Updates on the Willis-Starbuck Shooting
1) More information is available about the man being sought for the shooting. From the Alameda Times-Star:
Christopher Hollis, the young man Berkeley police believe shot and killed Dartmouth student Meleia Willis-Starbuck last week, made a call for help over the weekend. Hollis called his former basketball coach, Vincent Trahan, on Saturday, reaching the coach on his cell phone. A despondent Hollis told the Berkeley High School basketball coach he felt he was being made out to be a monster.
KRON4 has word that Hollis has also spoken with members of his family:
As the manhunt continues for 21-year old Christopher “Chris” Lester Hollis — the shooting suspect in the murder of 19-year-old Meleia Willis-Starbuck — the suspect’s family tells KRON 4 News that they have been in contact with Hollis.
“Our family is completely sorry and we feel bad for what has happened to Meleia,” said Kiana Hollis, the suspect’s sister. “He was very upset. Just like they’re suffering from a loss, he’s suffering from a loss.”
2) There was a meeting last night as a forum for members of the community to discuss their concerns. From the Chron this time:
Berkeley leaders held a community meeting Tuesday night to discuss the shooting death of 19-year-old Meleia Willis-Starbuck, who was killed near the UC Berkeley campus July 17 — allegedly by a friend she called her “brother.”
About 50 people came to the meeting, primarily to express sorrow over the killing. Some pleaded for stricter gun-control laws, others for better outreach to troubled students.
During a question and answer session, community members pleaded for more details in the investigation, but police did not reveal anything new.
3) And some information on Hollis’ previous run-ins with the law:
Hollis spent 15 days in jail after pleading no contest to misdemeanor hit- and-run after a car accident in Berkeley in June 2003. According to court records, Hollis had a previous felony conviction for possession of marijuana for sale and multiple arrests for resisting police officers.
4) And the legal process for the other suspect continues:
An Oakland man will appear in court Wednesday to answer charges that he drove the getaway car after the shooting death of a 19-year-old woman in Berkeley.
Christopher Wilson, Jr., 20 turned himself in to authorities last week.
There’s a very good article in the Dartmouth school paper that includes quotes from John Adams, an Alameda county prosecutor:
http://www.thedartmouth.com/article.php?aid=2005072601010
Two sections from the article that I consider most illuminating are:
*”Police would not confirm that Willis-Starbuck called Hollis, but Adams alleges that a number of witnesses at the scene indicated that Willis-Starbuck suggested that her friend bring a gun.
“She called Hollis,” Adams said. “There are witnesses that say they heard her say ‘bring the heat’ and if that’s true … that’s not a very good thing.”"
This is probably the most compelling evidence so far that Willis-Starbuck did ask her friend to bring a gun. Unless you’re a pitching coach for the Boston Red Sox, “bring the heat” usually refers to a firearm of some kind. I doubt the prosecutor has a motive to mislead people in this case, because if he’s lying, he just handed to the two suspects the defense that they were coming to the aid of a friend that they believed was in danger. (I’m not saying their response was appropriate. It’s just that you’d have to be a really stupid defense attorney not to bring that up.)
*”In an interview with The Dartmouth following the murder, Stephanie de Souza, a friend of Willis-Starbuck who was with her just prior to the shootings, said the argument had not led to the incident.
“I guess some insults flew towards Meleia and her friends. They were being sarcastic, they meant it as a joke,” de Souza said. “The girls took it a little too seriously, but it didn’t escalate at all.”
However, later reports indicated that the argument continued even after de Souza returned to her apartment, less than a block away from the shooting.”
Evidently, it appears that De Souza was friends with both Meleia Willis-Starbuck (i.e., they went to Berkeley High together) and the men who harassed Meleia. It is doubtful the argument would have happened without Willis-Starbuck and DeSouza bumping into each other, although De Souza does not appear to be a party to the argument. Basically, I think De Souza has a motive to make her friends (the one who called the women “bitches” for not partying with them) sound more like “Boy Scouts” than they really are. I checked Facebook for any Berkeley High graduates named DeSouza and it turns out that Stephanie DeSouza is a student at UCDavis, although her Facebook page would not be accessible to people not at Davis who didn’t know her personally.
Comment by jonp — July 27, 2005 @ 6:41 pm
What exactly constitutes harboring/aiding a fugitive? It seems really interesting that all of these people have talked to Hollis. I suppose they could all plausibly claim that they don’t know where he is. But I would have some questions about that.
As regards the de Souza interview. It’s not clear to me when that interview took place. But if it was before the police publicly identified Hollis/Wilson as the suspects, then it is possible that the friends of the victim knew what happened and were attempting to pass the shooting off as a completely random crime in order to protect Hollis/Willis. That’s another motive to minimize the connection between the argument and the shooting.
Comment by captain anonymous — July 27, 2005 @ 8:37 pm
keep people like meleia off our streets!
Comment by Anonymous — July 27, 2005 @ 9:15 pm
poor Hollis!…he probably thought he going to go help his friend and it all turned ugly!
damn…
Comment by Crazyguy! — July 27, 2005 @ 11:36 pm
Help his friend by bringing a gun to shoot guys who call women inappropriate names? I don’t condone that, but there’s something called proportional response, if indeed you’re going to retaliate.
