for the University.  Perhaps for all universities because I don't think any of them do more than the extensive background check that was conducted on this woman but it failed to turn up her past brushes with law enforcement because no charges were ever filed.

Anna- I've been trying to go through and post all the news I can find before some become unavailable.  My past experience has been that sometimes if you click a link, the article is no longer available, or you have to pay $2.95 to view it and etc. at a later date.  I appreciate your input, opinions, articles and etc. 

I too saw that Amy Bishop has 4 children.  That's sad for them.     Did you see the article in which it's alleged Amy Bishop managed to have the ice cream truck route removed from their neighborhood because her children were lactose intolerant and it wasn't fair they couldn't have ice cream?  Whhhhaaaat?? 

I had realized that if Amy Bishop was not tenured, she would be fired because my eldest son was a TA at a university and he worked for a professor that made his life a living heck because she was thisclose to and trying to get tenured.   He said he really worried about her sometimes.  After she made tenure, he spoke with her and got more realization what kind of pressure she was under.  He also told me some of the professors are bringing lots of money into the university through their research, papers and such, and get very little in return if they don't make tenure.   The time and effort they've put in and no tenure means being out of a job.  It can be a very political process he also told me.  Of course this isn't a reason to shoot anyone, but my son did say the process of tenure really needs to be looked at closely.

As far as a review of hiring practices, I think it's overdue.  In my state, (TX)
 a law was finally passed   that school employees must be fingerprinted.  The teachers unions howled foul!!   (It didn't help that the teachers were expected to pay $40.00 for the fingerprinting)  That it trod upon their rights.  Well, teachers work among children.  Our children.  Some teachers with DUI's were found, some with felonies and this was not known by the schools when hired.  I think the schools should have that background information, imo.  I'm wondering sometimes if perhaps schools aren't wanting to dig too deeply, as it makes it harder to hire.  I understand there is a shortage of teachers already.


As far  drudge saying she was an oddball etc., I've found from experience some people that are extremely brilliant sometimes can be misunderstood or considered by some to be not so social.  They tend to think outside the box, if you see what I mean.  I know what you mean about how opinions vary.  Some may have found Amy Bishop as she's described in the Drudge Report article (I read there too), or others that will say she was normal, friendly and etc.  I've wondered myself how people might describe me.  Wouldn't it depend upon the time in your life?  I am different then I was when I was in my teens, different than when I was when I was in my 30s etc. (will stop there, LOL) and it depends on the situation.  In some neighbor hoods I got along famously with my neighbors, but there was one place I lived and I had the neighbors from hades. 

When I post an article, I'm posting what I'm finding.  It doesn't mean I agree with it, but I put it in here for people to see.  Sometimes I will post my opinion under it.  I think it helps to have articles from various sources, to perhaps give different sides/views. 

[Nut44x4]

I will never understand this...you can tell just by looking at this woman that she 'isn't right'   



Very sad situation. I believe there will be many, many lawsuits in the near future.

[trimmonthelake]

http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/02/prosecutor_says.html
Prosecutor says Amy Bishop could have been charged in 1986
EmailE-mail|Link February 16, 2010 06:03 PM
Norfolk County prosecutors have just announced that they have located the missing files in the 1986 shooting death of Seth Bishop by his sister, Amy Bishop. The Norfolk County district attorney now says that, after reviewing the files, he has concluded that probable cause existed in 1986 to arrest Amy Bishop and charge her with assault and weapons crimes. But, at the time, the death was declared accidental.

Here is the statement from the Norfolk District Attorney's Office:
As a result of an internal audit of municipal records ordered by Braintree Mayor Joseph Sullivan over the weekend, today Mayor Sullivan and Braintree Police Officials hand-delivered to the Norfolk District Attorney's Office a substantial body of police reports, previously believed to be missing, relative to the 1986 shooting of Seth Bishop.

These reports have been reviewed by senior staff at the District Attorney's Office, including the Chief of Homicide, the Chief Appellate Attorney and a lieutenant detective of the State Police assigned to the Norfolk District Attorney's Detective Unit.

