I know Dr. Maclin presented this story a little bit in class yesterday, but I decided to look up more details and websites for my post this week.
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/female-shooter-kills-university-alabama-huntsville/story?id=9823728
A biology professor, Dr. Amy Bishop, at the University of Alabama was denied tenure in upcoming April, and decided to go on a killing spree during a faculty meeting last Friday, Feb. 12. Bishop was arrested and charged with killing 3 professors and wounding three others. Killed, according to the Associated Press were, Maria Davis, Gopi K. Podila, the chairman of the Department of Biological Sciences, and faculty member Adriel Johnson. The injured were identified as biology department members Luis Cruz-Vera and Joseph Leahy and university staff member Stephanie Monticello.
Bishop's husband is still in disbelief of his wife's outrage and said he has know idea why she did it or where she got the gun.
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/professors-rampage-violent-past-9839637
http://www.aolnews.com/crime/article/3-dead-in-shooting-at-university-of-alabama-huntsville/19356792
Investigation into the case and the past of Bishop brings up suspiciousness of a violent past for the professor. 17 years ago, Bishop was a suspect in the 1993 attempted mail bombing of a Harvard Medical School professor. Bishop was also accused of killing her brother in 1986, although the case was never completely solved. The shooting was ruled accidental and Bishop was never charged.
I think Bishop has to have some mental instability to commit such an act on the basis of being denied tenure. She appears to have an aggressive past and problems controlling her angry outbursts. I think that investigators should reopen the case of the death Bishop's brother to see if there was any evidence that they may have missed that ties Bishop to the crime. If a verdict had been reached that found Bishop responsible for her brother's death, this killing spree at UAH may have never occured. It is hard to say "what if" but I think this case demonstrates how colleges and universities should do a thorough background check on their professors and faculty before hiring them and trusting them with today's students.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/us/21bishop.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=all
Above is a link that talks more in depth about her past incidences of violence that I found pretty interesting. It seems a little fishy that out of all of these incidences, she was not charged with a single one of them.