Comment by Anonymous — July 28, 2005 @ 2:54 am
I’ve heard women refer to african-americans with large penises as “packing some heat”, so maybe she was just making a booty call to Hollis and he took it the wrong way? “For sure girl, I’ll be right over - and I’ll definately be packin that heat, know what Im sayin?”
Comment by Anonymous — July 28, 2005 @ 3:48 am
I’m getting a little tired of the Hollis camp calling this thing an accident.
The only thing accidtental about this was his crappy aim killed someone other than his intended target. He INTENDED to kill someone. He PURPOSELY shot the gun and aimed it towards people. His accident was that he killed the woman who told him to come to the place and to bring his gun. Other than that, he is a man who pre-meditated killing another human being.
And major boo-hoo over the fact that he’s to distraught to come in and give himself up because he is dealing with the loss of his close friend. Reminds me of the old joke about the guy who killed his parents and asks the court for leniency because he’s an orphan. But this isn’t a joke.
Willis-Starbuck escalated this argument from words to gunfire. She asked for a gun to become part of the confrontation. She got her wish — a gun arrived and was shot. That wasn’t an accident. She didn’t accidentally tell Hollis to bring a gun when she meant to say “Oh, and pick me up something to drink on your way over here”. Hollis didn’t “happen” to bring the gun along — he was purposely told to do that. He didn’t “accidentally” fire the gun four or five times. He didn’t “accidentally” flee the scene and hide the car in at a friend’s house. His buddy in the back seat did not “accidentally” flee the country. And Wilson can claim all the ignorance he wants — once the gun was shot, he willingly and knowingly aided Hollis in getting away and hiding the car that he was driving. I wonder how much regret Wilson was feeling about the shooting before he found out who actually got shot.
This is not an accident. It’s an attempted murder in which the person who instigated the murder attempt got shot herself. If the guy who plans an armed robbery gets shot by his buddy who’s aiming at the police as he runs from the bank, nobody calls that a tragic accident. If one of the guys was killed instead of her, I think Willis-Starbuck would be facing charges right now.
And JonP — I notice your spinning goes on. I will grant you that the men harassed Willis-Starbuck, but in turn, she called a hit on them. Maybe you think conspiracy to commit murder is a proper response to harassment — if so, I’d be careful the next time you and yours occupy some building and harass the police who tell you to leave. And since you feel the need to modify using the term ‘friends’when talking about Souza’s relationship with the guys with this phrase: “(the one who called the women “bitches” for not partying with them)”, please make sure every time you mention Willis-Starbucks’ friends that you add “(the ones who committed premeditated and cold-blooded murder in response to trash talking)”.
I’d rather have someone call me a bitch than kill me, but hey — maybe that’s just me.
Comment by Insider — July 28, 2005 @ 10:01 am
How is it spinning to say that the men who argued with Willis-Starbuck probably weren’t Boy Scouts? Let’s think about the following scenario.
1. You’re a Cal Student and you’re probably not a 98-pound weakling either. You ask a group of women if they’d like to “party” with you.
2. The women say “No,” that they have no interest in “partying” with you. At this point, the sensible thing to do is to leave.
3. But let’s say you don’t leave. Let’s say you start calling the women “bitches.” Let’s say that you are probably bigger and stronger than these women and you’re harassing them at about 1:30 in the morning.
4. Now let’s say that one of these women tells you that it’s not nice to call women “bitches.” Now again, the sensible thing to do would be to smile, apologize, and LEAVE! But do you leave? No, suddenly, you decided to keep on arguing.
Summary execution is in no way a valid response to somebody calling you or your friends a “bitch.” On the other hand, if one of those name-callers got shot, I’d still think it was wrong, but I’d probably think they were done in by their own stupidity. Just like I think Willis-Starbuck probably got done in by her own unwise decision. Shooting the name-callers would be a grievous moral wrong, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t stupid in hanging around when they could’ve gotten shot. The guys arguing with Willis-Starbuck had TWO opportunities to de-escalate the confrontation: (1) They could have respected the women’s wishes not to “party” with them; (2) They could have apologized after Willis-Starbuck objected to being called a “bitch.” That they did not do so suggests that we shouldn’t be portraying them as a bunch of “little angels.”
As for the question of murder, that’s for the courts to decide. Any decent defense attorney will probably make the claim that Hollis thought he was coming to aid a friend who he thought was in danger. Defense of self or others is a legitimate defense against a murder charge. I would find it highly unlikely that it wouldn’t get raised either in a trial or to get his sentence reduced to manslaughter. As for Wilson, if he had no idea that Hollis had a gun or planned to bring a gun, then
By the way, who are you Insider? You probably know De Souza or one of the friends involved in the incident. What’s your angle? I even conceded the point that Willis-Starbuck did ask for a friend to bring a firearm, even though I had previously defended the poster “Mom in Wisconsin” for making that statement. I am trying to be as broadminded as I can in considering as many accounts of the shooting as possible, but don’t jump down my throat if I don’t accept your version–and only your version–as the absolute gospel truth.
