Charleston woman who gunned down armed man in West Virginia hailed as HERO by gun lobby
CHARLESTON, WEST VIRGINIA: A West Virginia woman is being praised for shooting and killing a criminal with her legally-owned pistol after he opened fire at a graduation party with an AR-15 last week. The police have not named the woman. The incident took place just a day after the deadly massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, in which 18-year-old gunman Salvador Ramos killed 19 children and two teachers, before being gunned down.
The woman who is being hailed was among the guests at the outdoor party. When she saw the suspect, 37-year-old Dennis Butler, open fire, she immediately pulled out her weapon and shot at him. While police described the people at the party as a 'crowd', the exact number of people is unclear. No one was injured in the attack. At a press conference, Charleston Chief of Detectives Tony Hazelett praised the woman, saying, "Instead of running from the threat, she engaged with the threat and saved several lives last night."
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Who was Dennis Butler?
Butler, 37, is a criminal who had already been warned for speeding near children when he drove to the graduation party. The party was being held outside at the Vista View Apartment Complex in Charleston, West Virginia. He was asked not to speed his car with children nearby. Butler then drove away and returned with an AR-style assault rifle to open fire at the party, before being gunned down by the woman.
There seems to be no end to incidents of gun violence or of mass shooting threats in recent times. On May 24, Salvador Ramos opened fire at Robb Elementary School, brutally killing over a dozen children and two teachers. Hours before carrying out the massacre, the shooter sent a chilling message to an acquaintance on Instagram, saying, "I'm about to". Born in North Dakota, Ramos lived in Uvalde. He was a student at Uvalde High School before he found work at Wendy's.
Just days before the Uvalde shooting, Payton Gendron, an 18-year-old White supremacist, shot 10 people dead and wounded three others at a Buffalo supermarket. Gendron said that he 'mostly agreed' with Brenton Harrison Tarrant, a man who live-streamed his attack which ultimately left 51 people attending a New Zealand mosque in March 2019 dead. He reportedly began planning the attack in January and chose the Tops Supermarket in Buffalo because “it has the highest black population percentage” by Zipcode, and also because it was not very far away from his Southern Tier home. Eleven of the victims were Black and two of them were White.
In another incident, a fifth-grade student in Florida was arrested on Saturday, May 28, for allegedly threatening to carry out a mass shooting via text messages. Lee County Sheriff’s Office identified Daniel Marquez, 10, a student at Patriot Elementary School in Cape Coral as the one who made the alleged threat. He was handcuffed and walked into a police cruiser for his written threat.
On May 26, a woman threatened to attend high school graduation with a fake bomb strapped to her chest. Cape Coral Police Department said that Tracy Carter did this because she was upset as disciplinary issues prevented her child from being able to graduate or attend prom.
Just days after the Uvalde shooting, a 16-year-old boy was arrested after threatening a mass shooting at a Long Island high school on social media. Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office said that the boy was arrested for making a terroristic threat. He allegedly made an Instagram post on his 'Bellport Scholars' page, warning that there could be shooting at Bellport High School the next day.