"School Shooting" at Cary High? | 4 female Durham Jail workers charged in 2 months | Trump signs vandalized at Cary early voting site
No. 95 — Oct. 20-26, 2024
Group fight near Cary High School escalates to shooting
15-year-old shot, teen suspect in custody after shooting near Cary High School - N&O
Cary shooting: 15-year-old injured, teen in custody for shooting near high school - WRAL
15-year-old shot outside Village Square in Cary; 17-year-old in custody - ABC11
15-year-old hurt in Cary shooting that prompted lockdowns; 17-year-old in custody - CBS17
On Friday, a shooting near Cary High School lead to a Code Yellow lockdown of the campus, as well as nearby Adams Elementary School and East Cary Middle School. Although initially reported to the police as an active shooter, video and eyewitness testimony confirm that it was in fact an escalation of a fight in the street between multiple apparently black teenagers.
Although the words "school" and "shooting" used in the same sentence is often used to evoke the active shooter massacres such as Sandy Hook, Parkland, or Uvalde, this more mundane incident is more representative of the "average" school shooting; the 280 incidents in the K-12 School Shooting Database recorded so far in 2024 involve 210 victims killed or wounded, for an average of 0.75 per shooting.
The fear of the unknown makes active shootings a particularly terrifying threat; violence that we understand and know how to avoid like the homicides every week on the streets of Raleigh and Durham is not as powerful as a tool to effect political change or keep the broader populace in a vulnerable state.
When anti-gun media and politicians slip a much broader definition "school shootings" in with the tragedies which resonate across the nation, they obscure the fact that incidents like this can be avoided by potential victims if they refrain from being in "stupid places" (the middle of the street) with "stupid people" (the "youths" captured in this video) doing "stupid things" (fighting in the street), as John Correia of Active Self Protection likes to say.
Third and fourth female Durham Co. detention center workers charged with smuggling drugs, cellphone
More Durham jail staff arrested, accused of crimes involving inmates. What to know. - N&O
More Durham detention center workers charged, weeks after two other arrests - WRAL
Durham County detention officer charged with sneaking cellphones and drugs to inmates - ABC11
Nicole Locke, a former sergeant at the Durham County Detention Facility, has been charged with providing cellphone components to Darrius Tyson, who is in jail on a $2,000,000 bond on murder charges related to the 2022 disappearance of a Durham club promoter.
Tyson's lengthy criminal record includes a 2010 murder, for which he was only sentenced to 14-17 years after pleading down from the first degree to second degree. Tyson was only out on the streets in 2022 due to the fact that "he was granted a new trial because of questions surrounding how his attorney and the DA's office handled the case."
Last month, charges were filed against a guard, Jade Shanicia Lanique Robertson, and a contractor, Lerin Burnette, who both allegedly had sex with Tyson at the jail in August of last year.
Charges have also been filed against Briana Bowie, a former nurse at the detention center who allegedly smuggled marijuana to different inmate.
Holly Springs petition signer wins $1 million in daily giveaway by Elon Musk's America PAC
Elon Musk Petition Winners So Far: Meet the People Handed $1M Checks - Newsweek
INBOX: Trump signs vandalized at Cary Senior Center early voting site
I'm hearing from people on the ground that the atmosphere has gotten "nasty" at the Wake County early voting site at the Cary Senior Center, with multiple Trump signs vandalized on Wednesday.
Although I'm sure the readers of this publication are familiar with the fact that county's voters choose Democratic candidates by a significant margin, some of y'all might not be aware that the sheer population of the county (approx. 1,190,275 in 2023) means that it is also home to more Republican voters than any other county in the state, with Trump receiving 226,197 Wake Co. votes in 2020.
ICYMI
On Thursday, I was able to interview a local woman at her horse farm in Wendell; she's been volunteering in Western NC and has some interesting things to say about what she's witnessed and has become aware of. I haven't been able to investigate or confirm her claims, but I believe this is newsworthy as a first-hand account:
INTERVIEW: Wake Co. horse farm owner on Helene relief - undercounted death toll, FEMA seizing supplies?
(I've also included the full video and transcript of the interview as bonus content for paying subscribers, something I plan to do more of in the future as more of you make the decision to support the work I do here)