Comment by jonp — July 28, 2005 @ 12:05 pm
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Help his friend by bringing a gun to shoot guys who call women inappropriate names? I don’t condone that, but there’s something called proportional response, if indeed you’re going to retaliate.
***
As a matter of morality, responses should be proportionate. But as a matter of law, the criminal codes of the 50 states differ a great deal in what they consider an adequate justification for deadly force. For example, there was a case a few years ago when a Japanese foreign exchange student got shot and killed in Louisiana, because he was on his way to a costume party dressed up like John Travolta from Saturday Night fever, but he went to the wrong house. The shooter got acquitted simply by saying he was afraid of crime and he was defending his property from what he thought was a burglar. I don’t what the justifications for deadly force are in California, but Hollis might claim that he was simply trying to defend a friend who was in danger from men sexually harassing her.
In addition, there’s the possibility that Willis-Starbuck was killed by a “warning shot.” Hollis may have shot into the air without intending to hurt anybody. Unfortunately, whatever bullet goes up must come down. There was a CSI episode like this where some idiot doing some illegal target shooting in his backyard ends up unwittingly killing a woman several hundred feet away. Something like this might explain why Willis-Starbuck’s friends accidentally killed her.
Comment by jonp — July 28, 2005 @ 12:14 pm
So, if the intended targets had been shot, it would have been due to their own “stupidity”. But since Meleia Willis-Starbuck was shot, it was due to her “unwise decision”. That’s an interesting parallel: You’re still spinning away!
Hollis: I doubt it’s manslaughter if he is shooting wildly into a group of people from half a block away. Unless he saw the Cal students brandishing a weapon or physically threatening the victim (no one has ever made that claim), it looks like murder to me (not that I have any legal training).
Wilson: Even if he did not know Hollis had a gun, he still drove Hollis away after the shooting and helped hide the car.
Comment by anon54 — July 28, 2005 @ 12:21 pm
How are unwise and stupid not synonymous, anon54? They both made dumb decisions.
Comment by jonp — July 28, 2005 @ 12:34 pm
I found this website with some California firearm/self-defense laws
link
Use of a Firearm or Other Deadly Force in Defense of Life and Body
The killing of one person by another may be justifiable when necessary to resist the attempt to commit a forcible and life-threatening crime, provided that a reasonable person in the same or similar situation would believe that (a) the person killed intended to commit a forcible and life-threatening crime; (b) there was imminent danger of such crime being accomplished; and (c) the person acted under the belief that such force was necessary to save himself or herself or another from death or a forcible and life-threatening crime. Murder, mayhem, rape, and robbery are examples of forcible and life-threatening crimes.
You can shoot someone to prevent them from committing murder, rape, robbery. I highly doubt that sexual harassment qualifies as a forcible or life-threatening crime.
And as for the warning shot/CSI hyopthesis, the victim was struck in the chest, not in the top of the head. It seems much more likely that she was struck by one of the shots aimed into the crowd.
Comment by anon54 — July 28, 2005 @ 12:35 pm
so much speculation. and all based on newspapers. you people really fail to appreciate how little information newspaper reports convey about these kinds of situations. journos have always, always spun violence, one way or antoher. Everyone from wieners like Andy writing about the “crime wave” to new york times reporters writing about a killing in Brooklyn. You almost NEVER get a good understanding of the situation on the ground when shit went down from a journo who wasnt there (and thus is almost always poorly or incompletely informed), writing for a paper with its own audience and editorial concerns.
Comment by mano — July 28, 2005 @ 12:40 pm
“There was a CSI episode like this….” hahahahaha
Comment by alum — July 28, 2005 @ 2:00 pm
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You can shoot someone to prevent them from committing murder, rape, robbery. I highly doubt that sexual harassment qualifies as a forcible or life-threatening crime.
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Thanks for the posting on self-defense laws in California. It’s bringing light to this discussion. It would be harder to raise defense of another person as a justification if the person is in danger of having something forcible AND life-threatening happen to them. I could see “forcible” perhaps, but I highly doubt that “life-threatening” would apply. On the other hand, juries don’t parse these statutes the way that judges do. It’s surprising how many people have been acquitted on self-defense grounds for relatively minor provocations (e.g., “road rage”).
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And as for the warning shot/CSI hyopthesis, the victim was struck in the chest, not in the top of the head. It seems much more likely that she was struck by one of the shots aimed into the crowd.
***
There’s a thing about women’s chests, anon54. They protrude more than men’s chests. It’s called breasts, son. And if you think my warning shot idea is out of bounds, tell that to the 1980s subway shooter Bernard Goetz who got acquitted using a similar defense.
Comment by jonp — July 28, 2005 @ 4:06 pm
Yo — JonP! Try to stay focused here. What’s with the “don’t jump down my throat if I don’t accept your version–and only your version–as the absolute gospel truth.” We don’t have different versions. We all know now that Willis-Starbuck did indeed call Hollis and tell him to bring a weapon. We all know he adhered to her request and brought a gun. We all know he did shoot into the crowd with intent to kill. That is no dispute on that.
