From The Onion: At Thug U. (Frostburg State), Where Students Sleep with Shotguns Under Their Beds, Pres. Jonathan Gibralter is Trying to

Understand and Reduce Student Violence, Following Weekend Slaying of Sophomore Coed
 

November 6, 2011 sophomore FSU murder victim Kortneigh McCoy, 19

 

Senior FSU scholar Shanee Liggins, 23, of Baltimore, charged with murdering Kortneigh McCoy

 


FSU student Brandon Carroll, murdered by FSU scholar Tyrone Hall on April 18, 2010
 

Ellis Hartridge Jr., whom Hall unsuccessfully tried to murder
 

Through the magic of criminal justice affirmative action, FSU scholar Tyrone Hall, who murdered Brandon Carroll, and committed attempted murder against Ellis Hartridge Jr., was initially charged with first-degree murder, first-degree attempted murder, and first-degree assault, and was thus eligible for life until parole, pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter, and was sentenced to a mere five years in prison
 

After admitting black thugs under relaxed AA standards, FSU Pres. Jonathan Gibralter seeks to "understand" why they acted like ... black thugs
 

Previously, at WEJB/NSU:

“Diverse Students Leave Diverse Hometowns for College in the Boondocks, Take Diverse Bloodshed with Them.”

By Nicholas Stix

Alright, it’s not from The Onion, but the story is so surreal that it might as well be. Look at the original, WJLA headline: “Kortneigh McCoy murder spurs FSU to reduce violence.” Nothing in the story bears out the headline.

It turns out that Kortneigh McCoy was not the first FSU student murdered by another FSU student. This is no longer unusual at FSU.

And note that since both FSU murders were committed off-campus, neither will be counted in the federal Clery Act campus crime stats.

A lefty troll who graced us with his presence the other day, insisted that I was blowing smoke when I talked about the predilection for blacks committing violent felonies against college and university students. He cited Clery Act stats which, as I pointed out after studying them, consisted by my reckoning almost 97 percent of crimes that were either non-violent or misdemeanors, only counted crimes committed on campus (almost all of the murders I referred to were committed off-campus), which combined school and college crime reports, and which relied on notoriously unreliable local police UCRs.

One WJLA reader, in a comment that is sure to be deleted, remarked,

Looks Like Frostburg
Nov 10, 2011 - 03:53:08 PM
Will be cutting the black student population.

Another sure-to-be deleted comment was,

JoeP
Nov 10, 2011 - 03:24:17 PM
Why not get a grant from the Department of Education and do a study of the crime rates on the campuses of HBCUs [historically black colleges and universities] versus that of BYU [Brigham Young University]?

Except that Frostburg State University is 76 percent non-Hispanic white! It’s only 17.4 percent non-Hispanic black. (It’s 17.4 percent non-Hispanic black? It’s 17.4 percent non-Hispanic black!)

* * *
Kortneigh McCoy murder spurs FSU to reduce violence
November 10, 2011 - 1:38 p.m.

(AP, ABC7) - Frostburg State University says it’s trying to understand and reduce student violence following the weekend slaying of a female sophomore student.

President Jonathan Gibralter wrote in a news release that the school is organizing several forums with students to discuss why some of them find it hard to resolve conflicts peacefully. A spokeswoman says the forums will start next week.

The Cumberland Times-News first reported Gibralter’s message Wednesday.
Senior Shanee Liggins of Waldorf is charged with first-degree murder in the off-campus stabbing death Sunday of 19-year-old Kortneigh McCoy of Baltimore. Liggins claims someone else did it.

It was the second violent death of a Frostburg student in 19 months. Twenty-one-year-old Brandon Carroll of Glen Burnie was shot to death by student Tyrone Hall in April 2010.

According to charging documents, Liggins was collecting money as a cover charge to a party at the house where she lives when McCoy and her friends arrived. An argument ensued between one of McCoy’s friends and Liggins. McCoy then allegedly became involved in the verbal altercation.

After the argument, the documents say that McCoy went outside the house and encountered one of her friends. She allegedly told the friend that she was going to fight a girl, then changed course and said she was only going to talk to her.

