Today's Eternal Sadness

We're getting some details on the killing of a Pentagon cop last Tuesday.

The murderer had a history of violence, apparently due to mental health problems, and yet nobody could quite figure out that he might be a danger to himself and others, and that maybe he shouldn't be walking around waiting for something to set him off?

That in itself is worth looking into, but the thing that chaps my ass is the fact that the cop was killed with his own gun.

WaPo: (pay wall)

Phillip Brent said he was awoken early one April morning by word someone had broken into his home in an upscale Atlanta suburb. He was away, so he quickly dialed up video from the home’s surveillance cameras on his phone.

Brent said the video showed a masked man smashing through a back door with a sledgehammer. The intruder, who appeared armed with a crowbar, eventually left and pulled off his mask. Brent said he instantly recognized the face on the video.

He said it was a neighbor, Austin Lanz, 27; the same man the FBI said killed a Pentagon police officer without warning or provocation Tuesday on a Metro bus platform outside the military headquarters. Lanz also was killed.

Brent said the April break-in, which resulted in Lanz’s arrest, was the culmination of a long campaign of harassment by Lanz against him and his former fiancee, Eliza Wells. The couple didn’t know Lanz personally and still don’t fully grasp the reasoning behind his fixation on them.

Brent and Wells, both 23, said the encounters were by turns menacing and bizarre, offering a glimpse of the man who carried out such a confounding attack at the Pentagon. The two said they were fearful of Lanz, but also deeply concerned about him and his mental health.

What triggered his attack outside the Pentagon also remains unknown. In a statement released by Lanz’s family, his relatives offered condolences to the family of George Gonzalez, the slain Pentagon police officer, saying they were “sorry and heartbroken.” In an interview, the family’s attorney, Jimmy Berry, said the family knows of no motive for the attack.

It goes on - and gets creepier - but the point for me is that we're told over and over that having a gun is how you keep yourself safe. That officer had a gun. He was trained in how not to get shot with it. And he's unavailable for comment because he's fucking dead now.

Which brings me to this: Fuck the shooter - I don't wanna remember that prick. I don't wanna hear his name.

Officer George Gonzales