The only thing I have against you is your continued spin crusade to make the victim look like she has no liability and that the guys somehow deserved to be shot at. You are spinning when you call the guys “stupid” and the victim, “unwise”, as if a grad student can’t see the difference in tone between those words. If the words are synonymous as you say, please start calling W-S stupid in future posts instead of unwise — but we both know that would be much more insulting and you won’t do it. You spin when you decide to modify the word friends when it applies to the guys and remind us how bad those guys are, but you don’t apply the same need to modify references to the victim’s friends, who, as we all know, includes at least one cold-blooded murderer. It’s spinning when you say that being shot for trashtalking and being shot because the guy you called to start shooting has bad aim and killed you instead of killing the guy you with arguing with, are the same thing. Words are the same as bullets, Jon? I don’t think so. It’s spinning when you constantly use the word “harass” which has a much more negative tone than “argue”. If the guys tried to continue the fight while the women tried to walk away; if they left and came back and started hassling the women again; then you could say harass which implies actions of a repeated nature. But I’d say it was a fight by the fact that by the time Hollis showed, the other women were done with the fight and already in the car and W-S was the only woman that was continuing the argument. The Dartmouth story points out “According to Adams, at the time of the incident, Willis-Starbuck remained on the sidewalk talking to the group of men while her friends entered a car and tried to encourage her to leave with them.” What I’ve heard confirms that — the fight was done and they guys were ready to leave but W-S was still upset and arguing. She could have left but she stayed to fight. Her friends were done and ready to go — how come W-S was the only one who kept the fight going? It’s spinning when you suggest the guys should have shut up and left but you don’t mention that option was also available to W-S and that her friends had clearly chosen that option. Sounds like it wasn’t harassment, but a mutual fight. If I wanted to spin, I could suggest that W-S was continuing to engage the men in a fight so she could give her gun-toting “brother” time to get there and shoot them. If she was mad enough to call a gun on them, mabye she didn’t want them to leave until they got their punishment? That’s a spinning speculation and the truth is that I don’t know why W-S kept fighting. But I do know she was aware that a gun was on the way as she continued the fight that her girlfriends had already ended. I do know she was aware a gun was coming when her friends wanted to leave and tried to get her to leave as well, but she wouldn’t.
I have never said the guys were angels. Look at every post of mine — I always admitted that they trashtalked and were rude. But I hardly count it as spinning when I said that they didn’t deserve to die for being jerks, and that W-S is not the victim of a tragic “accident”. They didn’t and it wasn’t.
Comment by Insider — July 28, 2005 @ 4:18 pm
yes Jonp, I was wondering myself why you labeled the guys as not “angels”. who did you think you were quoting?
Comment by thomas — July 28, 2005 @ 5:15 pm
My, my, my… Aren’t we testy? I even concede somebody’s point on W-S bringing a gun and I get jumped on for a perceived display of weakness. Ooh, so I played with the connotations of “unwise” vs. “stupid”? Are you going to look over my shoulders every time I look into a thesaurus so that I pick an adjective that you approve of?
By the way, I don’t know where you were raised, but when somebody doesn’t want to “party” with you and tells you “No,” you should respect that. If you call somebody a “bitch” and somebody calls you on it, you should apologize and move on rather than starting an argument about it. These are not offenses that warrant a person getting shot, but guys who think they’re rescuing a woman with a gun are as American as a John Wayne movie, not just some aberration of the ghetto.
Just for giggles… Would the hue and cry be as loud if the harassers were gangbangers from Hayward/Richmond and it was a Berkeley student who pulled out a pistol out of fear? Would the folks on this board still feel the same outrage? Or would they say this was justified like Bernie Goetz shooting some black kids on the subway?
Better yet, if Hollis used an Airsoft gun and shot Willis-Starbuck’s eye out, would the frat rats offer him an honorary membership in Pi Kappa Phi?
Comment by jonp — July 28, 2005 @ 7:34 pm
Insider says, “We all know now that Willis-Starbuck did indeed call Hollis and ask him to bring a weapon. We all know he adhered to her request and brought a gun. We all know he did shoot into the crowd with intent to kill. That is no dispute on that.”
Actually, you should be careful with stating what “we” agree to. Newspaper reports verify the first two claims. On the other hand, it isn’t true that “we” all know that Hollis shot with intent to kill. I certainly don’t know, because I wasn’t there.
If anyone on this board was there, then they can try to convince me about what Hollis really intended. Otherwise, I’m totally agnostic on this question. He should go to jail for what he did, but whether it should be for first-degree murder, second-degree murder, or manslaughter can’t be decided unless I get more information than I have now. That’s not “spinning.” It’s called waiting until all the facts are in. Unless “Insider” comes up with some more detailed info about his or her trash-talking friends, frankly I can’t form an opinion on intent.
(Note: “trash talking” was a term “Insider” used first.)
Comment by jonp — July 28, 2005 @ 7:42 pm
Jon:
Please give it up with the equivalence of “stupid” and “unwise”. One need not be a Ph.D. student to see the difference in meaning between the two words. You’re only making a joke of yourself by trying to claim that they are synonomous.
Just for giggles… Would the hue and cry be as loud if the harassers were gangbangers from Hayward/Richmond and it was a Berkeley student who pulled out a pistol out of fear?
You’re twisting the facts to make a patently invalid comparison. Hollis did not fire the gun because of an imminent threat to the life or safety of anyone. He fired because his friend had been disrespected and he was “settling the score”.