A short time later, Liggins allegedly came out of the house and a fight ensued between her and McCoy, during which blows were exchanged, including one from McCoy to Liggins that opened a cut on her lip.

The documents allege that at this point, the suspect had a knife in her hand; some witnesses saw it while others did not. During the course of the fight, Liggins then allegedly stabbed McCoy twice, once in the head and once in the neck.

* * *
A Blast from the Past

FSU reeling from fatal shooting
Bowery Street party altercation set incident into motion
By Jeffrey Alderton
April 20, 2010
The Cumberland Times-News

Frostburg — CUMBERLAND — Frostburg City Police had investigated several noise complaints and disturbances Saturday night into Sunday morning, but nothing out of the ordinary for a Saturday night in April in the Mountain City.

“It was a night of what we normally encounter on a spring night close to the end of the school year,” said Frostburg City Councilman Bob Flanigan, who serves as the city’s commissioner of public safety. “We had no reason to be on extra guard, or a heads up that something was going to happen. This was a very isolated incident.”

It was just about 4 a.m. when shotgun blasts outside 68 E. College Ave. claimed the life of Frostburg State University student Brandon Carroll and wounded his friend and college basketball teammate Ellis Hartridge Jr., who is expected to recover from a wound to the abdomen.

A short time after the shots were fired, police identified FSU student Tyrone Hall as a suspect with the help of a woman at the scene who Hall had contacted saying that he needed help. Hall was taken into custody at the scene when he exited the East College Avenue residence. He apparently told the woman that he placed the shotgun under his bed before he exited the residence with four other males, according to district court charging documents.

Hall reportedly told the woman he didn’t have a choice and that Hartridge and Carroll had “tried to jump him at his residence.”

During an interview with police, Hall said there was a party on Bowery Street earlier in the evening where he was dancing with an “unknown female” when his ex-girlfriend [Patrice Britton] arrived there. He said she pushed him in the face and then pushed the unidentified female. “A small scuffle ensued and Mr. Hall and his friends were asked to leave the party,” according to court papers.

Frostburg Police were not notified or called to investigate the Bowery Street incident. Hall and his friends returned to Hall’s residence on East College Avenue.

The court documents indicated Hall said he was then contacted by telephone by Hartridge, who said he was in a relationship with Hall’s ex-girlfriend [Patrice Britton]. Hall said Hartridge indicated he wanted to meet with [read: Beat the hell out of] him regarding the earlier incident.

Five minutes later, Hartridge had arrived at the residence with Carroll and another man, according to the court records.

“Mr. Hall noted that he was sitting on his bed and underneath the bed he keeps a 12-gauge shotgun. Mr. Hall noted that he loaded two shotgun shells into the shotgun and then slung the gun over his right shoulder. Mr. Hall then noted that he walked to the front door to his residence and stood there while Ellis (Hartridge) confronted him about the earlier argument.

Hall further stated that he didn’t notice any weapons in the possession of Hartridge or Carroll or the other man that accompanied them.

“Mr. Hall stated that Ellis lunged and swung his fist at him, but (another student) pushed them back. Mr. Hall then lowered the shotgun in the direction of Ellis, and when Ellis lunged at him the second time, Mr. Hall said that he fired the shotgun in the direction of Ellis. Ellis was struck with the shotgun blast in the left hip area. Mr. Hall noted that Brandon Carroll then lunged towards him and he turned and pointed the shotgun in the direction of Brandon and fired one shot,” according to the court documents.

As the fatal shooting remains under investigation by the C3I Unit, Flanigan expressed the city’s condolences to the victims and gratitude to the officers who responded to the incident — two university police officers who were first on the scene and three Frostburg City Police officers who were in the area.

Flanigan, who served as a Frostburg Police officer for 16 years before becoming self-employed, said, “If there is any way to curb violence in the community, we are going to do that.

“Any calls involving firearms and one involving loss of life is the most nerve-bending of incidents. You have the victims right in front of you, you have bystanders and you have to identify and locate the suspect and protect yourself at the same time. It’s what we train for but it’s not the kind of call our department is used to dealing with.

“This is an example of what can go wrong when a firearm is in the possession of untrained hands. The baffling part of all this is why a FSU student, unless an avid hunter, why would they have a shotgun,” said Flanigan, “and then bring it outside and use it against another human being?”

