Just a “little” story with one death of a 34 year old mother in Washington on a day when over 300 would-be migrants from Africa drowned off the Sicilian coast. Yet I find it more disturbing and I wonder why?
A dental hygienist – with her baby in her car – apparently drove over some lowered security bollards outside the White House and then panicked as security officers went – it seems – more than a little berserk in trying to stop her. She had her toddler with her in the car. She was unarmed.
But after a hot pursuit she was shot dead in a fusillade of some 15 shots.
Stamford Advocate: A Stamford woman was shot and killed after trying to ram her car into a White House security barrier and leading police on a high-speed chase past the Capitol with her 18-month-old daughter in tow.
Miriam Carey, 34, of 114 Woodside Green, drove her black Infiniti coupe onto a driveway leading to the White House and over a set of lowered barricades.
When Carey couldn’t get through a second barrier, she spun the car in the opposite direction, flipping a Secret Service officer over the hood of the car as she sped away, said B.J. Campbell, a tourist from Portland, Ore.
A representative of Carey’s family in Brooklyn, N.Y., said the family is still gathering information and was surprised by Thursday’s incident.
The family was expected to issue a statement later Thursday night, said Dennis Jones, a friend of the family.
Carey was a licensed dental hygienist and according to a local law enforcement official, she suffered from mental illness, but had no criminal record.
But this is Washington. Where weighty matters such as government shut-downs and debt crises and wars and drone strikes are decided.
Security services protecting the most important people in the US – and therefore the World – have carte blanche when it comes to protecting their charges. I noted that the politicians were very quick to thank their trigger-happy security staff.
So what is just another death of a “disturbed” but unarmed woman who panicked – even if it happened a little closer to home than the great people in Washington are used to? Just some very minor collateral damage in the Great War on Terror.
What disturbs most – I think – is the indiscriminate application of power and brute force on the one hand and the total helplessness of the victim on the other. She drove over a barricade that had been lowered (and effectively was not there). She seems to have been surrounded by screaming armed security and panicked. Who wouldn’t? Once the security staff got their guns out it was only going to end in one way. She was probably doomed from the moment she drove over the lowered security bollards — and everything that followed was then inevitable. And it is that inevitability of her death the moment she drove onto the wrong driveway that disturbs.
But the President is safe and all the Senators and Representatives are safe. A job well-done?
The k2p blog 