Joanna
----- Original Message ----- (Reuters) - A woman credited with convincing a gunman holed up in an Atlanta-area school to lay down his assault rifle and surrender to police says the man was suicidal and preparing to die in a bloodbath before she talked him out of it.
"He had a look on him that he was willing to kill, matter of fact he said it," said Antoinette Tuff, a clerk at the elementary school in the Atlanta suburbs where Tuesday's incident ended with no injuries after a tense standoff.
"He was going to end his life and take all the cops and everybody with him," Tuff told Atlanta's WSBTV television news.
Tuff was sitting in the front office of the Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy when Michael Brandon Hill, 20, walked in brandishing his AK-47 rifle.
"He said he didn't have any reason to live and he knew he was going to die today," Tuff said.
Tuff's account was borne out by the 911 recording of the call she made from the school during the incident that was released by police on Wednesday. Tuff can clearly be heard calmly talking Hill out of causing harm and reassuring him that giving up was the right thing to do.
"It's going to be alright sweetheart," she told him as he discarded his weapon, emptied his pockets and waited for police to enter the school. "I just want you to know that I love you though, and I'm proud of you," she added before police entered the school and arrested him without a struggle.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/22/us-usa-georgia-shooting-idUSBRE97L05220130822
[WS:] This is an excellent illustration of the point I made early in connection with the Zimmerman case that "standing one's ground" is likely to lead to more violence rather than prevent it. here, and unarmed woman, instead of "standing her ground" , emphasized with a would be assailant to persuade him to lay down his weapon.
The fact that it was a woman is significant - men too often suffer from brain testosterone poisoning to be able to act calmly and rationally in such situations.
-- Wojtek
"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money." ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk