The Worst Week Yet
November 10-16, 2024

1,646 words

The FBI says that although 25-year-old Jaquez Myrick admitted firing his gun at the event, he denied aiming at anyone. (Photo: Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office)

Machine Gun Fire Rings Out During Tuskegee University’s 100th Homecoming

Black celebration turned to black tragedy yet again last Sunday morning at the tail end of the 100^th Homecoming Week festivities at Alabama’s historically black Tuskegee University.

Is there a historically black college richer in black history than Tuskegee? Founded by famed black educator Booker T. Washington in 1881 as Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, the school counts among its alumni such luminaries as George Washington Carver, who elevated Southern blacks through his trailblazing work with the peanut. This was, need I remind you, way back in the days before air conditioning as blacks waged a multi-pronged war against racism, white supremacy, the Klan, hostile water moccasins, and the fearsome boll weevil.

It’s also the site where, from 1932-72, federal health agencies conducted the infamous Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male.

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But around 1:40 AM early Sunday morning, November 10, as thousands of rabid revelers continued rabidly reveling into the wee hours at the end of the school’s centennial homecoming, machine gun fire began ringing out on campus. One person was shot dead, twelve others were hit with bullets, and at least four celebrants were injured in the ensuing panic to escape harm.

The only confirmed fatality in the mass shooting was 18-year-old La’Tavion Johnson, whose parents described him as a “lively soul.”

Footage captured on the scene depicts multiple rapid-fire gunshots piercing the cool Alabama night, and clearly not all from the same gun. A brave young black man with gold teeth and his curly dreads dyed gold attempted to remain calm while counseling his friend to “stay down, nigga.” Another clip portrays a group of young blacks crouching together for safety, which is a behavior likely preserved in their DNA after their ancestors huddled together on the slave ships.

It was a historically black moment analogous to a Juneteenth shooting. One often finds that when blacks congregate to celebrate their heritage, shooting one another serves as their form of fireworks.

Two suspects have been arrested. Both are black males, both have been charged with possessing “switch” devices that converted their firearms into machine guns, and both have allegedly offered endearingly unique alibis for why they didn’t shoot anyone. Neither of the suspects is a Tuskegee student, but both hail from the nearby historically black town of Montgomery.

Andrew Erdmann, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, testified in a criminal complaint that witnesses led him to one of the suspects because the young buck’s car was among those doing “burnouts” in a parking lot outside the campus party where the major gunfire occurred. Erdmann writes of a witness who said the first shots fired that night came from a white Dodge Charger, which seems to be the only thing in the whole incident positively identified as white:

At least one witness recalled someone inside the Charger discharging a firearm in what appeared to be an attempt to clear a path for the vehicle to drive, after which several additional rounds of gunfire occurred…. Other witnesses recall observing a Black [sic] male exit the vehicle with a firearm in his hand at the time of the shooting.

While acting on tips and reviewing social-media posts the next day, Erdmann came across the Facebook account of 20-year-old Jeremiah Williams, who had been in such a self-incriminating mood that he wrote, “I need all the videos of me last night [in] a white Charger.” Williams had also posted multiple photos of himself in a white Charger. Several videos show a white Charger doing “burnouts” the night before.

Williams, who clearly won’t be splitting atoms at CERN anytime soon, allegedly admitted to police that all three inhabitants of his white Charger were armed that night and that his gun of choice for the evening was an AR-style pistol. Erdmann writes:

In one of the pictures, Jeremiah can be seen holding an AR type firearm in his hand. In another video shared by Jeremiah on Nov. 10, 2024, what appears to be the same white Charger can be seen approaching a crowd as gunshots from several firearms can be heard…. Jeremiah denies discharging his firearm during the shooting. Jeremiah was told some witnesses at Tuskegee University said the first shots fired came from his vehicle. Jeremiah said he did not discharge his firearm. Jeremiah asked how he could know because he was watching where he was driving.

It’s the old “Sure, I had a gun, and yes, so did everyone else in my car, and, all right, maybe witnesses did say they heard gunfire coming from my car, and OK, maybe someone in my car did shoot someone, but you can’t pin it on me, Copper, because I was driving” excuse. I’ve heard it a million times.

For the time being, Williams has only been charged with illegal possession of a machine gun conversion device.

