Behind the Byline: Covering a campus shooting May 19, 2008

A few posts down, you saw how my colleague LeAnne Matlach and I covered a shooting on the immediate outskirts of Temple’s campus.  As a refresher, here are the links to all the stories:

Shots fired at 15th and Norris – spot news coverage of shooting
Temple responds to shooting – e-mail sent to Temple students
Search still underway for shooting suspect – after some researching, I found some priors
No TU-Alert a louder message after shooting – colleague Shannon McDonald gives her take on the response

So…here’s the story…

It was 12 a.m., and I was in bed.  My phone rang, and I ignored it.  I listened to the voicemail, used a profanity and quickly called LeAnne.  The conversation went something like this:

LM: “Do you want me to go to the scene?”
CS: “Well, I don’t want you to go if you don’t want to.”
LM: “Do you want me to go to the scene?”
CS: “Only if you want to.”
LM: “If you tell me to go to the scene, I’ll go to the scene.”
CS: “OK.  Go to the scene.”

So, the brave girl that she is, LeAnne sends me cell phone photos to upload to the Web site immediately — just shows the need to be prepared always.

I didn’t go to bed until 3 a.m. that night.  The Philadelphia Police yelled at me a few times.  Temple Police didn’t answer their phone.  And, as you read in Shannon’s piece, no TU-Alert was sent.

Since this is my blog and not The Temple News, I will give my opinion.  Temple should have sent a TU-Alert — a text message, voicemail and e-mail to all Temple students, faculty and staff.  They say they determined it was not a random incident and appeared to be a domestic dispute.  Therefore, Temple students were not threatened.

BS they weren’t threatened.  Students live at the corner of 15th and Norris streets.  The suspect fleed toward Broad Street, the street that Temple students use to get to and from class, lunch, home.  And who could’ve known his true intentions at the time?  How could police know that his only intent was to shoot the victim?

At last check, the victim is in critical but stable condition at Temple Hospital.  The suspect, Marshall Thomas, is still at large.  And he has priors — charges that were dropped after four months for no apparent reason.

But what’s done is done, I suppose.  I hope that Temple has learned something about this.  Even if they don’t feel it’s necessary to send an alert, the students still want to be informed.  And the way to do that is through this system.

It’s up to Temple to use it wisely next time.  But let’s just hope there isn’t a ‘next time.’