In a move that comes 14 years too late to save the three University of Alabama-Huntsville faculty members who were gunned down in February, Amy Bishop, the biology professor charged with those killings, has been indicted on a first-degree murder charge in the 1986 shooting death of her brother in Massachusetts, reports the Associated Press. Prosecutors who originally concluded that Bishop accidentally killed her 18-year-old brother, Seth, now say police failed to share important evidence, including an alleged carjacking attempt by Amy Bishop after the shooting. They reopened the case after Bishop was charged in February with shooting six of her colleagues at UAH, killing three. Norfolk, Mass., District Attorney William Keating said he did not understand why charges were never brought against Bishop in the 1986 case. “I can’t give you any explanations, I can’t give you excuses, because there are none,” he said. “Jobs weren’t done, responsibilities weren’t met, and justice wasn’t served.” Bishop had told police who investigated her brother’s death that she accidentally shot him while trying to unload her father’s 12-gauge shotgun in the family’s Braintree home. Her mother, Judith, the only witness to the shooting, confirmed her daughter’s account to police. U.S. Rep. William Delahunt, who was then the Norfolk County district attorney, said that Braintree police never told anyone in his office that after Bishop shot her brother, she tried to commandeer a getaway car at gunpoint at a local car dealership, then refused to drop her gun until officers ordered her to do so repeatedly. Those events were described in Braintree police reports but not in a report written by a state police detective assigned to the district attorney’s office…
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Universities mull role of tenure in UAH shootings
Questions about how universities handle tenure decisions have arisen after Amy Bishop, a professor at the University of Alabama Huntsville campus, was accused of killing three colleagues from the university’s biology department earlier this month.
Bishop reportedly was denied tenure—a distinction that ensures job security in academia—and complained about the university’s decision for months before the shootings, colleagues said in interviews with the Associated Press (AP).
Higher-ed administrators say the tedious six-year tenure process can be fraught with anxiety, and if candidates expect to earn tenure and are denied by campus officials, reactions can be unpredictable.…Read More
Notification delay surfaces in Alabama shootings
Nearly an hour passed before University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH) officials dispatched emergency notification to students and faculty after fatal shootings allegedly committed by a professor, raising new questions about campus-based alert systems.
University President David Williams sent an eMail to faculty and students Feb. 15—three days after the shootings that killed three people and injured three others—and said campus police responded to the gunfire within minutes, but the university community was not alerted via text message or eMail.
“… Some of you are understandably troubled about the speed with which a text message alert was sent following the shootings,” Williams said in his open letter to UAH students and faculty. “As any institution would do after an incident like this, our university will conduct a complete examination of the emergency response. How to more effectively use the university’s text message system in the midst of a fast-moving, life-threatening situation will certainly be part of that review.”…Read More