Handcuffed student shoots himself in the head in the back of a police car after officers took him in

Handcuffed student shoots himself in the head in the back of a police car after officers took him into custody to prevent him hurting himself

www.dailymail.co.uk

A high school student has shot himself in the back of the head while inside a police car - after officers took him into custody to prevent him hurting himself.
The unidentified teenager from North Shore High School in Houston, Texas survived the shooting and was conscious when he arrived at hospital.
Officers said he became depressed after breaking up with a girlfriend in September, and on Wednesday morning, he texted a fellow student, indicating he intended to hurt himself...

(visit the link for the full news article)

I am thinking this is near impossible he was handcuffed behind his back and they say he was searched and only had on a T-shirt and they did not find the gun under his T-shirt. Sounds mighty fishy to me.

I grabbed a gun and tried to point it at my head with my hands behind my back and the gun is pointing a away from the head. If you put your head back you might be able to nick it but seems pretty improbable...

What do you think ATS?

www.dailymail.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

reply to post by hawkiye


Didn't something near identical to this happen about 2 months ago?

That incident a person handcuffed behind his back shot himself in the head in the backseat of a police car after being searched and texting his girlfriend.

Odd


eta:about earlier incidents under strangely similar circumstances.
www.abovetopsecret.com....
www.abovetopsecret.com...
www.abovetopsecret.com...
www.abovetopsecret.com...

And this is one from earlier about todays incident.
www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by Chamberf=6


Handcuffed man shot in back police car

It sure did. Back in July. I at first thought this was the same story.

reply to post by hawkiye


Seems like more and more of this kind of thing going on. This is one of things that is going to be pushing America toward gun control. Everyday it seems there is some new attack on someone or on themselves...

It's really quiet strange and sad. My two cents.

-SAP-

Obviously the officer taking him into custody didn't search him that well. I sure would hate to be partnered with him.
No, bueno...

Seems like I remember something about the earilier one being questionable and the link does discribe the issues, but I think a cop got fingered for it.....looking for any new news...

reply to post by spartaocean

How is he supposed to shoot himself with handcuffs on? And how is it not noticeable if the guy in the back is reaching around with handcuffs on and trying to maneuver around to actually shoot himself. Also, don't police cars have camera's that face the back seat to keep a view on anyone in custody? Tapes should be looked at by the police chief, or someone who can get something done about this if the officer's aren't telling the truth about what happened.

reply to post by hawkiye


Sounds like the Cop shot him.
Him living was not in the Plan.

Sooo.... The same cops that treat every kid like the worst threat to human life they've ever seen or heard......missed finding a gun on a suicidal teenager before stuffing him into the back of a cop car in handcuffs? Oh... How many ways does this one scream fail?

At least this one lived...so we can know for certain if it WAS his gun. The one in Arkansas smells so bad I think I can catch a whiff from clear up in Missouri here occasionally.

You know, the sloppiness is getting TOTALLY out of hand. What will it take to train cops to effectively search someone?! Perhaps the next kid keeps his gun until getting into the station lock-up or the first entry of the Jail before strip searching. Perhaps the international news it will make when finally, one does go postal inside a station house or jail intake AS an inmate with a gun they brought in themselves will get someone off their butts for this issue.

Obviously, two kids in a year shooting themselves with guns that shouldn't exist, inside 'secure areas' they never should enter, isn't enough to raise serious hackles. I guess this kid wasn't important enough? The one in Arkansas was just a local criminal....no one seemed to care much about that one. Life is too cheap these days.

They shot a teenage boy, in all likelihood. I don't understand anyone tolerating this in the least.

Oh, dear Lord. Its O.J. Simpson all over again. Have some in-humane dignity for the righteous, not scumbags.

I have some points to make from my point of view as a former LEO. I don't chime in on too much of this stuff on this site, because usually there is no point. There's plently of other cops on here, both current and former, and i dont know any more or less than them, so they can chime in too. But these are 1) my observations based on six years of experience in a busy dept; and 2) my opinions, my assumptions. Just like everyone else who's here making their assumptions, I am making mine. I had tried to form some educated guesses based on what I have experienced and observed and what I've trained rookies to do and NOT EVER do.

