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Rap Party Erupts into Violence – 2 Suspects on the Run Two killed, one injured. Jack Hammer, Crime & Justice Reporter – Sometimes I cannot help but think that the Rapper (or Hip Hop, if you prefer) music scene is a death cult. Take, for instance, this true crime story Straight Outta West Memphis. April 6, 2019 - West Memphis, Ark. – by WREG Staff. According to W Memphis police, the shooting happened around 1:30 a.m. inside the 2nd Chance Automotive Repair and Body Work on East Broadway, West Memphis. The auto repair shop is also used for hosting private club events. A flyer posted to Facebook Friday night showed that the shop was the venue for a concert by Memphis rapper Kevo Money. Witnesses say they were attending a rapper party at the time of the shooting “Just vibin’ (sic), playing music and stuff and just took a wrong turn. Just stuff went south," said witness Dquinton Patterson. "And all of a sudden you just hear, boom boom boom boom boom (sic), like repetitive fire. So, my instinct was automatically to get on the ground so I wouldn’t get hit by a stray bullet. And they’re just continuing shooting... It was like a movie scene or something.” Police say three men were shot at the club. One was pronounced dead on the scene and another died at a local hospital. Two suspects are on the run, Raheem Stackhouse and Reginald Smith. Below are the full list of charges both men faced in the past, according to court records. Raheem Stackhouse:
Reginald Smith:
 Reggie Smith (L); Raheem Stackhouse fugitives
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Driver dies after he's accidentally shot by own passenger during botched Chicago drive-by Jack Hammer, Crime & Justice Reporter – Perhaps these two were rookies at drive-by. I bestow a Darwin Award on the driver. I wish this happened more often. The poorly written news article does not clearly state that the shooter is in jail, so it is fair to say there is manhunt on for Jake Lee. July 26, 2019 – via abc7news staff  Chicago - Matt Gibson [photo below] died after he was accidentally shot [in the head] by his own passenger in a drive-by [shooting] on the South Side… Jake Lee [a convicted felon] has been charged with aggravated battery with a firearm, and is expected to face a murder count, according to Cook County prosecutors… Police say Gibson was driving when he pulled alongside a white SUV waiting to make a left turn. Lee, seated in the front passenger seat, began firing at the SUV with a .40-caliber [felon in possession] handgun and accidentally shot Gibson in the head, prosecutors said… Surveillance video of the shooting did not appear to show shots being fired from the white SUV, prosecutors said. Jake Lee was paroled April 21 after serving eight years for a 2011 [felony] conviction for aggravated battery with a handgun, according to Illinois Department of Corrections records. [Does anyone see a pattern here?]. Homicides in America on decline in 2019 You can thank the boys in blue; not the gun grabbers By Jack Hammer, Crime & Justice Reporter – July 20, 2019 With the summer shooting season in full swing throughout many large US cities, I was astonished and pleased to read this July 01 ABC news headline: “Chicago shootings at 4-year low in 2019”. You can read the full article here. In addition to the good news from Chicago, the FBI preliminary 2018 homicide report confirms a 6.7% decline from previous year – 2017 (see table below).  Of course it is too early for the FBI to make a 2019 homicide forecast, but never fear; House Clark is here for a Fearless Forecast. A good starting pointing for my estimate is the Gun Violence Archive (GVA) which is updated daily by searching over 2,500 news sources in the USA. The website can be found here. I did a data capture on July 01, 2019 to begin the semi-annual calculations.  GVA 2019 Stats Jan 1 - June 30 The challenge when working with GVA data is how they keep count on the number of deaths. I am only interested in the homicide totals, so the table below outlines the method used to calculate homicides from GVA data. You need to dig into the GVA spreadsheets (downloadable) to sort the numbers to discover about 20% of the GVA gun deaths are not homicides.  I estimate a 5% error bar on the final estimate mainly due to the jump from gun homicides to all homicides. It is impossible (for me) to tally all the homicides by stabbing, strangling, and other non-firearm murder types; therefore, the estimate depends on FBI historical data on weapons used in homicides. As can be seen by the chart below, there has been a gradual decline in US murders since 2016, and 2019 will hopefully continue the downward trend.  Conclusion As shown by the above chart, the US 2019 homicides are on pace to be the lowest of the last five years. There still remain pockets of very violent areas in many large US cities. I did a search on the GVA database using the key word: drive by, and got 351 hits for the month of June alone. The 351 drive by incidents in June resulted in 381 casualties, with about 15% being gunshot deaths. Most of the drive-by shooting crimes go unsolved by the police, but that is not to say that the police are ineffective at removing armed and dangerous criminals from the streets. When I searched the GVA database for keyword: felon in possession, I got, on average, 95 hits per week. That is an impressive number of arrests that should result in hundreds, if not thousands, of dangerous criminals doing serious time in the pen. On another positive note, gun related Home Invasions (HI) are trending downward in 2019. At the current pace of 850 HI in the first 6 months, expect ~1700 HI for the full year. This number of HI is the lowest amount in the last six years, and 18% lower than the 2,075 HI reported in 2018. Suspect Charged In Murder of Former Republican State Senator June 18, 2019 via zerohedge.com Arkansas - An arrest has been made in the case of former Arkansas state Senator Linda Collins-Smith, 57, who was one of two state senators who were shot at their homes in a two-day span. State Police and Randolph County Sheriff's deputies announced Friday that they had detained Rebecca Lynn O'Donnell, 48, of Pocahontas, Arkansas, in connection with Collins-Smith's slaying. O'Donnell has been charged with capital murder in the case. Collins-Smith was found fatally shot in her Randolph County home on June 4. The next day, Jonathan Nichols, a former Oklahoma state senator, was found dead in his Oklahoma home following reports of gunfire. The law does not consider the two murders to be related.  Sheriff Deputy escorts Ms. O'Donnell to jailhouse O'Donnell, the accused killer, had worked on the former lawmaker’s campaign and the pair were reportedly "good friends," per CBS. "They traveled together and did grassroots stuff, even after Linda lost her re-election," Ken Yang, a former communications staffer, told CBS News. Collins-Smith was elected to the state House as a Democrat in 2010, but she switched parties in 2011. She was elected to the state Senate in 2014, but lost re-election in a GOP primary. Below is a photo of the victim (left) with her accused killer (right).  The victim's family released a statement saying they were "sickened" that someone so close to Collins-Smith could have been involved in the crime. When her body was found, it was said to be an "advanced state" of decomposition, and it took police two days to identify the body, since they needed to confirm with Collins-Smith's dental records. |
