Submitted for your perusal and edification, E-mail Blog report received from:
Massad Ayoob On Guns from “Backwoods Home Magazine”
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"THAT’S NOT A KNIFE…THIS IS A KNIFE!”
Posted: 14 Aug 2009 03:45 PM PDT
That line was funny in the movie “Crocodile Dundee.” It ain’t funny when you had to use force to keep yourself or another innocent person from being stabbed or slashed to death, and “the other side” claims that the blade-wielder’s weapon was harmless.
We saw that classically last week in Maitland, Florida when police were desperately called to a home where an 18-year-old man was stabbing his 60-year old mother. Two cops arrived to find a pool of blood in the house. They quickly followed the blood trail to discover a stabbing in progress. Officer Steve Mendez took the blade-wielder at gunpoint and ordered him to drop the weapon. Instead, the young matricide-seeker sneered at the officer and raised the weapon in a classic position for a final, potentially fatal downward stab.
The officer responded exactly as trained, and the attacker fell mortally wounded, hit by two .40 caliber service pistol bullets.
The mother, whose life was saved by those two police bullets, now says that the police didn’t order him to drop the weapon until after he was killed. (!?!?!?) Moreover, critics of the police said the poor boy only had a “butter knife.”
Thankfully, the Maitland Police Department has a stand-up chief. Police Chief Doug Ball called a press conference and showed reporters the evidence. That included the cutlery in question. He explained that far from a butter knife, one of the two weapons the murderous son attacked his mother with – the one he was stabbing her with when Officer Mendez first saw him – was a thirteen-inch barbecue fork. The Orlando Sentinel newspaper reported, “The knife, reported earlier to be a butter knife, was a 9-inch serrated dinner knife with a point. The fork had been used with such force, its tines had been bent 90 degrees.”
The terminology still leaves some things open to interpretation. Was the “butter knife” the round-tip slicing implement that sits between the fork and the spoon in a restaurant? That’s my Chicago-born sweetie’s definition of the term. For me, “butter knife” is the even more fragile little thing that was by my Boston-born mom’s butter dish. Does “nine-inch knife” mean nine inch blade or nine inch overall length?
A Google search last night of the term “butter knife” turned up a photograph of a child with a butter knife embedded in the side of his head, to the hilt. It looked like the little one my mom had by the butter dish. A steak knife I took from my kitchen drawer at random was shorter than nine inches from pommel (the butt of the handle) to point, but still had a blade close to five inches long. As I’ve proven before for trial as an expert witness, in soft tissue a knife can stab to a depth roughly twice its blade length. Soft tissue (the human abdomen, for instance) compresses. More than once I’ve stabbed a four-inch blade knife into eight inches of pork roast (swine muscle tissue is the closest there is to human muscle tissue) and impaled it through the Styrofoam beneath it. (And at least once through THAT and into the cutting board below.) That depth equals into the chest and all but out the back of the average adult male human torso.
In the wake of their monstrous acts, psycho offspring become “sweet kids gone wrong” who “only made a mistake,” and “were just putting their lives back together.” When the monster child or husband is killed, it’s safe to be their mother or their wife again, and misplaced love seeks to punish someone for the loss of one once – and in this case I’m sure, still – loved. It’s a sad thing, but it happens.
Attorney Sam Mitchell took critics to task with a letter to the Sentinel. Thanks for giving those folks a reality check, Sam.
To the Orlando Sentinel
You owe the involved police officer and the public an apology. Headline: “MAN WITH BBQ FORK KILLED BY POLICE.” You then reported that “a man was stabbing his mother with a butter knife,” and went on to slant the article by quoting a friend of the crazed attempted murder as saying, “they got beanbag guns right? ” . . . “But no, he’s got to shoot him.” After savaging the responding officer in this manner, you later mention in a different article that the knife was a 9 inch serrated knife with a point and that before the violent attack was ended by the officers appropriate action, the attack had already caused the victim to have “suffered multiple stab wounds to her torso, arms, and hands” and it is confirmed that in fact she was “critically injured.”. I can tell you that the law is clear when dealing with this circumstance. The responding officer was presented with a crazed and admittedly psychotic person who is stabbing a prone victim with a knife and the officer’s sworn duty and training tells him one thing - the use of deadly force is the only appropriate action. Less than lethal methods are not adequate and always uncertain and are legally and morally unjustifiable given these facts. As to your reporting concerning what and when the office may have shouted instructions; it is also true that the officer has NO duty to first say drop the weapon and in fact, pursuant to appropriate policies that govern the use of deadly force, the officer must act immediately to stop the other person’s ongoing use of deadly force against this victim. Whether or not he said drop the weapon before are after shooting - or not at all - is of no consequence in judging this matter. I must also note that the fact that the victim is unable to objectively add anything of value to this discourse is also of no consequence. Your faulty and slanted reporting is unjustifiable and ev en to say, “I’m sorry for the mistake,” which you did not do, is inadequate. You also have a duty. The officer fulfilled his. You did not.
Sam C. Mitchell
Attorney at Law
618-920-3632
samitchell70@gmail.com
Congratulations to Chief Doug Ball for standing up and telling the truth … and to Officer Steve Mendez, who apparently saved this woman’s life. The Chief intends to put Officer Mendez back to work some time next week.
I’m certain the community they serve will be the safer for it.
There are those who would call each of these a “butter knife.” Neither is entirely harmless.
see pictures on above link