Unlike certain celebrities, who can afford to hire their own bodyguards.
http://www.americanpartisan.com/cols/henry.htm
What One Woman Really Needed
by Lawrence Henry
On the very weekend that "a million" so-called "moms" supposedly "marched" for what was sound-bited as "common-sense gun laws," a young woman from my New Jersey hometown was killed by a sadistic and brutal man. He shot her in the back of the head with a stolen pistol, then killed himself with the same gun.
The paper I write for, the Westfield Leader, ran a front-page photo - incongruous in our peaceful town - of a fully-armed and helmeted SWAT team marching up Central Avenue, not half a mile from my house. The police arrived too late to prevent the crime.
The young woman, Sohayla Massachi, 23, had apparently gotten to the know the man, Christopher Honrath, 24, via the Internet about a year ago. Honrath weighed 300 pounds and got his kicks punching brick walls and other people. A headline in a followup story in the Newark Star-Ledger described him as "a scary young man." He had been arrested six years earlier for
stalking a 15-year-old girl. That girl's family had actually been forced to move the 15-year-old out of the state to get her away from Honrath.
Massachi apparently realized her mistake early, and tried to drop Honrath. But Honrath wouldn't let go.
The events of the day Massachi died present an object lesson in the limits of law enforcement.
Item one: Massachi had obtained a temporary restraining order against Honrath, an order he reportedly violated again and again. The day Massachi died, police told the Star-Ledger, the two were due in court for a hearing on Massachi's petition to make that order final.
Item two: Honrath showed up at the campus of Seton Hall University in South Orange, lassoed Massachi around the throat with a necktie, and dragged her, shrieking, into his car. He drove away with the passenger door swinging open and Massachi's legs trailing outside. A witness to the abduction screamed at Honrath to stop, while another witness begged a campus security
guard to call the police. The security guard, since fired, essentially said, "Not my job," and did nothing but tell the witnesses to go to the South Orange police station.
The witnesses called the police station - giving a clear, concise, frightened account of the abduction, including the license plate number of Honrath's car. A police officer came to one of the witness's homes and took a report.
Item three: My Westfield Leader colleague Paul J. Peyton, writing a followup story, reported that a third witness jumped in a car and followed the Honrath vehicle down South Orange Avenue and onto the Garden State Parkway. That driver called 911 on the way.
"That's when it got ugly," said Westfield Police Lt. Frank Brunelle, quoted in Paul's story. Brunelle said the 911 operator "literally blew the woman off" who made the call.
At his Westfield apartment, Honrath parked, then dragged Massachi, who was still screaming, up the back stairs and inside. Honrath's roommate heard the violence from another part of the two-family house and called the Westfield police. They sent their SWAT team.
Item four: The SWAT team knocked on Honrath's apartment door just in time to hear the gunshots.
At the Leader, I got the assignment of interviewing Sohayla Massachi's former teachers and friends from Westfield High School, from where she had graduated in 1994, to find out what kind of person she was. She was a very nice person indeed. As one of her teachers told me, when he heard the news, his first reaction was, "Aw, Jeez, no, it just couldn't happen."
But it did.
It happened in spite of a restraining order, in spite of Massachi's going to college at a campus with security guards, in spite of repeated reports to police of Honrath's threats to Massachi (in the months before the crime) and of his violent acts (on the dayof the murder itself), in spite of a prompt response by a SWAT team. It happened while, in Washington, a hundred thousand
deluded demonstrators claimed to want to protect children with mandatory trigger locks and gun registration laws. It happened because all the gun laws in the world wouldn't have kept a stolen revolver out of the hands of a borderline psychotic. Nor would - or could, or did - any amount of law have protected the young woman that psycho killed.
Sohayla Massachi, and the witnesses to her abduction, tried everything to foil Christopher Honrath - except the one thing that could have worked.
Sohayla Massachi needed a gun.
http://www.americanpartisan.com/cols/henry.htm
What One Woman Really Needed
by Lawrence Henry
On the very weekend that "a million" so-called "moms" supposedly "marched" for what was sound-bited as "common-sense gun laws," a young woman from my New Jersey hometown was killed by a sadistic and brutal man. He shot her in the back of the head with a stolen pistol, then killed himself with the same gun.
The paper I write for, the Westfield Leader, ran a front-page photo - incongruous in our peaceful town - of a fully-armed and helmeted SWAT team marching up Central Avenue, not half a mile from my house. The police arrived too late to prevent the crime.
The young woman, Sohayla Massachi, 23, had apparently gotten to the know the man, Christopher Honrath, 24, via the Internet about a year ago. Honrath weighed 300 pounds and got his kicks punching brick walls and other people. A headline in a followup story in the Newark Star-Ledger described him as "a scary young man." He had been arrested six years earlier for
stalking a 15-year-old girl. That girl's family had actually been forced to move the 15-year-old out of the state to get her away from Honrath.
Massachi apparently realized her mistake early, and tried to drop Honrath. But Honrath wouldn't let go.
The events of the day Massachi died present an object lesson in the limits of law enforcement.
Item one: Massachi had obtained a temporary restraining order against Honrath, an order he reportedly violated again and again. The day Massachi died, police told the Star-Ledger, the two were due in court for a hearing on Massachi's petition to make that order final.
Item two: Honrath showed up at the campus of Seton Hall University in South Orange, lassoed Massachi around the throat with a necktie, and dragged her, shrieking, into his car. He drove away with the passenger door swinging open and Massachi's legs trailing outside. A witness to the abduction screamed at Honrath to stop, while another witness begged a campus security
guard to call the police. The security guard, since fired, essentially said, "Not my job," and did nothing but tell the witnesses to go to the South Orange police station.
The witnesses called the police station - giving a clear, concise, frightened account of the abduction, including the license plate number of Honrath's car. A police officer came to one of the witness's homes and took a report.
Item three: My Westfield Leader colleague Paul J. Peyton, writing a followup story, reported that a third witness jumped in a car and followed the Honrath vehicle down South Orange Avenue and onto the Garden State Parkway. That driver called 911 on the way.
"That's when it got ugly," said Westfield Police Lt. Frank Brunelle, quoted in Paul's story. Brunelle said the 911 operator "literally blew the woman off" who made the call.
At his Westfield apartment, Honrath parked, then dragged Massachi, who was still screaming, up the back stairs and inside. Honrath's roommate heard the violence from another part of the two-family house and called the Westfield police. They sent their SWAT team.
Item four: The SWAT team knocked on Honrath's apartment door just in time to hear the gunshots.
At the Leader, I got the assignment of interviewing Sohayla Massachi's former teachers and friends from Westfield High School, from where she had graduated in 1994, to find out what kind of person she was. She was a very nice person indeed. As one of her teachers told me, when he heard the news, his first reaction was, "Aw, Jeez, no, it just couldn't happen."
But it did.
It happened in spite of a restraining order, in spite of Massachi's going to college at a campus with security guards, in spite of repeated reports to police of Honrath's threats to Massachi (in the months before the crime) and of his violent acts (on the dayof the murder itself), in spite of a prompt response by a SWAT team. It happened while, in Washington, a hundred thousand
deluded demonstrators claimed to want to protect children with mandatory trigger locks and gun registration laws. It happened because all the gun laws in the world wouldn't have kept a stolen revolver out of the hands of a borderline psychotic. Nor would - or could, or did - any amount of law have protected the young woman that psycho killed.
Sohayla Massachi, and the witnesses to her abduction, tried everything to foil Christopher Honrath - except the one thing that could have worked.
Sohayla Massachi needed a gun.