Fun With Guns: “Don’t Bring Your Gun To Town, Boys” Edition
Okay, let’s head off to Minnesota.
St. Catherine University Security Officer Brent Ahlers was shot in the shoulder earlier this week while on duty. The quiet little town was horrified.
[Police Sergeant] Ernster said 55 police officers and four K-9s, as well as a State Patrol aircraft, joined in the search for a suspect on Tuesday night. Scanner reports described a man in a navy blue sweatshirt and black jeans. Ahlers was taken to Regions Hospital with noncritical injuries.
Police conducted a building-by-building search and advised people to stay indoors as they searched for the shooter.
The campus was put on lockdown. People in town started calling police to come to their homes because they thought the shooter was in their backyards.
The search continued the next day. They don’t cotton to shootin’ security guards at St. Catherine’s so they were pulling out all stops.
Yeah, except that Security Office Brent Ahlers finally admitted that he shot himself.
While interviewing Ahlers about 9:15 p.m. Wednesday, he told officers that he was in a wooded area of the campus about 9:30 p.m. Tuesday. He had brought his personal handgun from home and was handling it when it accidentally discharged, hitting him in the shoulder.
He told police he’d lied and said he made up the story because he was afraid of losing his job because he’d brought a gun to work with him.
They probably won’t let him back on campus either.
Thanks to Elizabeth for the heads up.
Hooo, boy! AD’s accompanied by a fabrication will never but never work. The AD is bad enough for the victim and the employer but the fabrication is a bridge too far. Ten to one he will never get a campus job anywhere again
1Ohhhhh my! We are not amused. :}
2“he’d lied and said he made up the story because he was afraid of losing his job”
With that on his resume he may no longer qualify for work at St Catherine, but I’m sure Donald Trump can find a place for him in the administration. Somewhere.
3[Dis?]claimer: I live in St. Paul, MN ~1 mile from “St. Kates” (a private Catholic school w/ ~5,000 students), and one of my son’s caretakers is a student there.
The >= 55 police officers, at least one helicopter, and K9 units are no doubt correct. One of our neighborhood friends “stopped counting after 30 police cars”. The campus went into lockdown, but the students were not told why. Our son’s caretaker was one of them; she found out from us by phone/msg that a campus security officer had been shot and the police were looking for an active shooter. The dorms/campus stayed in lockdown from shortly after the shooting until after 2AM. The helicopter was making regular passes until at least midnight.
Rumor started going around early yesterday that the shooting may have been self-inflicted, but official sources were reportedly trying to squash that rumor. [Perhaps to encourage the shooter to embellish his story incriminatingly. (?)]
Almost exactly 24 hours after the shooting, the St. Paul police released a statement that the shooting had been self-inflicted.
4Cleaning out the gene pool one bullet at a time
5It didn’t end well in “Orange is the New Black,” either. Netflix and learn!
6Okay…
Let’s assume you shoot yourself playing Billy the Kidd in the woods. You then dream up some BS story to explain it to the police. In other words, you put more thought into the excuse than you did the safety of your playtime with your gun. And NOW you’re worried about losing your security guard job?
Son… secure is not what you make me feel.
7Actually he’ll have no trouble at all finding another similar job, as long as he doesn’t mind moving to another location. Probably won’t even have to leave the state. Many, if not most, jurisdictions do bare minimum background checks on cops. Especially cop wannabes like this guy.
8I suggest he be billed for extra police time, helicopter use, etc. That should keep him busy for quite a while.
I also suggest that the teens who started one of the massive western fires by throwing a firework into a dry forest should be drawn and quartered. That you can’t pay for, and they’re too damn stupid to live.
9My enquiring mind wants to know just how the heck one shoots oneself in the shoulder. Bad aim?
10@#9–I agree that they’re stupid, but I’m afraid that’s a pre-existing condition for 15 y.o. guys, so I’m not up for terminating them with extreme prejudice.
However, I do think that the next five summers spent with Forestry workers doing replanting and trail maintenance would be an excellent idea. Nothing like sweat equity to make someone decide to take care of a piece of real estate.
11I agree Rhea, his pay from his next job ( wondering what that would be?) should be paid to city in some way. I am not a fan of saying his pay should be garnished , a mental picture of parsley always pops onto my head.
12The guard should be made to pay for the taxpayer expenditures for the search.
13The morons who started the fire must be made to clean the area and replant each and every tree they distroyed. By hand, one at a time. Then perhaps they will appreciate what they destroyed. And oh yes, they must care for all the displaced animals. Fair is fair.
A later story points out that the original gunman was the ubiquitous ‘black guy’ who always seems to mysteriously appear around crazy racist people.
14St. Paul is a liberal city of about 300,000 (About right eyesoars?), and the “twin” of Minneapolis. I live in Northfield, a small town 45 miles south, though I have abided and grad schooled in StP in the past. Anyway, I remember hearing about this recently, but not all the details you filled in eyesoars. Thanks. That guy is a Class A bonehead.
15Huge disgusted sigh. Big black man shot him. Yadda, yadda lying crap. This makes me so sick and tired. And I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.
16Handling it!!WTF?
17Yep, he knew where to deflect the blame. If there’s a shooting, must be a black guy. If there’s a robbery, must be a black guy.
18What Debbo@15 says; the metro area is ~2 million. St Paul is one of the more Catholic (RCC) areas of the state. The school is a mostly women’s college (there is also a convent on-site), so fearing a gun-toting nut on the loose brought forth a huge police response.
Northfield is a small college town (home to Carlton College and St. Olaf College) not far from my primary soaring field. It’s perhaps most famous as the last raid and bank robbery of the James Gang, who were shot and/or captured a few days later near Madelia, MN.
Re: Angela@16, bus routes were shut down in the middle of the night (roads blockaded). Imagine how you’d feel as a black member of the community. Philando Castile was shot only a few miles North of here, and while the St. Paul police are better regarded than the Minneapolis police, I’m much relieved nobody was shot or killed during this.
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19Rhetorical wondering… why is it that the people who most want to own guns are those who I would least trust with them?
eyesoars, you’re talking about Stanton, that kind of soaring? Wonderful! I’ve flown in small planes but never gliders. Must be wonderful. Kudos to you.
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