Woman killed while jogging near Logan Circle

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Odd that so many are looking at this _solely_ through the prism of gender -- men attacking women -- when it might have been a racial hate crime (if the "colors" were reversed, that's the way WaPo would frame it), or just an example of the random risks of trying to go about your life in a culture where feral, drugged-out predators are allowed to prowl the streets unmolested.

I agree with this. The homeless in DC (and many other American cities) have been allowed to take over and do whatever they want, set up makeshift encampments on public sidewalks, rant and rave, punch the air, scream expletives with children around, whatever, while the rest of us scurry along and hope they don’t decide to harm us. It is unacceptable that the rights of the drugged out and mentally ill trump all others. When will we learn?

I was walking with my daughter by CVS in Tenleytown and a homeless person was raving curse words and threatening phrases. Alarmed, I flagged down a police officer in a passing cruiser and asked him to intervene. He scolded me for flagging him down, and informed me about freedom of speech. Reluctantly, he called some sort of paddy wagon. Police don't want tot ouch this with a ten foot stick, and IMO it's because they feel hung out to dry. Someone will video them doing a wellness check and complain about infringement of rights, and they don't want to be social workers nor are jails the proper place for these people. Our politicians need to address this. DC currently offers fairly moderate weather, many day shelters, lots of dummies who hand out money on the street will nilly, a Mayor who has offered year round right to shelter, and is the home to the federal government which is a MAGNET for the mentally ill. We also need to lock up and treat chronic homeless or erratically mentally ill or nuisance drug addicted (lying in streets), or send them back whence they came to a community equipped to better deal with them What a tragic waste of life and we will hear peep from our public officials, and lots of shrugging from the hipsters who accuse anyone wanting some remedy of "pear clutching" and telling them it's life in the big city and to move to the suburbs yadda yadda. It's all so repetitive.

Excuse me? Did you just say government is a magnet for mentally ill people? I take offense with that. What line of work are you in?

DC, as home of the federal government, is a magnet for mentally ill persons to orbit around. Especially the paranoid schizoid. Conspiracy theories and hyperfocusing on people in power is their bread and butter. DC is a huge draw for such individuals, who may also have irrational, imuppulsive and violent tendencies

Dp- but that was totally clear from your post. The offended op is likely always looking to be offended. Which offends me!

Thanks- I thought so too. Maybe this is very dry humour? Hard to read tone online of course...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, shit. This is terrifying and it sucks.

It's still far more rare than say, deaths by accidents on the Beltway, and just as I am not going to stop driving on the Beltway because of that risk, I'm not planning on changing my lifestyle because deranged murderers exist.

As women, we can only do our best.

Sure, ideally, us women runners could go in groups or only during daylight, but in the real world, we all have schedules that make that easier said than done. I'm a pretty serious runner and have rather intense training, so it's not like I can find just any person that can keep up with me. I also have a busy schedule which often means running very early in the morning. As the days get shorter, most women runners have very few daylight nonworking hours to pick from.

My suggestions for women running alone not "letting the @ssholes win" and changing your whole lifestyle, but protecting yourself from the preventable:

-Bring your phone, but don't wear headphones.
-Carry a small weapon such as a pocketknife
-Vary your routes if possible and know an "escape route" if someone nearby looks suspicious.
-Be sure to let family or neighbors you trust know when & where you are likely to run, so if you don't show up for a few hours, they'll know something is wrong.
-Know your strengths in self-defense. If you have taken a self defense/martial arts course, know where and how you would have the most success in at least catching the assailant off-guard. If not, can you make a sprint getaway? Can you abruptly switch directions so that your assailant cannot predict your next move? Can you yell loudly enough that someone could hear you? The idea is to know your fight-or-flight reflexes to avoid freezing up. Don't assume you will be able to react a certain way if someone attacks you if you've never been in that situation.

I don’t see how any of your tips could have changed what happened here, though.

Yes, especially if it's a mentally ill person.

When I was in elementary school in VA, our 5th grade class took a field trip to DC to see the C&O canal and do a tour. While we were with a park ranger, a homeless guy ran up to our group and tried to push a few of the kids into the canal. We were at a lock at the time that was nearly empty, so if he'd succeeded, the kids would have been either seriously hurt or killed. He was screaming nonsense about saving us from "them." This was a group of 25 kids, probably 8-10 parents, a park ranger, and a teacher all together.

[Anonymous]

I keep seeing reference here to a “mentally ill homeless person.” Do you all have information that others don’t?
How do you know he is homeless? How do you know he is “mentally ill” and not a gang-member or someone who had a grudge against white women?
I have no idea who he is or why he did this. Do you?

[Anonymous]

The killer is in custody, news conference later this morning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The killer is in custody, news conference later this morning.

Who is legally responsible for this deranged person to be freely roaming the streets?

Is it the Mayor?

[Anonymous]

We don't. We would like peacefully interacting citizens in our city to be protected from all of the above, which will involve deploying different strategies depending on who poses the threat. But to shrug shoulders and act as if stranger killings are a weird tax on the convenience and fun of urban life is unacceptable. Whoever did this will emerge and our politicians need to respond with more than clucking. They need to respond with policy that protects the peaceable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I keep seeing reference here to a “mentally ill homeless person.” Do you all have information that others don’t?
How do you know he is homeless? How do you know he is “mentally ill” and not a gang-member or someone who had a grudge against white women?
I have no idea who he is or why he did this. Do you?