Further, two can play this game. If the victim was a blonde sexpot sorority girl from Orange county, instead of a local left wing activist, would you still be be here defending her and trying to somehow attribute a degree of blame to the students who had argued with her? I really doubt it.
Better yet, if Hollis used an Airsoft gun and shot Willis-Starbuck’s eye out, would the frat rats offer him an honorary membership in Pi Kappa Phi?
Apparently it’s hard to stay on topic when you’re getting roasted. Best to revert to your tried and true strategy of attacking the Greek system.
Comment by captain anonymous — July 28, 2005 @ 9:33 pm
I agree with Captain Anonymous. The fact that the girl’s death is such a big deal is because she’s black. I’m not saying that being black makes her death more or less tragic because it would be equally as tragic as anyone of any race. However, the fact that we’re still writing huge long blogs is because of the overreaction due to the girl’s ethnicity. Please look beyond her ethnicity and treat her like a regular human being and not some sideshow.
If the killer was white, everyone would be screaming hate crime, regardless of motive.
Comment by Anonymous — July 28, 2005 @ 11:45 pm
And jonp, please set aside your hateful bigotry against Cal Greek just once when dealing with another issue.
Comment by Anonymous — July 28, 2005 @ 11:47 pm
how would a white girl calling her homies for armed backup be a hate crime?
jonp is more retarded than lauren kerasek
Comment by alum — July 29, 2005 @ 12:34 am
no no..It’s Lauryn
Comment by Anon. — July 29, 2005 @ 1:13 am
And she’s a womyn!
Comment by Anonymous — July 29, 2005 @ 1:26 am
Anonymous-
That wasn’t really my point. First, I was referring to jonp’s posts in particular, not the general level of calstuff coverage. Second, my statement was that his opinions were derivative of the victims political ideology, not her racial group.
Comment by captain anonymous — July 29, 2005 @ 11:37 am
Seriously. If Amaris White had called Mike Davis to bring a gun to shoot up CalSERVE in the Senate chambers because they called her a bitch and were otherwise arguing with her, and Mike Davis fired shots into the crowded CalSERVE side of the chambers and killed Amaris White, Jon would gleefully post on his blog about the poetic justice of it all. And then he’d go on a six page tirade calling for the death penalty for Mike Davis.
Or if W-S were a redneck who got in an argument with a bunch of bangers who called him “honky” and he called his hillbilly buddy Billy Bob McHick to bring a gun and teach them a lesson, only to be shot himself, Jon would dismiss it as white trash finally being cleaned up.
Comment by Anonymous — July 29, 2005 @ 12:21 pm
***
He fired because his friend had been disrespected and he was settling the score.
***
You people are full of shit. I don’t even know the race of whoever talked smack with Willis-Starbuck. Anyway, I thought she was biracial, as if that mattered…
Anyhow, look at the assumptions. Yeah, if there’s a shooting involving a black person, it had to be because somebody’s homegirl got “dissed” and not for some other reason. If anybody has some real info about the circumstances of the crime instead of insinuations you want to make because you don’t like my liberalism, then I’m totally willing to hear the info. Otherwise, you are just totally full of shit. Give me some facts, people. Not your goddamn freakin’ opinions!
And what’s this horseshit about calling for death penalty for Mike Davis? We obviously got some BCR mole on this board who’s too chickenshit to tell me who he or she is. I oppose the death penalty in all cases. It’s called principle. You should try it sometime.
But evidently, I’m touching on some nerve when I suggest the possibility that some frat boys, not all frat boys, but that some frat boys might have violence on their minds. Of course, in some of your fantasy worlds, I guess the only violence in this world is perpetrated by black people. And nobody has ever died or gotten injured from fraternity hazing. Or if somebody did get injured, it must have been because there was some token black guy in the frat.
Comment by jonp — July 29, 2005 @ 1:10 pm
jonp, you’re just confirming our assertions with your tirades on race.
Comment by Anonymous — July 29, 2005 @ 1:18 pm
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jonp, you’re just confirming our assertions with your tirades on race.
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Assertions are all you have. How about some facts?
Comment by jonp — July 29, 2005 @ 3:10 pm
By the way, there’s a really good column in the Daily Planet about the importance of not jumping to conclusions in the Willis-Starbuck shooting:
http://www.berkeleydaily.org/text/article.cfm?issue=07-29-05&storyID=21971
Comment by jonp — July 29, 2005 @ 3:24 pm
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***
jonp, you’re just confirming our assertions with your tirades on race.
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Assertions are all you have. How about some facts?
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confirm - To support or establish the certainty or validity of; verify.
Sounds like he’s pointing to something as fact, lets take a look at the sentence sturcture to find out what.
The subject in this sentence is jonp, aka Jon Pennington, aka you. The verb here is gerund form of “to confirm”, as in “jon is confirming.” What is jon confirming? The direct object of the sentence, “our assertions.” How is the subject confirming, ie providing fact, of the assertions? The next clause tells us “…with [his] tirades on race.”
You moron, he’s calling you on your hypocracy and using your tirades as examples. Either rebut his examples or shut up, but don’t say he’s not providing examples as a method of side stepping the criticism.
