Suicide--of course it is!

"Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth." – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, from The Sign of the Four.

It’s the kind of trick that Harry Houdini would have had problems pulling off. Yes, that Houdini, whom according to stories could slip out of the tightest handcuffs, crack open a safe from the inside, safely survive falling into open water in a frozen river… Miracles? It may seem so, but for Harry it was all part of the show.

No one really knows how he pulled off all those escapes. Some of them, like escaping from a strait jacket, seem in credible. Sure, it was only a show, but it was an amazing show. It was a stupendous show. And yet, deep down inside, we somehow know it was a trick of some sort. Whether he was double jointed, or had extremely thin hands, or just plain knew more about things than most of us, we understood it was a show and that Houdini was a mast showman.

But some of the things that have been happening lately just defy logic. Take for instance the case of Victor White III who died in a Louisiana hospital from a “self-inflicted” gunshot wound. Sure suicides happen all the time, so why would just another suicide create suspicion?

Well, as with anything in life, the devil, as they say, is in the details. In my experience, suicide is strictly a personal thing. No matter how the deed is done, it’s typically something the perpetrator/victim does alone. Alone meaning with no one else around. But that may not have been the case with Mr. White.

Mr. White was walking down the street when a New Iberia sheriff’s cruiser pulled up and stopped him. The sheriff was responding to a call about a fight some six blocks from where Mr. White was stopped. Although White and his friend Isaiah Lewis were not involved in the fight, the deputy stopped them and searched them. He searched hard enough to find a small quantity of marijuana on White and subsequently cuffed him behind his back and put him in the police car.

The deputy involved, Corporal Justin Orvis, had no real description to go on when he made the stop, just that the men were black and that one might have had a gun. One would think at that point, if you searched a suspect suspected of being armed, you might want to try to find a gun. But nonetheless there was no gun reported in the initial report.

Somehow, apparently, White ended up getting shot in the chest. The initial report suggested the shot hit White in the back. But the coroner’s report showed the bullet entering from the right front.

One might suspect that such an incident, a handcuffed suspect shot in the chest, would be cause for suspicion of murder. But the state moved forward with its investigation, waiting on the results of the autopsy. Those results have raised some eyebrows in Louisiana. The coroner’s report listed the cause of death as suicide.

Suicide? Really?

It seems to me that holding a pistol at such an angle that one could hit oneself in the chest would be problematic for someone with their hands cuffed behind their back. Holding a pistol at all with your hands cuffed behind your back, I would think, would be pretty hard to do. And so I think, well maybe this is an isolated incident.

Not so says Google. According to the Internet search engine, there are at least two other similar acts of suicide:

• Chavis Carter, 21, was shot in the head while handcuffed in the back of a police car in Jonesboro, Arkansas
• Tyree Woodson, 38, apparently snuck a gun past Baltimore police and into a holding cell, and then shot himself while handcuffed in the bathroom.

It seems odd that such a thing could happen even once. But to have happened at least three times, and I am almost certain there are more instances that just haven’t been brought to light, just doesn’t make sense.

When incidents like this happen, and apparently with some regularity, it makes it easy to understand why some people find it hard to trust the authorities. How Mr White’s case ends up is yet to be determined. But it would be very hard for a suicide to throw away the weapon of choice, especially while handcuffed inside a police cruiser. A simple test for gunshot residue on the hands and finger prints on the weapon may have more to say about this than a coroner’s report that seems illogical on its face.

Deadliest dog: Dachshund, apparently

I think it all started with the Rodney King beating. I mean, the whole idea of the police gone wrong probably started even before that, but that’s the one that triggered a lot of the I-report rage. Citizen outrage over police behavior has been going on forever.

But lately it has really gotten out of hand. Take for instance, Ferguson. There apparently is no question something went wrong in that instance. I’m not quite ready to point a finger at anyone, I remember all too well how those things tend to work out differently in the courts than they do in the land of public opinion and the press.

Still, it really makes one wonder about what the heck is going on.

I mean even in lonely little Colonial Heights the specter of cops gone bad has reared its head in a situation that on its face seems clean. I mean, several witnesses have attested to the officer clearly telling the armed woman to get on the ground.

Given the situation, a woman coming at you with a pistol aimed in your direction, just how do you handle that? I think tripping the trigger is exactly the right thing to do. It’s better if the person avoids a medical examiner’s table, but things happen. Still, there was provocation and response.