Don't know about the homeless part, but there was an interview on one of the news story links with a woman who lives nearby and was pretty certain she was familiar with the guy. She said he seemed deranged, and about 6 months ago she experienced an incident with him coming up to her car when she was leaving for work and knocking crazily on the window and making a funny face. She drove off quickly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Well, shit. This is terrifying and it sucks.

It's still far more rare than say, deaths by accidents on the Beltway, and just as I am not going to stop driving on the Beltway because of that risk, I'm not planning on changing my lifestyle because deranged murderers exist.

As women, we can only do our best.

Sure, ideally, us women runners could go in groups or only during daylight, but in the real world, we all have schedules that make that easier said than done. I'm a pretty serious runner and have rather intense training, so it's not like I can find just any person that can keep up with me. I also have a busy schedule which often means running very early in the morning. As the days get shorter, most women runners have very few daylight nonworking hours to pick from.

My suggestions for women running alone not "letting the @ssholes win" and changing your whole lifestyle, but protecting yourself from the preventable:

-Bring your phone, but don't wear headphones.
-Carry a small weapon such as a pocketknife
-Vary your routes if possible and know an "escape route" if someone nearby looks suspicious.
-Be sure to let family or neighbors you trust know when & where you are likely to run, so if you don't show up for a few hours, they'll know something is wrong.
-Know your strengths in self-defense. If you have taken a self defense/martial arts course, know where and how you would have the most success in at least catching the assailant off-guard. If not, can you make a sprint getaway? Can you abruptly switch directions so that your assailant cannot predict your next move? Can you yell loudly enough that someone could hear you? The idea is to know your fight-or-flight reflexes to avoid freezing up. Don't assume you will be able to react a certain way if someone attacks you if you've never been in that situation.

None of this would help much, I'm afraid.

Why not bring pepper spray?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I keep seeing reference here to a “mentally ill homeless person.” Do you all have information that others don’t?
How do you know he is homeless? How do you know he is “mentally ill” and not a gang-member or someone who had a grudge against white women?
I have no idea who he is or why he did this. Do you?

Don't know about the homeless part, but there was an interview on one of the news story links with a woman who lives nearby and was pretty certain she was familiar with the guy. She said he seemed deranged, and about 6 months ago she experienced an incident with him coming up to her car when she was leaving for work and knocking crazily on the window and making a funny face. She drove off quickly.

Too bad there was no one she could call, nothing she could do about a deranged seeming person who her gut said posed a threat. But there isn't We need immediate legislation/policy change. I can't believe bowser sold off DC general while could have been converted into a state of the art mental health facility. Do we have any other large public facilities left, or have they all been give aways to developers??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The killer is in custody, news conference later this morning.

Who is legally responsible for this deranged person to be freely roaming the streets?

Is it the Mayor?

This deranged/mentally ill talk is such a broken record. Whether it's killing a woman jogging in DC, jogging in around rural corn fields, golfing in Iowa, going to school, going to work, going to an outdoor concert in Vegas, going to a video game tournament, whatever - there's one common denominator.

And mentally ill women don't do this kind of crap. They just don't.

It's so tiring.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How about remove as many threats as possible - or erratic mentally ill homeless people? Erratic violent drug addicts? Their own families would LOVE for them to be treated, to be safe, to be findable. You people who are so "compassionate" actually arent. Would you like to live your life as a mentally ill street murderer? How do things look up for the perpetrator now?

Absolutely. More beds to detox, more Housing First, more safe injection sites, more drug-assisted treatment sites (eg methadone). That's what compassion means to me. What does it mean to you?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I keep seeing reference here to a “mentally ill homeless person.” Do you all have information that others don’t?
How do you know he is homeless? How do you know he is “mentally ill” and not a gang-member or someone who had a grudge against white women?
I have no idea who he is or why he did this. Do you?

think horses, not zebras. all evidence points to him being a mentally ill/drug addicted person (who may or may not be homeless).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The killer is in custody, news conference later this morning.

Who is legally responsible for this deranged person to be freely roaming the streets?

Is it the Mayor?

This deranged/mentally ill talk is such a broken record. Whether it's killing a woman jogging in DC, jogging in around rural corn fields, golfing in Iowa, going to school, going to work, going to an outdoor concert in Vegas, going to a video game tournament, whatever - there's one common denominator.

And mentally ill women don't do this kind of crap. They just don't.

It's so tiring.

It's quite tiring when you work so hard to evade the question.

Who's legally responsible for that person roaming the streets?

Is it the Mayor? Or the person's family? Or someone else?

The only way to fix problems is one at a time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:http://www.fox5dc.com/news/local-news/suspect-arrested-in-deadly-logan-circle-stabbing-sources-say

Third story on google

Interesting. I was driving down U Street last night at 10pm. One cop car was stopped in the middle of the 16th and U intersection, talking with a private citizen driver driving the opposite direction. It was pretty obvious the driver flagged down the cop in the middle of the intersection (weird). Suddenly, that cop scrambled to the gas station at U and 15th, pulled up with brights on, and began talking with a homeless man (long white shirt, rolled up sweatpants, and long stringy hair). As I kept driving down U Street, I saw three more cop cars zooming toward the gas station.

Wow, sounds like you saw the apprehension. Good on the DCPD for a fast response.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I keep seeing reference here to a “mentally ill homeless person.” Do you all have information that others don’t?
How do you know he is homeless? How do you know he is “mentally ill” and not a gang-member or someone who had a grudge against white women?
I have no idea who he is or why he did this. Do you?

think horses, not zebras. all evidence points to him being a mentally ill/drug addicted person (who may or may not be homeless).

The initial article about the arrest said he is homeless.