Damn you’re an embarassment.
Comment by Anonymous — July 29, 2005 @ 3:33 pm
Embarassment? I’m not the one hiding behind anonymity. You can diagram sentences as much as you damn well please, but I have still not heard a single damn thing that goes beyond second-hand accounts and hearsay about what really went on with the Willis-Starbuck shooting. It’s put up or shut up time. Unless you got info, then frankly you’re just some ranter who’s got a bug up his butt.
By the way, check out this quote from the Berkeley Daily Planet:
http://www.berkeleydaily.org/text/article.cfm?issue=07-29-05&storyID=21970
“Meleia was shot and killed while she was taking the time to try to explain to a group of young men—some of whom were reported to be Cal football players—why it was inappropriate and disrespectful to call her and her friends “bitches” for having refused their advances. Not one of the supposed UC Berkeley students has come forward to acknowledge his role in this tragedy or to express any regret for the verbal abuse that preceded the shooting.”
Some of you might want to heed that. Of course, we all know that frat boys and football players don’t do anything at 1:15AM in the morning except help little old ladies across the street. And oh, they would never sexually harass anybody. Ri-i-i-ight… Evidently, it’s “Beetle-style” cool to be cynical about Willis-Starbuck, but it’s a total sacred cow to be cynical about frat boys and football players. Evidently, I’m not allowed to be cynical about both.
Comment by jonp — July 29, 2005 @ 5:03 pm
w00t! My own adverb!
Comment by Beetle — July 29, 2005 @ 5:19 pm
Hey jon, calm down. No one said that the “football players” (and heavens why you brought up frat boys who had nothing to do with this) were good people for their remarks. We’re just trying to point out that because the victim was black it has brought in tons of jeers or pathetic pity for the “evil society” that “keeps blacks down”.
But john, why always the tirade against fraternities? I mean seriously, it seems like some kind of obsessive clinical illness. Were you rushing Pi Kapp at your undergraduate and get hazed too hard?
Comment by Republicrat — July 29, 2005 @ 8:12 pm
Jon didn’t enjoy high school back in the mid eighties…
Comment by Anonymous — July 29, 2005 @ 8:18 pm
Wilson’s hopes of playing ignorant may be done. I know nothing about this one, but the Oakland Tribune, which has had good sources on this story, is reporting that there were actually four people in the car while it was on the way to the argument and that a female demanded to be let out of the car before it got to its destination because she was upset that the gun was brought along.
Oakland Trib: “Police would not confirm reports by sources that a young woman was also in the car in the minutes before the shooting. Sources said she became frightened by the sight of a gun and was urged to get out of the car a few blocks from College Avenue and Dwight Way, where the shooting occurred.”
If true, that makes it hard for Wilson to play stupid and/or unwise.
Comment by Insider — July 30, 2005 @ 2:49 pm
Oh, and Jon — if you want to be taken seriously, start answering specific critiques of your spinning. Shifting the argument to rants about frat boys just makes you look like you are trying to shift attention away from your own failed arguments.
Bottom line — I am soooo sorry that one your progressive types turned out to be just another gun-lover like conservatives, but that’s the deal. You can try to smear the guys all you want — and for the last time, no one says they were angels or not rude — I’m just saying they didn’t deserve to die for being jerks. If people were killed for being jerks, your Momma would be buying a black dress right now. Because you are a total jerk. For example — you call for the guys to identify themselves and come forward — um, maybe you forgot but there is a killer on the loose out there that tried to kill them. I think I’d keep my identity quiet. Someone who announced their name while a killer was out there looking for them would be stupid/unwise (depending on whether or not they fit your politics). The police know who the guys are and they too think their names should be kept quiet for now.
Jon, you got all high and mighty and insulted when the woman you were getting ready for sainthood turned out to be the instigator of a plot to kill others. Give it up, man — all your spinning isn’t going to make any guy who trashtalks worthy of capital punishment. All your spinning isn’t going to make their stupidity worse than W-S’s cold-hearted decision to sentence them to death. Her actions are NOWHERE in proportion to the guys’ actions. Yes, they were stupid. But W-S? She was criminally responsible for instigating violence and caused someone to be killed. To try to compare her actions with that of drunk guys who need to shut up is ridiculous.
You might as well say Saddam got what he deserved for trashtalking Bush.
Comment by Insider — July 30, 2005 @ 4:34 pm
Excuse me, Insider, but I’m under no obligation to answer specific criticisms about me. The point of this discussion is to get facts about the Willis-Starbuck shooting, not generate ad hominem attacks against me. If you’re such a goddamn “insider,” then why don’t you prove it? In other words, provide some inside info with some real proof. Otherwise, all you are doing is casting aspersions on the motives of somebody who has a different point of view (e.g., I must be some liberal defending a “beloved progressive”). Besides, it wasn’t me who made Willis-Starbuck out to be this superactivist. It was the local papers, the same local papers who are now telling a completely opposite story. I believe that “truth will out,” but I just don’t think the full truth has come out, especially when a so-called “insider” would rather insult me than actually inform people about what actually happened.
