Assistant Professor Charged in University Shooting

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There has been a shooting at the University of Alabama, and apparently an assistant professor has been charged with killing 3 people and injuring several more. Here is the article from the CNN website.

(CNN) -- A Harvard-trained biology professor is facing murder charges in the shooting deaths of three faculty members at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, police said early Saturday.

Authorities said Amy Bishop wounded three other employees Friday. She was arrested outside the sciences building where the shooting occurred, authorities said

Bishop is an assistant professor of biological sciences, according to a profile on the university Web site.

The shooting occurred about 4 p.m. ET in Shelby Hall, which houses the chemistry department, said university spokesman Ray Garner. The building is named after U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama.

Garner identified the dead as Gopi Podila, chairman of the biological sciences department; Maria Davis, associate professor of biology; and Adriel Johnson, associate professor of biology.


The injured were Joseph Leahy, associate professor of biology, in critical condition; Luis Cruz-Vera, assistant professor of biology, in stable condition; and Stephanie Monticello, staff assistant, also in stable condition.

Authorities have not released a possible motive for the shooting.

A news conference is planned for noon on Saturday, said Trent Willis, chief of staff for the city's mayor.

The university has canceled classes and athletic events next week, and a notice on its Web site said counseling was available.

 

Business as usual in America then? If you don't like your school, workplace, or life in general - kill everyone! With your guns!

It's less dramatic when it happens once a month or so.

There's something wrong with American culture when this is the go-to solution for changing your *****y life.

 

Aik, despite it all, this is not the 'common solution', nor are guns the only weapons used in such attacks.

On top of that, this is the first school shooting I've heard of where a teacher was the culprit. At least she wasn't shooting at the kids.

 

The fact that the dead victims were all other professors leads me to postulate that it was more of a workplace issue -- the workplace just happened to be a University. She was possibly passed over for a promotion? Or there was an office love triangle/web? I'm interested in finding out what her motivations are!

 

She was simply a disgruntled employee upset at her pending termination. She had been denied tenure and was teaching her last semester at the university.

 

Still, shooting everyone is pretty serious. I have to wonder if maybe they weren't going to give her a reference letter, or maybe they had passed around info on her being a bad employee or something. Things like that can ruin a career.

 

Wasnt this a religiously inspired terrorist attack on the American way of life like that other recent shooting?

 

It seems to be a common solution relative to anywhere else in the world. How many work/school massacres happen in other countries? I don't see that it's a generalisation of all Americans to point out that it seems to be a part of American culture to go out and do this sort of thing - in the same way that suicide is so common in Japan.

I haven't done the math to see whether it's true - but America seems to have as many incidents like this as the rest of the Western world combined.

(and please excuse me if I think that piracy - unless you're talking about the sort on the seven seas - is a much better way of consoling yourself than loading up your guns and killing your colleagues )

 

I never knew that Europeans liked to steal things, I always thought they just burned cars when they didn't get their way. Or is that just France, now I'm totally confused.

 

Oh, I thought you were talking about actually stealing, but now I believe you are talking about illegal downloads. If that is the case Europeans are probably no worse then North Americans.

 

Looking at this, if you think of the US as a collection of societies similar to Europe, rather than a singular nation, it's not much different. Sure, there are more in the US than Europe, but there are also more 'sections' of the US than of Europe.

 

Well, I'm not going to defend my position here, because it's probably crap I see strong links between America's gun culture and the American cultural glorification of violence and these fairly frequent massacres. It's understandable if you don't want to extend that as far as 'going to school/work and shooting people is a part of American culture'.

I know they happen in other countries - it just seems to me that America has a disproportionate amount, and that even then a lot of the non-American ones are copycats of American shootings (normally Columbine).

@Piracy:
Urgh. I'm not getting into this These poor victims should be comforted by the ridiculous amounts of profit that the entertainment industry is making instead.

 

Piracy is a crime no doubt, but it seems like it is much less serious (albeit much more prevalent) than shooting someone. I, for one, would much rather suffer financial harm than physical harm.

 

How are they Columbine-like? Did the shooters wear trench coats? Did the shootings occur at a school?

I'm not sure the US should have to wear any shootings that don't occur in the US ...

 

In my opinion, no one should have to take any responsability for any copy-cat of their actions. If I rob a bank with a machete and a hockey-mask, and Aldeth sees it and thinks it's a great idea and does the same, it only proves that Aldeth is just as much a criminal, and suffering from similar problems, as I am.

To put it simply: if German kids see Columbine and immitate it, it only proves that German kids thought it was a good idea to go out shooting, too. They say great minds think alike. Well, it seems so do poor and troubled ones.

 

Simple answer.

Probably not.

It seems like it is status related being denied tenure at one of her jobs. Tenure secures employment (which she may have been able to find elsewhere) and a certain level of status (which some seemed to deny her by describing her as strange) for professors at a college.

I wonder if your comment is at least partly rooted in your biases about religion rather than reports of what happened.

The police aren't talking at this point so we don't know for sure.



As for people who imitate other shootings with their own. They feel unhappy but may not know what to do about it. Reading about it when someone else does it may provide them with a bad idea they may or may not have come up with on their own but serves as a solution.... a very bad one.

 

Actually, pplr, I think joacqin's post was a sarcastic strike at the terrorist fears of today.