For this blog, we were assigned to follow up on 2 current events that have taken place in the last week. I chose to write about the Houston College shooting and the Monte Te'o girlfriend hoax.
Houston Shooting:
On January 22, 2 gunmen shot and wounded 3 people at Lone Star College in Houston, Texas. A CNN reporter talked to a freshman girl who heard 6 gun shots from outside her classroom. She told the reporter people have told her they were shooting in a library, but she believed to hear them outside her classroom in the hallway. Amanda Vasquez then hid under her desk, like the rest of her English class. She could hear people scrambling and running. It was no surprise that she called her mother while hiding, you never know what’s going on when you hear gun shots in schools anymore.
Apparently 2 people had gotten in a fight that afternoon. 22 year old Carlton Berry is known to be the alleged shooter, who began shooting at Trey Foster, the man he got in a fight with. People heard several shots from his gun. Carlton was charged with aggravated assault according to authorities. Both of the men who were fighting had wounds due to gunfire and both were detained while being treated at the hospital.
<-Trey Foster and Carlton Berry (left to right)
Three people were injured, including a campus maintenance worker. The maintenance worker was accidentally shot in the leg due to working around the area the two people were fighting. He was in his mid 50’s and is now stable.
When this story first made headlines I was shocked. It’s one thing to get into fist fights on campus, but bringing out guns is serious. I don’t know what I would do if I were in the school at that time. Especially after all the recent shootings, so many things would be going through my mind. Although this isn’t as damaging as the Newtown shooting, it’s just another event adding on to the gun control controversy.
-http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2013/01/22/shooting-reported-at-texas-college/?hpt=hp_t1
http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/22/justice/texas-college-shooting/index.html
Monto Te'o Hoax:
It’d be no shocker if you’ve heard of Monte Te’o’s fake girlfriend hoax. But was she really a hoax in his eyes? Te’o said he was the “victim of an elaborate prank”. He said it all began in the winter of 2009. He’d met a women online through facebook named Lennay Kekua. They started to get more serious by communicating by phone the next spring. Throughout their “relationship” they never met each other face to face. This is why a call from her “brother” on September 12th was such a heartbreaker. Te’o broke out to the press about how is girlfriend had passed away from leukemia, just days after his grandmother passed away. The Notre Dame linebacker’s sob story captured the nation’s football crowd after their big win over Michigan State. However, 3 months later he got a call from Kekua “herself” saying she was not dead.
<-Monte Te'o and a picture of his fake girlfriend (Diane O'Meara
Once Te’o informed the school that he was not part of the hoax, the question was: Who was behind it? Who is the girl used as the face of Kekua? It turns out Tuiasosopo, a former “The Voice” try out was behind it. On January 16th, he finally called Te’o and apologized for the embarrassing situation. Diane O’Meara was the face said to be Kekua. Apparently, O’Meara went to school with Tuiasosopo but they weren’t close friends. Diane had a private interview with The Today Show and described the situation as “twisted and confusing”. I don’t know what I would do if I was in her position. She was leading a completely normal life and all of a sudden, due to this hoax, she’s famous. The man who framed her as Te’o’s deceased girlfriend had been stalking and stealing O’Meara’s Facebook photos for years. Although he has apologized, she doesn’t think there is any way for him to make up what he’s done.
Will we ever know if Te’o was truly unaware of her nonexistence? It’s hard to believe he would have a “relationship” for 3 years without ever seeing “her” in person. I guess we’ll never know the true motive behind this hoax.
Comments
I think we will find out what really happened with Te'o. I am starting to believe him.