Contact Jeffrey Alderton at jlalderton@times-news.com.

* * *
Former Frostburg State student gets five years in prison for slaying
By Don Markus
November 10, 2010
The Baltimore Sun

CUMBERLAND — — Shortly after Tyrone Hall was sentenced Wednesday for the fatal shooting of Brandon Carroll and the wounding of Ellis Hartridge Jr., the families and friends of all three young men involved in the incident last April stood outside Allegany Circuit Court.

Some cried openly; others seethed quietly.

Neither side seemed satisfied with Judge W. Timothy Finan’s decision to send the 21-year-old Glen Burnie man to prison for five years.

“Is it fair? Somebody died, so somebody had to pay,” Hall’s father, Tyrone Sr., said as he fought back tears. “But I don’t think he should be going to the Department of Corrections — he’s not that type of kid.”

A few minutes earlier, reading from a statement, Carroll’s mother, Faye, said, “We did not get justice for our son’s murder. Allegany County after only 31/2 hours of deliberation gave the shooter what amounts to no more than a ‘time out’ for this crime. They have set a regrettable precedent for cases of this type in the future.”

Hall had testified last month that he fired a shotgun at both men in what he said was self-defense. After a jury was unable to agree on a verdict, Hall, who was initially charged with first-degree murder, first-degree attempted murder and first-degree assault, pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter under an agreement limiting his possible prison time to eight years. Finan sentenced Hall Wednesday to 10 years, with five years suspended, followed by two years of unsupervised probation.

In court Wednesday, Hall apologized to the families of the two Frostburg University basketball players. Carroll, 20, died at a nearby hospital the night he accompanied Hartridge to Hall’s off-campus residence. Hartridge, then 21, had gone there to fight Hall after a woman both men had dated told Hartridge that Hall had slapped her at a party earlier that night.

“I’m truly sorry,” Hall said “I pray for them and both their families every night.”
Hall, who had gone to the Western Maryland school after what had been a promising soccer career begun at Mount St. Joseph High School stalled at two other colleges, told those in the courtroom that “at no time did I act out of hate; I simply acted out of fear.”

Those words rang hollow for Carroll’s family and friends, many of whom cried when seeing Allegany State’s Attorney Michael O. Twigg place an enlarged photograph of a smiling Carroll behind the witness stand while his mother; his father, Malcolm; and his stepfather, Michael Stewart, spoke of their slain son.

“Brandon was a decent human, and he did not deserve to be shot like an animal and left on the street to die,” Faye Carroll said. “I can’t fathom what could have gone through the minds of those five young men” — Hall and four friends at his house the night of the shooting — “that they would allow something so cold-blooded to happen to someone, and just walk away like nothing happened.”

Said Malcolm Carroll, “Brandon had a choice to take Ellis to Hall’s apartment, but Tyrone Hall made the choice for him to live or die.”

Hall’s parents spoke on behalf of their son, with Hall’s father asking Carroll’s family and Hartridge’s relatives “to please accept our condolences. … This is a terrible situation for all involved.”

Though Carroll’s family initially called the senior Hall’s apology “perfunctory,” Malcolm Carroll seemed satisfied later when Hall’s mother, Kim, and sister, Tanai, tearfully hugged him as he left the courthouse.

“It’s just a terrible situation,” Malcolm Carroll said. “Three lives are lost by this senseless act. You go to school to learn. My son transferred to Frostburg, and nine months later we’re putting him in the grave.”

Hartridge, who has returned to school and resumed his basketball career despite having lingering pain where he was shot, had his sister, Chanel, read his victim impact statement. It was the first time that Hartridge had publicly expressed regret for going to Hall’s residence after Patrice Britton told him about her alleged run-in with Hall earlier that evening.

“My decision to go over to 68 East College to fight was not smart at all but I never expected this to happen,” Hartridge wrote. “I replay my decisions over and over in my head all the time and I wish I could have done something different.”

Later in the statement, Hartridge wrote, “I have two massive scars and a little scar that I have to see every morning I awake. By seeing these scars it reminds me of the day I lost my friend and I almost lost my life.”

don.markus@baltsun.com

[Thanks to reader-researcher RC.]