The other suspect, 25-year-old Jaquez Myrick, was arrested on campus early last Sunday morning. Just like Jeremiah Williams, Myrick has been indicted on federal charges of possessing a handgun with an illegal conversion device. According to a federal complaint, an officer who ran toward the sounds of gunfire chanced upon La’Tavion’s corpse and saw Myrick standing nearby with a Glock pistol:

Myrick then confessed to discharging the Glock but denied shooting at anyone.

OK, it’s the old, “I shot my gun but didn’t aim it, so if someone got killed, it was an accident” excuse.

Mr. Myrick was forthcoming enough to confess that he’d bought the Glock from a pawn shop in Tampa, purchased the machine gun conversion switch from someone he’d met on Discord, had it delivered to a vacant residence, and installed the switch himself.

Where were these young men’s fathers to counsel them that you never speak to the police after showing up at a mass shooting with a gun?

Haiti: They Shoot Planes, Don’t They?

Rumors of Haitian migrants eating cats and dogs in Springfield, OH dominated the election cycle. Even if the rumors were true, those migrants are amateurs. Gang members roaming the anarchic streets of Port-au-Prince have been accused of “eating people they’ve killed.”

In March I wrote of how Haitian gangs engaging in gunplay at Toussaint Louverture International Airport prevented the safe landing of Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry. At some point thereafter, the reckless shenanigans of trigger-happy, plane-shooting gangsters led to a nearly three-month shutdown of the irredeemable city’s domestic and international airports.

But that was four Haitian Prime Ministers ago in the notoriously unstable island nation.

In October, after renegade hooligans shot at a U.N. Humanitarian Air Service helicopter as it flew 800 feet above Haiti’s capital city on a charitable food-delivery mission, both the U.N. and Spirit Airlines temporarily suspended flights to Port-au-Prince.

The shootings of planes, though, have proceeded on schedule.

Last Monday, three different aircraft, all from commercial US airlines, were shot over Port-au-Prince—one while attempting to land, the other two while leaving.

A Spirit Airlines flight originating in Fort Lauderdale was reportedly struck four times by gunfire as it attempted to land at Toussaint Louverture Airport. The plane reportedly came within 550 feet of the runway before its pilot aborted the mission and wisely chose to land in the Dominican Republic.

On Monday afternoon, inspectors at JFK Airport in NYC discovered that the exterior of JetBlue Airways Flight 935 from Port-au-Prince been struck with bullets. The airline announced it would suspend all flights to Haiti until December 2.

On Tuesday, American Airlines released a statement claiming that Flight 819 had landed without incident in Miami on Monday, but that a post-flight inspection found that “the exterior of the aircraft had been impacted by a bullet.” The airline announced it would suspend daily service between Miami and Port-au-Prince until at least February 12.

The Federal Aviation Administration issued an order last Tuesday prohibiting all US airlines from flying below 10,000 feet over all Haitian airspace for 30 days.

The U.N. likewise suspended humanitarian aid to Port-au-Prince. Deprived of humanitarian food, the Haitian capital’s roving gangsters will likely be forced to resume eating their victims’ corpses.

Black Suspect Charged With Stabbing Five White Victims Said “Black Power!” During Police Interview

Last Thursday, prosecutors in King County, WA charged a 37-year-old black man named Roland Jerome Lee with four counts of assault in the first degree and one count of assault in the fourth degree.

The charges were in connection with a “‘violent, random’ Seattle mass stabbing spree” in the city’s Chinatown-International District on Friday, November 8.

Police Sergeant David Sullivan was in the area at around 2 P.M. that Friday, investigating another series of violent and random stabbings that occurred the previous day. When witnesses allegedly pointed at Lee as the stabber, Sullivan chased and arrested him.

According to Seattle’s KOMO News:

In an arrest report, police allege they recovered three knives at the scene. Two of the knives were along the route where Sullivan chased Lee, and another was still in a victim’s back.

All five of the stabbing victims injured in Friday’s attack survived. Four of the victims were taken to Harborview Medical Center for treatment and the fifth was treated and released at the scene….

“It should be noted that all five of the victims are white,” a Seattle police detective wrote in the arrest report. “The suspect (Lee) is a black male who was heard saying ‘Black Power’ while he was in the recorded interview room at SPD HQ.”

Prosecutors say that at the time of his arrest, Lee already had nine felony convictions on his record as well as an outstanding warrant. Despite allegedly stabbing four victims in the back, he’s being charged with assault in the first degree rather than attempted murder because the assault charge carries a heavier sentence. Police are still investigating Lee’s possible involvement in the previous day’s stabbing binge.

Thus concludes our week of black-on-black, black-on-white, and black-on-plane violence.