The District Attorney's Office is also in receipt of the State Police ballistics report relating to the shotgun that was used in the Dec. 6, 1986 shooting.

All of these documents are attached for your review, along with previously released documents.

The analysis of the newly received documents, as well as the previously released March 30, 1987 State Police report indicate that probable cause existed at that time to place Amy Bishop under arrest charged with:
Assault with a Dangerous Weapon, Chap. 265 Sec. 15B
Carrying a Dangerous Weapon, Chap. 269 Sec. 10, 12D
Unlawful possession of ammunition, Chap. 269 Ch. 10 (h)

The statute of limitations has run on all of those charges.

The reports supply significant additional details into the incident and the circumstances of the apprehension of Amy Bishop. The reports do not contradict the previously released information regarding the sole eye witness, the victim's mother, who told police at the time that she directly observed the shotgun in her daughter's hands discharge accidentally, striking and killing Seth Bishop.

Even if a Grand Jury were to hear allegations that this incident involved wanton and reckless conduct on the part of Amy Bishop -- the lowest standard for Manslaughter in Massachusetts -- the statute of limitations has barred indictment on that charge since 1992.


Mayor Sullivan stated: "On Monday, February 15, 2010 after a search of archived records, Chief Frazier located the Braintree Police reports written by officers involved with the incident. The reports were found among other investigative files maintained by a retired Braintree Police Captain." Mayor Sullivan further stated: "A review of Braintree municipal records also revealed that Amy Bishop's mother was one of 240 elected Town Meeting members. She represented Precinct 3 from 1980 to 1993. She served one year (1985) on the Braintree Arts Lottery Council, with her husband. There is no indication in town records that she served on the Personnel Board or any other elected or appointed office."
"I appreciate the work we were able to accomplish with District Attorney Keating throughout this matter and I believe our combined efforts are in the best interest of the town of Braintree," Mayor Sullivan said.

"Although the reports and my statements contain minor discrepancies, I am relieved that we now have the incident reports from the responding officers available to us," Chief Paul Frazier stated.

[trimmonthelake]

http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/02/amy_bishop_was.html
Amy Bishop was charged with assault in 2002 IHOP dispute
EmailE-mail|Link February 16, 2010 06:51 PM                           
By Maria Cramer and Travis Andersen, Globe Staff

In March, 2002, Bishop walked into an International House of Pancakes in Peabody with her family, asked for a booster seat for one of her children, and learned the last seat had gone to another mother.

Bishop, according to a police report, strode over to the other woman, demanded the seat and launched into a profanity-laced rant.

When the woman would not give the seat up, Bishop punched her in the head, all the while yelling "I am Dr. Amy Bishop."

Bishop received probation and prosecutors recommended that she be sent to anger management classes, though it is unclear from court documents whether a judge ever sent her there.
The woman, identified in court documents as Michelle Gjika, declined to comment, saying only "It's not something I want to relive."

Maria Cramer can be reached at mcramer@globe.com

[trimmonthelake]

http://www.news8austin.com/content/headlines/?ArID=267080&SecID=2
6:40

x57
Professor charged in shooting made discrimination claim
2/16/2010 5:10 PM
By: Associated Press

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. -- Officials said a professor accused in a deadly campus shooting in Alabama filed a complaint last year alleging gender discrimination by the university.

Professor Amy Bishop was accused of shooting three of her colleagues to death and wounding three others during a meeting Friday at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Police haven't revealed a motive but colleagues said she complained often about being denied tenure in March. Her appeal was denied in November.

University spokesman Ray Garner said Tuesday that the university denies the accusations, which are in a complaint pending before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The complaint itself, filed Sept. 15, was not immediately available.

Bishop represented herself and did not have an attorney for the complaint.

