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The Washington Post reports that an internet escort in Charleston, W.Va., may have saved her own life and the lives of many other women, when she shot and killed an alleged attacker who showed up at the woman's home on July 18 after answering an escort ad she had placed on Backpage.com. Neal Falls showed up with multiple pairs of handcuffs and a Subaru full of weapons and tools, including a shovel, knives, a bulletproof vest, a machete, bleach, trash bags, sledgehammers and axes. In Falls's pocket, police said, was a list of names of potential future victims, all of whom are sex workers who advertised on Backpage. Investigators are trying to determine whether Falls is responsible for a string of slayings targeting sex workers in Ohio and Nevada. "We are entering his DNA profile into CODIS, which is a national crime DNA database, to see if it matches any previous submissions from anywhere in the United States," says Steve Cooper, the Charleston Police Department's chief of detectives. "If his DNA has been located in any other crimes and his profile was entered into CODIS, there will be a match."
From the moment Falls showed up at the home of his latest alleged victim, he turned violent. "I knew he was there to kill me," says the victim who asked not to be identified. Falls pulled a gun on her and began strangling her. "When he strangled me he just wouldn't let me get any air. I grabbed my rake and when he laid the gun down to get the rake out of my hands, I shot him. I just grabbed the gun and shot behind me." Local authorities are treating the shooting as an act of self-defense. According to Cooper, "when we find multiple sets of handcuffs, a machete, an axe, a bulletproof vest and container of bleach, the first thing that comes to an investigator's mind is, 'This is a serial killer kit.'"
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday July 27 2015, @12:10PM
Which anti-depressant or similar medication was he on? This is a pretty standard question for mass shootings, they're almost universally on one or the other. Its not unheard of to have a non-medicated mass shooter, but its more of a once in a decade thing than a once a month thing like medicated shooters.
Its not culturally possible to discuss this in mass media because lots of corporate money is made selling anti-depressants just think of the TV ads alone.
However, were it possible to discuss the topic, its an interesting moral / ethical debate that we've apparently decided that, say, for every million who get a year of treatment (aka medication) (of some varying level of success below 100%) we seem to tolerate about one dead body in a mass shooting.
Some day it'll probably all be looked back on like those currently shocking tobacco company exec statements from the old days. "Well sure it kills people and we stack the bodies like cordwood but we make lots of money so its all good."
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday July 27 2015, @12:35PM
Good point. Very good point, VLM. Drugs, drugs, drugs - drugs are evil, unless a corporation stands to make a profit off of those drugs. The cops will shoot you in a dope deal gone bad, but they're happy to see you "medicated" with good corporate drugs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2015, @03:22PM
Which anti-depressant or similar medication was he on? This is a pretty standard question for mass shootings, they're almost universally on one or the other.
Dude, you are confusing cause and effect. It should be no surprise that nearly all mass shooters are on anti-depressants, because they are fucking depressed! If anti-depressants actually caused people to become mass shooters, then we'd have hundreds of mass shootings every day because over 10% of the population is taking them.
If you want to get worked up about corporate conspiracies you ought to be focused on the well-established fact that anti-depressants don't actually work. [scientificamerican.com] That except for the most severe cases, they don't improve outcomes any better than placebo (mostly because placebo works amazingly well).