JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

Nothing makes people feel quite as helpless, and nothing unnerves a city quite like a random shooter or shooters — one or more people who target others seemingly for the hell of it when they are unlucky enough to enter into the assailants’ demonic sphere.

Scott

We’ve seen it happen in Kansas City a couple of times in recent years. Last year, a young man named Freddie Scott, now 23, terrorized the south part of Kansas City for six months when he randomly shot and killed several people in the Indian Creek area. He was caught after he came up behind a man and shot him in the back of the head on 67th Street, just off Troost Avenue.

“They didn’t see it coming,” Scott said under his breath while being questioned by detectives. He’s now charged with six counts of first-degree murder.

(His attorney, whom I know, says, with all sincerity, “He’s a nice guy.” Of course, she sees and visits him in a safe setting, the Jackson County jail.)

Whitaker

In the spring of  2014 we had “the highway shooter,” a man named Mohammed Whitaker, who shot at several people as the were driving in the Three Trails Crossing Area, also in south Kansas City. Fortunately, police nabbed him before anyone died. Whitaker, now 32, was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

The most infamous random killers in the last 20 years were the Washington D.C. “Beltway snipers,”  John Allen Muhammad, 41 at the time, and Lee Boyd Malvo, 17 at the time.

Living out of their car, they pulled off a series of coordinated shootings that occurred during three weeks in October 2002 in Maryland, Virginia and D.C. They killed 10 people and injured three other critically, mostly along I-95 in Virginia. Their terrorizing run came to an end at 3:15 a.m. Oct. 24, 2002, when officers found them sleeping in their car at an I-70 rest stop in Maryland.

…Now, regrettably, it’s Nashville that has had its sense of communal security shaken to the core.

In the last 10 days, a woman has been shot and paralyzed; two young men and a young woman have been gunned down and killed in robberies; and a young man was beaten by two men who attempted to rob him. The incidents have occurred in East Nashville and the suburb of Madison.

Police are feverishly looking for two black men, one of whom has shoulder-length dreadlocks, as well as a small, dark Chevy the men are believed to have been driving.

The first incident occurred around 12:30 a.m. Aug. 8 when a 39-year-old woman was walking her dos near her home when she saw a dark-colored sedan drive by her and circle back and come by again. After she told the men to leave, they shot her in the lower back. She managed to call 911 but is paralyzed.

On Tuesday morning, about 5 a.m., Kendall Rice, 31, was walking to a bus stop, on his way to work, when a dark-colored sedan drove up behind him and two men inside shot him with a rifle. His personal belongings were missing when police found him. A few minutes earlier, a man reported that two men armed with a rifle assaulted him and tried to rob him outside an apartment complex.

The latest incident occurred about 3:30 a.m. Friday in a parking lot outside a bar called The Cobra. Jaime Sarrantonio, 30, and Bartley Teal, 33, both of Nashville, had gone to a nearby convenience store for snacks. After walking back to The Cobra’s parking lot, two men in a dark-colored sedan pulled up and got out of the car to rob them. The assailants shot and killed Sarrantonio and Teal but spared the lives of a 34-year-old man and 32-year-old woman who were with the two victims. the victims’ belongings were later found in a North Nashville alley.

Sarrantonio

Teal

Rice

On Friday, a Metro Nashville Police Department spokesman said, “Officers throughout the city are on the lookout for two cold-blooded killers who obviously have no respect for the sanctity of human life.”

Today, the spokesman said police had active leads in the homicide cases. Meanwhile, The Cobra was closed to the public tonight because it was hosting a private gathering for friends and family members of Sarrantonio and Teal.

What a tragedy, and what a senseless series of events. Once again, in our country, friends and relatives of innocent victims are hurting, angry and frustrated, and residents of a major city are taking cover and hoping the latest round of madness will soon end.