Thursday, August 2, 2012

Police in Oregon Prevent Possible "Lone Gunman" Murder Spree (Medford Mail Tribune)---- August 02, 2012 A Grants Pass man authorities feared might have been plotting a sniper attack at a high school football game is scheduled to be back in court next week to change his plea. Federal prosecutor Judith Harper says Raphael Amoroso will plead guilty to charges of being a marijuana user in possession of a gun and having a gun on school grounds. The hearing is scheduled for Aug. 8 in U.S. District Court in Medford. Harper said Amoroso will be sentenced at a later date. The 26-year-old self-employed handyman has been held without bail since October. He was arrested after approaching a police officer outside Grants Pass High School hours after a football game. A search of his car revealed a loaded pistol, 200 rounds of rifle ammunition, binoculars, a camouflage jacket and a novel about a rogue federal agent who opens fire on a football game. A week later, police searched the home Amoroso shared with his mother and found seven guns, mostly vintage military rifles, along with 2,200 rounds of ammunition, a bulletproof vest, a helmet, a sniper's camouflage suit, sniper training manuals and an Internet test titled, "What Kind of Terrorist are You?" Defense attorney Larry R. Roloff did not immediately return a telephone call for comment. In denying bail last January, Judge Owen C. Panner said Amoroso had shown a pattern of escalating behavior since high school, when he wrote on a desk that he wanted to shoot teachers, and later shot at a jet boat on the Rogue River with a pellet rifle, injuring a passenger. — Jeff Barnard, Associated Press

9 comments:

  1. another sicko on the loose...glad he is behind bars now.

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  2. So, this wasn't purely an exercise in video-game-like fantasy, but he was starting to act-out this sick syndrome.
    Wow.

    Just goes to show there are Jared Loughners to be found anywhere ... Columbine, Tucson, Aurora, Springfield, Medford ...

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  3. He tipped-off police on purpose?
    Gee... he was just itching to be found out, methinks.

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  4. Yes, I'm afraid there are quite a few of these sickos out there.

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  5. Yes, there is something weird about the guy beyond the gun-crazy weird.

    But then you have a guy like the Aurora shooter. He just puts his guns down when the cops show up.

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  6. Add the availability of lethal weapons to violent popular culture, novels, video games, movies etc and it seems to me all you need is a feeble minded non-entity and we have all the ingredients of the recipe for mass murder. It seems to me the only difference between sickos and heroes is that the latter carry out their crimes abroad. Surely this is just America isn't it.... warts and all?

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  7. I agree. It's all the more reason we need better federal gun laws, AA, but our culture in about two-thirds of the states in America make that an uphill climb. Very uphill.

    Thanks to everybody who has commented so far on this touchy issue.

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  8. I know this guy. I grew up with him. There was never any intent to do any of the "plans" "plots", etc, that the media or the fed prosecutor claimed. He went shooting, left a gun in the glovebox of a car, gets popped for a duii a few days later. I don't know what they're referring to as a "sniper's camouflage suit", maybe they mean a ghillie suit, which he does not and never had. All the rifles he had were mostly WWII vintage, one was the M1 Carbine his father carried in Korea. The "bulletproof vest" was an older model flak jacket with no plates. Ive seen it (well, saw it years ago before all this happened. . . ) and it's no more than a 90's era flak jacket that stops no projectiles aside from maybe shotgun pellets, if that. This whole thing was a load of bs.

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