But the more I hear about these out-there incidents, the more it makes me think it is not the police officers shooting someone in the head intentionally and with malice. I do believe that the police were WRONG 100% of the time if this happened while someone was in their custody. When you place handcuffs on someone, you are actually saying, "I am taking away your Constitutional rights." You are taking away their freedom from them. An officer has observed conduct that is reasonably egregious enough that he can take away a person's Constitutional rights on the spot. This is how serious it is to place hand cuffs on another person. Don't try and get nit picky detailed with me and say "NUH-UH, what about Miranda rights, I still haven those!!!" Yes, you do. They only apply when I am questioning you. I'm not talking to you, so do use that right and be quiet, mkay? My point is that not that you don't still have rights cause duh you do. My point is rather that this I the way I was taught in the academy about the seriousness of making an arrest. It was drilled into my head that it was THAT serious. A lot officers get out on the road, and the grisly old guys teach them the 'real way' it's done and it becomes enh, whateva.

Cops get lazy.

Which brings me to my next point of clarification. Yes, generally, cops will place handcuffs on a person who has not committed a crime but is not free to go. In my state, those who were deemed a danger to themselves by a medical doctor OR based on behavior personally observed by an officer, are not free to go. The idea behind this is that someone who wants to die is of a diseased (not criminal) mindset that can be treated, but requires hospitalization to fix. This means that someone is usually showing several pretty good indicators that they are serious about taking their life. It is not ever, "um, Johnny and Suzy broke up and I think he might kill himself." there is an extensive interview with the subject himself. Awkward sometimes. Caps aren't generally touchy feely and you kinda have to get some trust and conversation going on to get someone to open up and admit to you they are going to kill themselves. This conversation does not occur when you show up and Bob hands you the empty bottles of pills and says he just took them all. He gets the ambo ride and I don't need any extra conversation to write a committment order for Him to have a 72 hour stay.

I get that it is rough telling your family you're going to drink a bottle of alcohol and take pills and go to sleep and die. But when the police find you pulling up at your apartment with three handles of booze and a bottle of Tylenol you just bought at the Wal-Mart, I will take you to the hospital. You can fight, it sucks, you don't want to go, you just want to be left alone, you don't reallllly want to die, you don't have a cent to pay a hospital with but YOU. ARE. GOING. And usually, the cops are nice enough to realize that you smell like booze, were just driving a car.... But dont charge you on that DUI because, clearly you just aren't right in the head at the moment.

One big, BIG contributor to this shtuff happening is poor officer safety skills. I can't watch cop tv shows because (besides being dumb and not close to reality at all) they are unsafe. I see them cuffing murder suspects in the front and thinking what the hell? Then I watch the news and I see deputies taking defendants in and out of the courthouse handcuffed in the front! I find myself yelling at the screen, WHY! Who is teaching you this!!!!? Unless you're SO pregnant that it just ain't happening, you get cuffed behind like everyone else. Even if you have really broad shoulders cause you're a macho macho man, fine, we can use two pairs to stretch the length. If you're a little itty bitty thing and can whoops accidentally maybe slip your wrists out when you think I ain't lookin' then you probably can fit both wrists in one single handcuff hole. Surprising how many chicks can do this.

Number two safety wise is, clearly, this guy was not searched before being placed in a police car. He probably wasn't searched because he wasn't really under arrest, He was just not free to go for his own good. This is cops being lazy, probably. My department had few cage cars, so our prisoners ALL went up in the front seat next to us. always felt waaay better to me there, anyways. I could always see what they were doing.
Ok, wrote too mu

Originally posted by spartaocean
Obviously the officer taking him into custody didn't search him that well. I sure would hate to be partnered with him.
No, bueno...

Yea he only had a T-Shirt on how do you miss a gun under a T-shirt when doing the pat down?

reply to post by hawkiye


If the handcuffs werent done in the normal fashion, he could have slipped them under his legs and then aimed the gun at himself from the front.

It would explain why he's alive, he probably couldnt get a proper angle and ended up grazing his skull.

ch. Wow, I didn't think I'd ever write so much on an ATS thread and never quote an external source.

What I was saying. Is that WHOEVER FAILED TO SEARCH THS KID SHOULD BE FIRED. You do not miss a gun on a search. You have either FAILED COMPLETELY TO DO YOU JOB AND SEARCH HIM or you have been so grossly negligent that your behavior endangered the prisoner, the other officers nearby and the public in general. BYE.

