NEWS: Woman Killed By Pepper-Like Spray After Red Sox Win

21 year old Victoria Snelgrov was killed during a celebration of the Red Sox winning when a police officer shot her in the eye with "non-lethal" pepper spray. Red Sox fans were celebrating on the streets near Fenway Park, when crowd control officers fired pepper-like spray into the crowd.


Snelgrove was a journalism major when she died of a head injury at Brigham and Women's Hospital due to the pepper spray. Police Commissioner Kathleen O'Toole states that she accepts responsibility for the errors made by the officers, but condemns the "punks" who turned a victory of the Red Sox into violence and destruction.

Mayor Thomas Menino is considered banning liquor and alcohol sales during world series events. He is also considering asking bars and restaurants to not allow live coverage of the games to keep rowdiness down.

[edit on 22-10-2004 by deeprivergal]

This is a tragedy and goes along with the thread I posted yesterday...it was moved to chit chat....although this is terrible and my heart goes out to that family, what else can the police to do when people act like total idiot morons rioting over a damn stupid game! I understand she was a bystander too near the trouble....just really sad that sports fans get that mob mentality mindset...it's so stupid! Very, very sad

People are a product of their environment.

If a person chooses to place themselves in such an (as the one stated above) environment, they must have the common sense to know that no good can become of it.

Yes, my sympathies go to the family of the lost love one but in all honesty, I have no sympathy for the stupidity of the individual. The person decided to place themselves into a situation where the authorities had to be called to control it.

I would like to continue on with something along the lines of cleansing the gene pool but it wouldn't be proper.

I have to take issue with the headlines of the story. OC "spray" can not cause a traumatic head injury. There are basically two "projectiles" that contain OC and they are "pepperballs", very similar to paintballs (I have never heard of a concussion from a paintball), and gas cannisters used for riot control. I can only guess from the information that she was hit by a gas cannister fired from a 37mm or 40mm grenade launcher. No matter what was in the cannister, anyone hit in the head is in serious trouble. Why does the media choose to focus on the agent within the cannister instead of what actually caused the injury? I wonder how much of an innocent bystander she was. Unless it was a stray round, the gas cannister is usually fired at the trouble spot.

Again, saying someone recieved a head injury from pepper "spray" is like saying you could give someone a lump on the head by spraying them with lysol.

[edit on 22-10-2004 by suspishus]

I was watching CNN this morning at breakfast and they were claiming it was a "tear-gas canister".

www.cnn.com...


Mmmmm, chemical weapon goodness.

This is a quote from the CNN article:

"However, video from the scene where Snelgrove was struck showed the crowd in a joyous mood, slapping high fives and chanting celebratory Red Sox slogans. There were no signs of near-riotous conditions in that immediate vicinity although the area was crowded, and dozens of people near her stopped celebrating when they realized the severity of her injury and they tried to get help."

There is similar situation that happened here in Detroit when the Red Wings last won the Stanley Cup a few years ago. Myself and 2 friends watched the final game in Mt. Clemens at a bar. When the game was over and the Cup was won we hit Gratiot Ave. (Very major road that runs out of North out of Detroit) We were about five miles outside the city where a majority of the celebration was. Everyone was having fun, nothing was getting damaged, no one was getting hurt, however, the police showed up in all out riot gear. The police came from every jurisdiction in 5 counties. They started beating people with the batons and shields. They arrested everyone they could get their hands on. Everyone arrested regardless of situation was given a DUI, Drunk and Disorderly, or Drunk in Public tickets. I know of two people that were standing on the sidewalk and received DUI's. The police also tear gased many people. They used cannisters and I highly doubt it was a cannister that killed the woman in Boston. It had to be a "pepperball". It would be just like getting shot in the eye with a paintball and depending on the range she was probably shot by an officer within ten feet from her. Ok, back to my story. Well there are many side roads off of Gratiot but you could not escape down them. The police had them blocked off. There was no escape. We cut through a parking lot with my truck and hit a side street behind the police barricade. The car behind me was not so lucky. Last I saw there were being dragged out of the car.

The police took harmless fun and celebration, and turned into a war zone. I went to the news stations about it the next morning and they told me they believed my story. It was the same as many others they had heard that day. However they refused to do a story on it because it would have been the collapse of the police departments in those five counties, all the cities in those counties, and much of the state department.

When I hear a story like this it hardly suprises me.

GTWill- Doesn't Detroit also have Devil's night. If I was a cop there I might be a little antsy.


I saw footage of Boston and those people acted like jerk-offs. Climbing lightpoles, flipping cars, destroying private proerty. Rioting is an excuse to commit violent and outrageous acts and blame it on group frenzy.

I feel for the family of the girl, and Whether or not that girl did anything, I still think her family should sue the hell out of the city to make sure there is a ban on alchohol sales at Red Sox games. I put no blame on the officer unless it was malicaious. If there was gross negligence and this was a round not meant to be shot in that direction (it was 40 degrees outside, gloves and a grenade launcher???) then the officer should be reprimanded or fired based a jury of his peers. I am sure that this will haunt him for years.

Well, the Boston Commissioner has now promised to prosecute everybody involved.

Except, strangely, the cop who actually shot her.


news.bostonherald.com...



jako

That is likely because there is going to be a seperate internal investigation on the officer. Then it may get kicked up to what passes for a Grand Jury. I'm sure it is not over for the officer. You can't expect drunk and disorderly charges to get lumped in with a possible manslaughter charge, which I don't think it was.