Oh, by the way, the crack about my Mom needing to buy a black dress. I’m a big boy so I can take it, but that was really classy… You’re not exactly convincing me that your friends didn’t go out picking a fight on the night of Willis-Starbuck’s death.
Comment by jonp — July 30, 2005 @ 5:41 pm
Walter Sobchak: Those rich fucks! This whole fucking thing… I did not watch my buddies die face down in the muck so that this fucking strumpet…
The Dude: I don’t see any connection to Vietnam, Walter.
Walter Sobchak: Well, there isn’t a literal connection, Dude.
The Dude: Walter, face it, there isn’t any connection.
Comment by Anonymous — July 30, 2005 @ 10:29 pm
jonp has absolutely no credibility. hes just playing devils advocate because he has nothing better to do with his time. he will bring up any alternative scenario, probably out of his own butthole, to try to prove that hes smart or something, whereas the rest of us are citing what all 324,563,223 articles out there already all corroborate. dont give jonp the time of day, cuz hes just a moron who doesnt have people in his real life to impress, so hes going to continue to antagonize this oh-so-special forum.
Comment by alum — July 30, 2005 @ 11:03 pm
Haha! You became me, Jon!
Comment by Beetle — July 31, 2005 @ 1:01 am
Seriously. “He didn’t really mean to kill her, she could have died because a warning shot came down and hit her in a boob.” Jon, I know you haven’t been with many women, but she’d have to have double-d cups to even get hit from something falling from above, and even then, it’s just fat tissue so a bullet with that trajectory isn’t going to be lethal.
It says a lot about a discipline that would give you a Ph.D.
Comment by Anonymous — July 31, 2005 @ 2:34 pm
Oh, boo-hoo. JonP is being insulted. Geez, I can’t imagine why…..
1) YOU are the first one to bring up the accusation of spinning, when the truth is that you are the biggest spinner. You posted “Hey, insider, you close to the football team, eh? You might have a stake in “spinning” the content of Meleia’s phone conversations.” Of course, as we’ve all seen, my comments that W-S asking for a weapon to be brought wasn’t spinning at all – but you are the one that actually went spinning with your assertion that “stupid” and “unwise” are the same terms with the same meaning.
2) You preach that you only value proven info — “Insider, I just have a general policy against putting too much stock in anonymous second-hand accounts, unless there is some corroborating evidence to back it up. “ and then you publish the Wisconsin’s mom’s assertion that W-S didn’t call for weapons, even tho the mom admits she only has second hand info. You are such a hypocrite! When that hypocrisy is challenged — you go silent.
And even better, once your unsupported second-hand account is proven wrong, you get all preachy and announce that anyone who uses second-hand info is full of shit. “If anybody has some real info about the circumstances of the crime instead of insinuations you want to make because you don’t like my liberalism, then I’m totally willing to hear the info. Otherwise, you are just totally full of shit.” Yet you yourself posted that unsupported second-hand speculation (that proved to be untrue) by the Wisconsin mom – so again it’s a situation when posting speculation that Jon disagrees with means you are full of shit, but if Jon likes the speculation, then it’s okay.
3) You make this statement: “On the other hand, if one of those name-callers got shot, I’d still think it was wrong, but I’d probably think they were done in by their own stupidity.” Carrying your logic thru – women who wear short dresses are raped by their own stupidity. Saddam, in taunting America, was done in by his own stupidity. Women with abusive husbands who get distracted and burn dinner are subsequently beat because of their own stupidity. We all know you would never say those last 3 statements, but they are exactly the same as your first assertion. Again, it’s so obvious that your values and principles and philosophy are variable and determined by the type of people it applies to in a specific case.
4) You keep referring to Hollis’ murdering someone as “accidental” because you want W-S to look good, but when challenged on how you could call a pre-meditated drive to a scene, bringing a gun as requested, and shooting into a crowd after you showed you know how to shoot into the air as “accidental”, you again go silent.
5) While refusing to answer questions yourself, you demand that the guys in the fight should come forward. When countered that even the police think the guys should be quiet because, after all, a guy who has once tried to kill them is still on the loose, you go silent again.
There’s lot more examples but the bottom line Jon, is that you are getting attacked because you are one huge hypocrite. You wrongly accuse others of what you are actually doing. People you agree with can speculate but people you disagree with are full of shit if they speculate. You can demand answers, but don’t have to answer any question posed to you.
Meanwhile, the real question we should be addressing is why W-S resorted to gunplay? Why would a peace-loving violence-hating woman makd that call? I’d suggest that if she spent a lot of time in progressive circles, and all progresives are as hypocritical as you, then we have the answer. Maybe, as you have certainly displayed, W-S felt that football players and frat boys deserve whatever they get. What’s the old song from Hair? How can people be so heartless? Especially people who care about strangers — who care about evil and social injustice? Do you only care about the bleeding crowd? In your case, JonP, because frat boys are politically incorrect, they deserve to die for their stupidity. Maybe your kind of thinking rubbed off on W-S. Easy to be hard.
Comment by Insider — July 31, 2005 @ 2:37 pm
Insider wins the internet! Enjoy your prize.
Comment by Beetle — July 31, 2005 @ 3:05 pm
Ad hominem bullshit once again from insider… Thank god we have trials and due process and stuff like that, otherwise everything would be decided by what Insider “knows.” In the words of Will Rogers, “It’s not what he knows that bothers me. It’s what he knows that just ain’t so.”