Based on the number offline vehicles on scene, either the world came running when the shots went ut on the air, or this kid was cornered in a bathroom during a lock down stand off situation that would have indicated from the get go that hey this guy might just be armed.

Cops get dissed all the time for using excessive force. They should. It is wrong. Cops also need to get held to the standard when they do the opposite. The opposite might be, maybe, not shooting someone with a gun to a baby's head (not enough force ). Ok so in this situation, where it wasn't a use of force issue at all, it was laziness and complacency or malice (not ruling it out, I just doubt it, it is so out there in the realm of possibilities.) I am leaning towards laziness and, more likely, complacency. Whoever was in charge of taking the boy into custody has probably taken one too many mentally ill people to the hospital, none of them ever had a gun on them, why would a teenager at school? He probably didn't check him at all. If he searched the boy, it was a damn piss poor search. This guy, we're he still an academy student, would have been canned back then if he failed to demonstrate this simple, required knowledge skill after remediation of course.

Maybe it was failure to train or failure to supervise. Personally, I believe in personal responsibility. A cop messed up big time. I don't see any indicators that it was malicious. I have personally experienced this laziness from fellow officers and had to ream them out when my sergeant wouldn't (what do you know, departmental culture trickles
down!!)

I think that is all. I don't know. I didn't proofread this rant before I posted it because I ran of of space the first time, so it is what it is.

This unfortunate incident did occur earlier today in Galena Park, an area on the east side of Houston. Apparently the young man had tweeted his intentions earlier in the day and one of his friends/followers intervened by alerting someone. It's a sad, sad situation.

Originally posted by Miraj
reply to post by hawkiye

 

If the handcuffs werent done in the normal fashion, he could have slipped them under his legs and then aimed the gun at himself from the front.

It would explain why he's alive, he probably couldnt get a proper angle and ended up grazing his skull.

Article says he shot himself in the back of the head.

Originally posted by TheOtter
ch. Wow, I didn't think I'd ever write so much on an ATS thread and never quote an external source.

What I was saying. Is that WHOEVER FAILED TO SEARCH THS KID SHOULD BE FIRED. You do not miss a gun on a search. You have either FAILED COMPLETELY TO DO YOU JOB AND SEARCH HIM or you have been so grossly negligent that your behavior endangered the prisoner, the other officers nearby and the public in general. BYE.

Based on the number offline vehicles on scene, either the world came running when the shots went ut on the air, or this kid was cornered in a bathroom during a lock down stand off situation that would have indicated from the get go that hey this guy might just be armed.

Cops get dissed all the time for using excessive force. They should. It is wrong. Cops also need to get held to the standard when they do the opposite. The opposite might be, maybe, not shooting someone with a gun to a baby's head (not enough force ). Ok so in this situation, where it wasn't a use of force issue at all, it was laziness and complacency or malice (not ruling it out, I just doubt it, it is so out there in the realm of possibilities.) I am leaning towards laziness and, more likely, complacency. Whoever was in charge of taking the boy into custody has probably taken one too many mentally ill people to the hospital, none of them ever had a gun on them, why would a teenager at school? He probably didn't check him at all. If he searched the boy, it was a damn piss poor search. This guy, we're he still an academy student, would have been canned back then if he failed to demonstrate this simple, required knowledge skill after remediation of course.

Maybe it was failure to train or failure to supervise. Personally, I believe in personal responsibility. A cop messed up big time. I don't see any indicators that it was malicious. I have personally experienced this laziness from fellow officers and had to ream them out when my sergeant wouldn't (what do you know, departmental culture trickles
down!!)

I think that is all. I don't know. I didn't proofread this rant before I posted it because I ran of of space the first time, so it is what it is.

The cops were informed he was armed when the call was made. And you didn't even address the fact that it is near if not impossible to shoot yourself in the back of the head with your HANDS CUFFED BEHIND YOUR BACK never mind missing the gun in the search which is BS because he had only a T Shirt on. This is way to fishy to assume the kid did it to himself without extreme further investigation.

reply to post by hawkiye


Apparently he was depressed after breaking up with his girlfriend. It is unfortunate that sometimes young people in the throes of unrequited love turn to extreme measures in an attempt to ease their emotional pain.

It's not all that hard to imagine this kid probably had the gun tucked in the back of his pants/shorts, manages to flip the gun facing upwards and pull the trigger.