[trimmonthelake]

http://wbztv.com/local/amy.bishop.assaults.2.1498979.html
 Feb 16, 2010 6:55 pm US/Eastern
Bishop Assaulted North Shore Mom 8 Years Ago
 Reporting
Peg Rusconi
BOSTON (WBZ) ―
In the days since she allegedly opened fire on a faculty meeting at an Alabama university, Amy Bishop's face has become instantly recognizable.
For one North Shore woman, it is a blast from the past.

"I was just completely in shock and not surprised, but surprised I had an incident with her," said the woman, who spoke with WBZ on condition of anonymity.

The woman's account is backed up by a 2002 police report. She said she went to a Peabody pancake restaurant with her two small children, and was given what turned out to be the last booster seat in the restaurant.

This, she said, triggered a profane tirade from Amy Bishop, who'd just been seated with her husband and children in a nearby booth.

"She was completely crazy. Erratic and screaming and swearing... And she just came toward me and hit me on the side of the head," said the woman. "It was a closed fist and she hit me right on the side of the head when I was holding my one year old son on my hip."
According to the police report, Bishop shouted multiple times, "I am Dr. Amy Bishop!" inside the restaurant.

The victim and police said the restaurant manager got Bishop's license plate as Bishop fled with her family, and called police. The matter landed in Peabody District Court. Bishop, who was living in Ipswich at the time, was charged with assault and battery and being a disorderly person.

According to court documents, Bishop admitted to the facts two months later - was ordered to stay away from the victim, and after 6 months of probation, the charges were dismissed.

[MuffyBee]

  I wonder what else there is that could be told about Amy Bishop?   

We've got the shooting at U of Alabama
We've got the fatal shooting of Amy's brother Seth
We've got the pipe bomb questions
We've got Amy punching a mother in the head while she held a baby(assault & battery charge & being disorderly person)

Again, I wonder what else there is that could be told about Amy Bishop?

[trimmonthelake]

http://thephoenix.com/BLOGS/dontquoteme/archive/2010/02/16/herald-on-bishop-d-amp-d-made-her-do-it.aspx

Herald on Bishop: D&D made her do it
Published Feb 16 2010, 11:12 AM by Adam Reilly
2

Today in the Herald, Laurel Sweet takes the still-unfolding story of Amy Bishop in a new direction: Bishop, she reports, loved to play Dungeons & Dragons back in the day...just like Wakefield workplace killer Michael McDermott!

    Bishop, now a University of Alabama professor, and her husband James Anderson met and fell in love in a Dungeons & Dragons club while biology students at Northeastern University in the early 1980s, and were heavily into the fantasy role-playing board game, a source told the Herald.

    “They even acted this crap out,” the source said....

    The popular fantasy role-playing game has a long history of controversy, with objections raised to its demonic and violent elements. Some experts have cited the D&D backgrounds of people who were later involved in violent crimes, while others say it [sic] just a game....


I am not, I confess, a Dungeons & Dragons connisseur. But I know the game has been around for a few decades--and in that time, it hasn't exactly spawned an epidemic of violence. Maybe that's why Sweet doesn't meet the traditional quota for a "trend" piece by citing a third Dungeons & Dragons-influenced killer.

Limited analytical value notwithstanding, Sweet's piece has generated some entertaining responses over at bostonherald.com. One commenter notes that Red Sox hero/conservative agitator Curt Schilling is a big D&D type, and forecasts a horrific Fenway massacre to come.  Another offers: "I heard she used to play hopscotch and jump rope as a child. That's it, time [to] ban these destructive activities from the past time of America's youth." And a commenter with the moniker johntheobscure weighs in with this:

    My name is John Ruch. I freelanced for the Herald for years, during which I played D&D regularly, as I still do.

    This article is the exact type of hateful, incompetent, fraudulent, lazy and incorrect "reporting" that convinced me to stop associating myself with the Herald.

 Feeling some back-to-the-80s deja vu? You're not alone:
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/nFIWUYr0n10&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1&amp;color1=0x5d1719&amp;color2=0xcd311b&amp;border=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/nFIWUYr0n10&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1&amp;color1=0x5d1719&amp;color2=0xcd311b&amp;border=1</a>