Joseph Ng, an associate professor who attended the meeting in which Amy Bishop (allegedly) opened fire, described the scene via e-mail to a colleague at the University of California, Irvine, Alexander McPherson:
About 30 minutes into the meeting, Amy Bishop “got up suddenly, took out a gun and started shooting at each one of us.”
[...]
Ms. Bishop, who Mr. Ng described as a “disgruntled faculty member,” “started with the one closest to her and went down the row shooting her targets in the head.”“Our chairman got it the worst as he was right next to her along with two others who died almost instantly. Six people sitting in the rows perpendicular were all shot fatally or seriously wounded,” he wrote.
He wrote that the remaining five people at the meeting, including him, “immediately dropped to the floor.” When Ms. Bishop was trying to reload her gun, the faculty members pushed her out the conference-room door, barricaded it, and called 911.
“Blood was everywhere with crying and moaning,” he wrote.
Those killed include Gopi K. Podila, chairman of the Department of Biological Sciences; Maria Ragland Davis and Adriel Johnson, both department faculty. Two who were wounded — Joseph Leahy and staffer Stephanie Monticciolo — were in critical condition, and the third Luis Cruz-Vera, was released from the hospital over the weekend.
This bit of history is darkly fascinating:
On Saturday afternoon, the police in Braintree, Mass., announced that 24 years ago, Dr. Bishop had fatally wounded her brother, Seth Bishop, in an argument at their home, which The Boston Globe first reported on its Web site. The police were considering reopening the case, in which she was not charged and the report by the officer on duty at the time was no longer available, said Paul Frazier, the Braintree police chief.“The release of Ms. Bishop did not sit well with the police officers,” Chief Frazier said in a statement, “and I can assure you that this would not happen in this day and age.” He said at a news conference on Saturday that the original account describing the shooting as an accident had been inaccurate and, The Globe said, that while he was reluctant to use the word “cover-up,” it did not “look good” that the detailed records of the case have been missing since 1988.
A 1987 state police report, released Saturday by the Norfolk County district attorney’s office, said that Dr. Bishop tried to teach herself to use the family’s shotgun after a break-in occurred at their home. She said she had loaded the gun but could not unload it and asked her brother for help, in their mother’s presence. She said the gun accidentally went off, striking her brother. Because her mother, Judith Bishop, confirmed that account, the report said, the death was ruled accidental.
But Chief Frazier said in his statement that the officer on duty, Ronald Solimini, remembered that Dr. Bishop had shot and killed her brother after an argument. She fired another round from the shotgun into the ceiling as she left the home, the officer said, and fled down the street with the shotgun. The officer also remembered her pointing the shotgun at a vehicle in an attempt to get the driver to stop, the chief said.
Another officer, Timothy Murphy, seized the shotgun, and Dr. Bishop was handcuffed and transported to the police station under arrest, Chief Frazier said.
He said that he spoke with the person who was the booking officer at the time, who recalled getting a call “he believes was from then-Police Chief John Polio or possibly from a captain on Chief Polio’s behalf” to stop the process. Dr. Bishop was released from police custody, and the two left the police station by a rear exit, Chief Frazier said.
Of course, you should never trust the New York Times to properly report gun facts:
After she left the room, the police said, she dumped the gun — for which she did not have a permit — in a second-floor bathroom.
While not technically untrue, that’s quite misleading, because Alabama does not issue gun permits.