By the way, if I’m a jerk for being a devil’s advocate, why don’t you insult Beetle for a change? That’s all he ever fucking does is split hairs, play linguistic games, and make empty sarcastic comments. Oh right, it’s because I’m some “progressive” that you have incentive to rhetorically beat up on, while you happen to agree with Beetle’s targets…
Comment by jonp — July 31, 2005 @ 5:08 pm
Oh yeah, for info that accidental deaths do result from warning shots:
http://www.laaw.com/sig_warnshot.htm
I’m not saying that’s what happened, but frankly “Insider” could be totally full of shit and probably is. “Insider” hasn’t come up with jack shit beyond what’s in the papers.
Comment by jonp — July 31, 2005 @ 5:16 pm
Insider said in an earlier post that “His buddy in the back seat did not “accidentally” flee the country.” Either this refers to Hollis, which is totally bogus, because the Vallejo Times-Herald reports that Hollis’s car was spotted at a home raided by the police in Vallejo:
http://www.timesheraldonline.com/ci_2903183
Last time I checked, Vallejo is still in the United States and has not been incorporated into Mexico. Unless Insider is talking about a third passenger in Hollis/Wilson’s car that has not shown up in newspaper reports, this has about as much credibility for me as those tinfoil hat scenarios of second gunmen on the grassy knoll. (By the way, how would Insider know who was in the back seat of the shooter’s car if the only people he/she knows were the ones being shot at?)
Comment by jonp — July 31, 2005 @ 5:34 pm
Uh, that third passenger has shown up in newspaper reports quite a bit, actually. A fourth passenger is now showing up. I recall the third dude who skipped country from when that one dude first turned himself in, but here you go.
But dude, “Go insult that other guy” is a really lame defense.
Comment by Beetle — July 31, 2005 @ 5:55 pm
Stop splitting hairs beetle. And stop playing the evidence card. And stop being funnier than Jon.
Comment by Anonymous — July 31, 2005 @ 6:46 pm
jonp obviously lacks a social circle
Comment by alum — July 31, 2005 @ 7:06 pm
Anonymous posters obviously lack some fucking gonads.
Comment by jonp — July 31, 2005 @ 9:53 pm
Jon-
You are absolutely wrong about Insider not posting anything other than what’s been written in the newspapers. Go back and check the timestamps of all the comments on this and previous threads. Insided posted that the victim had asked Hollis to bring a gun before any paper published such a statement. That is a fact.
Also, I think it is pretty clear that Insider was referring to the third passenger as the one who had fled the country. And, as Beetle points out, the third passenger has been mentioned in print several times.
Comment by captain anonymous — July 31, 2005 @ 10:32 pm
But, I’ll cut you some slack. I imagine that you probably missed those news stories about the third passenger. What, with all the time you have spent studying how women could be killed by warning shots lodging in their chi-chis. “It was on CSI. Really”.
Comment by captain anonymous — July 31, 2005 @ 10:34 pm
Ah, the first CSI I watched involved furries. It was thus also the last CSI I watched.
Comment by Beetle — July 31, 2005 @ 11:13 pm
Chi-chis? That’s a new euphemism on me.
Comment by jonp — August 1, 2005 @ 1:10 am
Oh, Jon — you make it to0 easy to pick you apart and make fun of you.
I don’t have to be an insider to make reference to the third passenger — he has been referenced in news reports since it was first revealed that Hollis was the shooter and Wilson was the driver. The prosecutor has announced that he’s gotten an attorney and fled to Panama. And even the possibility of a fourth passenger has been reported.
So I guess this shows us that you are just ranting and raving and making speculations and spinning WITHOUT EVEN INFORMING YOURSELF ABOUT THE FACTS OF THE CASE. To make such a stupid remark about the third passenger just shows that you haven’t read anything about this case.
Man if this is the way you teach, I pity the students who have you, since you obviously thinks you don’t need to be informed on a topic in order to rant and rave on it.
Give it up Jon. Each time you try to defend yourself here, you just make yourself look worse.
Comment by Insider — August 2, 2005 @ 9:47 am
regarding W-S’s pacificism and political views, I think that was just a wagon she jumped on. She was just painting by numbers. I doubt she really believed in it. I guess that’s obvious now.
To that point, if you listen to KPFA you’d have to be pretty dim not to figure out that Peace and Justice and all that baloney is just a vehicle and the only thing they’re really serious about is biching and moaning and pointing their fingers in disdain in 360 different directions, and they’re also pissed off that they’re pacifists because what they really want to do is get into a good street fight and stick a shiv into somebody. That was her I bet, and that’s her crowd. Cuba and Vietnam, how disgusting.
Any way.
Comment by observer — August 2, 2005 @ 12:21 pm
so it seems like all the newspapers and investigators agree that she asked for heat to be brought. guess that attempted murderer got hers.
Comment by alum — August 9, 2005 @ 6:22 pm
If all the hypocritical leftists in Berkeley got shot, how many people would there be in Berkeley?
Comment by Vermillion — August 9, 2005 @ 9:07 pm