The whole incident seems straight forward and pretty clean to me. Bravo CHPD.

But now we have this. It seems that a police officer in Danville felt the need to dispatch a dog that came at him growling, according to an article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. The fact that the dog happened to be an 11-year-old miniature Dachshund doesn’t apparently matter.

Still it seems a bit hard to even pull a gun on a dog that small. At worst, what damage could the dog do to the officer? Wouldn’t it just be best to disengage from the situation?

It’s not like we are talking about a really dangerous dog, like a pit bull, Doberman, or Rottweiler. We are talking about a pet here. There should have been no question that the deceased belonged to someone, and perhaps may have had good reason to be growling and snarling at the officer. Haven’t you ever wanted to do so? I know, I too would be afraid of the consequences, judging by what happened here.

Still, we’re talking about maybe a 15-pound dog at best. Why not just walk away. Why not just a quick kick or a shot with the Billy club, or whatever it is that the police call those things nowadays anyhow. Not having had to face such a vicious attack, it still makes me wonder if the officer’s actions weren’t a bit of overkill, pardon the expression.

There is little question that police officers are faced with dangerous and yes even deadly situations on any given day. Incidents like Ferguson happen, and we, as citizens, need to allow due process to proceed. We should do the same thing for the situation in Colonial Heights.

But I don’t know how to react about the Danville shooting. You have to know that the dog is someone’s pet. After all it was Dachshund, a breed renowned for its vicious qualities. It seems to me there may have been a better way to handle that situation.

Panda Pandemic, the next reality TV show

Move over Kardashians panda live births are about to take your spot on the reality TV show circuit. Or are they?

It seems that pandas may be much smarter than we human’s ever expected. We are so thrilled at the prospect of panda bears giving birth in captivity that it seems we have gone to the extreme in taking care of the prospective moms. Where, left on their own in the wilds, the pandas may have just wandered around in the bamboo eating shoots and sweating in the sweltering heat, we have provided them with the best of climate control.

According to a story that appeared in CNN online, Ai Hin, a six year old panda living in the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, in China, sort of figured out that the state would pay for special accommodations for her if she were preggers. So, Ai Hin sort of started exhibiting signs of an impending pregnancy.

The keepers at Chengdu were ecstatic. Plans were put in place, and they were already promoting their reality show of the giant panda giving birth to her cubs. And they knew they had to take good care of their star performer, Ai Hin. She also knew they would be taking good care of her, although exactly why may have been beyond her ability to realize. She obviously was aware that getting pregnant or at least seeming to be pregnant was the way to go.

Call her the welfare panda. Ai Hin started to exhibit signs of being pregnant. And, she did a good enough job of it to fool her handlers. On the handlers’ behalf, Ai Hin did an excellent job of following them by showing signs of pregnancy, including:  a change in appetite, moving less, and an increase in progesterone in July, according to Xinhua. Pperhaps, however, her handlers got caught up in their own hype and longed to be part of the reality show market.

Be that as it may, they followed the protocol for a pregnant panda. The protocol includes a private, climate controlled room, and providing more and better quality food. That’s the right thing to do with a pregnant mother, right? Well, it’s not so unusual, according to this quote from the CNN story:

"After showing prenatal signs, the 'mothers-to-be' are moved into single rooms with air conditioning and around-the-clock care," Wu Kongju, an expert at the Chengdu base, said. "They also receive more buns, fruits and bamboo, so some clever pandas have used this to their advantage to improve their quality of life."

Maybe there is good cause for the keepers to be excited. Apparently, giant pandas are only fertile three days each year. Pandas are also notoriously reluctant to breed in captivity. That gives the males a very small window at best.

On top of that, the baby pandas have a 33 percent mortality rate when born in captivity. So it may not be a bad idea to baby the mothers who are about to have babies of their own.

Pandas have long been a favorite of mine. I suppose I owe my love for Pandas to Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing, a pair of pandas that were given to the US back in the ‘70s.

I think I actually saw them when I was in Washington for my senior class trip. Still, it’s a big deal when a panda bear is giving birth in captivity. The next suspected pregnancy is Tian Tian, who lives in the Edinburgh Zoo in Scotland. But the keepers were careful to note that there are no guarantees. The keepers were quick to note their inability to be certain about panda pregnancies, this time.

"It is very likely that we will not know 100% if Tian Tian is pregnant until she gives birth," Iain Valentine, director of giant pandas for the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, said earlier this month.