A regular gas canister launcher is smooth bore, and they aren't very acurate, nor do they need to be. They are built to target a whole area.

GTWill - A gas canister to the head most definitely can kill you. Maybe you are thinking about the large fire-extinguisher type sprayers. Yes a pepperball could damage an eye, but I will be suprised if that was the actual culprit. Even if it didn't burst, it is a light projectile, probably travelling no more than 300 ft per sec. It really is similar to a paintball, and as many people play in this country, I am sure you would have had an accidental death before this point. A cannister could have crushed the bones around the occular cavity and propelled them into the brain.

I think it is important to remember who it was that for created the situation in the first place. Peaceful or not, since when is it acceptable to get drunk and jam up a street (which, by the way, some people need to use to get to work, because they don't have the luxury to get hammered and roll around in the gutter... over success, no less)? The French Quarter is fine for this, but they expect that there.

Don't engage in risky behavior, then complain when there are consequences.

[edit on 22-10-2004 by suspishus]

In order for a projectile of paintball hardness and velocity to not just pierce through someone's eyeball, but actually KILL them, the shooter would have to have been at the very most 10 feet away.

For a trained officer to hit someone in the face from that distance it would have to have been either a deliberate act of aggression, misjudgement due to aggression, or a result of random firing into the crowd. The officers would be trained to shoot the weapon at the target's chest area, otherwise the weapons would not be put into use (reason states). The only other possible scenario is that the victim crouched down at the wrong moment, or ducked down in instinctive reaction after a projectile struck her torso., thereby placing her head in pathy of the following projectile.

Regardless of the cause, that kind of weapon is simply not appropriate for that kind of situation. From the reports, it was not a riot where cars were being turned over and people were being beaten; it was merely an excited crowd. The ones responsible here are not the officers holding the weapons and commanded to use them, rather it is the authorities that authorize the distribution of and the use of such weapons to "quell" minor civil disturbances. Next time you argue with a shopkeeper, are police going to run in and start firing rubber bullets at you? Ridiculous...but things seem to be going in that direction.

wecomeinpeace, did you see the footage? It was a mad house. My favorite was the one with the shopping cart passed over the top of a sea of people in the street. Like it was a beach ball. It is a etremly sad an unfortunate incident, and it is the new curse for Boston. I have been in crowds where things suddenly go wrong and the police are firing gas, at it is scary as hell. There were riots in my city a few years back due to a shooting after a traffic stop, and 'blocks' were burned down. HOwever, that was racial, these j/o are just (happy?) too have won the pennant so they destory private proerty. I would hate to have seen Boston in the morning if pedro would have blown it.

Well. here is the new curse for Boston. They can win the series this year, and the Bambino may go away, but the ignorant actions of the fans will now haunt them with the unfortunae death of this girl. No more championships for another 90 or so years. They hsould also ban alchohol sales during the playoffs at Fenway.

From what I've seen of CS canister launchers, the operators (when skilled) tend to fire them at the ground infront of a crowd and allow it to skip and slide into the crowd, rather than aiming it like a weapon. If that was the case here the women would have to have been lying down or crouching very low to be hit in the face. If it was discharged at an angle where it would contact with the upper body first, then I say the cop should face charges approrpiately.

No, I must admit I didn't see the footage. When I said "reports", I meant from posters in this thread.
Maybe GTWill didn't see the footage you did. I still maintain that a person-targeted weapon that fires projectiles of any sort (gas cannisters are area-targted) is NOT appropriate for crowd control. Gas? Fine. Net guns? Fine. (Although I guess the weights on them can be pretty heavy). Tasers? Maybe.
Arson is a different matter though. If you were gonna burn the block where my family lives, I'd shoot you myself.

[edit on 2004/10/22 by wecomeinpeace]

The gas cannisters that I am familiar with are the ones that are lobbed into a crowd. I have also witnessed the ones that are shot through windows to disrupt a hostage situation. Granted the one shot through a window would cause a good lump if hit in the head however if hit in the eye it would probably only cause blindness, not death.

The footage I saw was celebrational but not destructive and was much more rowdy than what caused the police brutality that I witnessed. Oh, and yes we do have devil's night in Detroit however it is called Angel's Night and citizens patrol the street along with police. The incident that I witnessed was in a Roseville, MI -- two cities away from Detroit(5 Miles Away)

Okay - pepper spray is made from peppers right?! Hmmm....lemme think....maybe this girl had an allergy to one of the particles that make up peppers...If it's in the spray, and in the eyes of an allergic person, it's got a fair chance of killing someone...

Originally posted by deeprivergal
21 year old Victoria Snelgrov was killed during a celebration of the Red Sox winning when a police officer shot her in the eye with "non-lethal" pepper spray. Red Sox fans were celebrating on the streets near Fenway Park, when crowd control officers fired pepper-like spray into the crowd.

 

usatoday.com
BOSTON (AP) � A college student celebrating the Red Sox come-from-behind victory over the New York Yankees was killed after a police officer called in to control the rowdy crowd shot her in the eye with what was designed to be a non-lethal projectile.

(snip)
[edit on 22-10-2004 by deeprivergal]

"Since people won't accept responsibility, I, as mayor, will take it into my own hands," Menino said Thursday. "

The mayor is truely a noble person. Since he says he accepts
responsibility, and since the girl was murdered, he should
be put to death, in my opinion.





[edit on 22-10-2004 by mockan] extra DIV