In this country, back to school means back to school shootings.
A graduate student opened fire on Chapel Hill’s campus yesterday, killing a faculty member and retraumatizing a whole community. On just the second week of classes, this bozo decided to commit a crime for reasons unknown and unknowable. On a campus that’s been equal parts comforting, and stressful and any number of other emotions, but for a time home to so many people, across generations.
Police charged Tailei Qi with first-degree murder in the fatal shooting of Zijie Yan inside a science building on campus. Yan is listed on UNC’s website as an associate professor in the Department of Applied Physical Sciences, while Qi is listed as a graduate student in Yan’s research group. Their connection doesn’t equate to a motive, because there could really be no motive that fits this crime.
In this community a shooter somehow feels both ordinary and hard to imagine. And that’s the hard part. It's the casual devastation of these murders that resonates most. Hoping and praying that the students, faculty, and other members of the Chapel Hill community can come together and support one another through this tragedy.
Side Items
Same Story, Different Day : A new federal indictment reveals the harsh reality and sadistic behavior by cops in northern California, who allegedly brutalized residents with K-9 dog bites or by shooting them with “less lethal” projectiles, and bragged of breaching their civil rights. The charging document, filed earlier this month, accuses 3 Antioch PD officers with conspiracy “to injure, oppress, threaten, and intimidate” residents of the town and to deprive them of the constitutional right to be free of “unreasonable force by a law enforcement officer.” Antioch (pop. 115,000) is a suburb of San Francisco, about an hour’s drive east that’s become a popular landing spot for people of color priced out of other parts of the Bay Area. The city’s nonwhite population has doubled over the last two decades, contributing to escalating tensions between residents and a PD notorious for biased law enforcement. I’m sure we’re just a few small tweaks away from that police reform everyone’s been talking about
Idalia’s Lurking: Florida is in disaster mode once again, gearing up for an onslaught later this week from Idalia, a storm system currently forecast to strengthen rapidly into “an extremely dangerous major hurricane” before hitting the Gulf Coast tomorrow. Floridians are loading up on sandbags and evacuating from their homes in low-lying areas along the Gulf Coast to prepare for a storm that the National Hurricane Center is projecting to have sustained winds of up to 120 mph. That would make it a Category 3 hurricane and (in my non-meteorologist opinion) not the last powerful storm of this hurricane season
Rare Good News: The actor/stuntman/generally insane person known as Steve-O has really turned a new leaf. Born Stephen Gilchrist Glover, the Canadian-American entertainer is best known for his outrageous performance stunts in the reality/comedy/bad idea TV series Jackass. But Steve-O has ditched the wildman reputation and sobered up, and it seems he’s discovered the therapeutic and calming nature of the outdoors. Watching him rescue this stray dog and help her find a perfect home is a great way to spend ~3 minutes this morning