In the California Division 1AA Southern Section championship, Mater Dei led by three with seconds to play when Etiwanda’s Evan Jenkins attempted a three-point shot. Mater Dei’s Eli Stalzer clearly raked him across the arm.
Jenkins would have had to hit three free throws to tie the game, but still, what a shame. The refs really blew that one.
A jury found Mark Becker guilty of murder in the shooting of Ed Thomas, who was a well-known high school football coach in Iowa.
From ESPN.com:
Becker, 24, had explained to psychiatrists that after months of torment, he shot Thomas at least six times in the makeshift high school weight room, then kicked his body before walking away.
Jurors deliberated more than 24 hours over five days before convicting Becker of first-degree murder, rejecting his plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. The guilty verdict carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison.
Defense psychiatrist Phillip Resnick, of Cleveland, said Becker believed Satan had possessed Thomas and that he was doing the community a favor — and freeing Parkersburg’s children — by killing the coach.
Resnick and others who interviewed Becker about his mental status said Becker suffered from such intense delusions that he incorrectly believed Thomas and the members of Becker’s old football team were sexually assaulting him, and that Thomas was trying to make Becker into a “sex slave.”
Maryland-based psychiatrist Michael Spodak, testifying for the prosecution, agreed Becker suffered from severe mental problems, including paranoid schizophrenia, but said he still understood right and wrong.
Spodak said Becker took rational measures to avoid detection on the morning of the shooting: He hid his gun while he was driving, told passersby that he was searching for Thomas in order to volunteer for the city’s tornado relief efforts, and made it a point to avoid shooting the teenagers in the weight room.
Although I have my own take on this subject, I’ll leave psychological evaluations to the professionals. Draw your own conclusions as to whether or not you think this conviction was right.
I will note, however, that Todd Thomas, the son of Ed Thomas, said it best after the trial when he stated that there are no winners here. One man lost his life, while the other will watch the rest of his go by from a prison cell. It’s a sad, unfortunate situation.
Photo from fOTOGLIF
Here’s a good finish to a New Jersey boys basketball game. I’m trying to figure out how this has 44 K hits on YouTube. Maybe it’s the 15 white boys running around to a rap song at the end, I don’t know…
Quoting the YouTube description:
River Dell vs. Tenalfy [sic] Varsity boys basketball
River Dell Down the entire game
4th qtr. 5.40 to go RD down 12
RIGHT NOW
4th qtr. 30 seconds to go RD down 2 with ball
An Iowa high school football coach who helped get current pro players Casey Wiegmann, Jared DeVries, Brad Meester and Aaron Kampman to the NFL was shot and killed in the weight room of the school on Wednesday morning by a former player.
Ed Thomas, who has produced four NFL linemen as the football coach at tiny Aplington-Parkersburg High, was shot and killed Wednesday inside the school’s weight room, authorities said.
The gunman, identified by authorities as 24-year-old Mark Becker, shot Thomas multiple times just before 8 a.m. local time, authorities said. About 50 students were in the school, including several in the weight room, at the time. School was not in session, and no one else was injured in the attack.
Thomas, the 2005 NFL High School Football Coach of the Year, was airlifted to Covenant Medical Center in Waterloo, where he died, his family said in a statement. He was 58.
Becker, a former student and football player at the school, was arrested shortly after the shooting and charged with first-degree murder, authorities said. He is being held in Butler County jail.
“No kids were hurt, we’re thankful for that,” superintendent Jon Thompson told KOEL radio. “They did witness this and so we have counselors at the site to talk with the kids.”
Thomas made national headlines last year when he insisted that the high school’s football field, named in his honor, be rebuilt as a way to help restore community pride in Parkersburg after it was hit by a powerful tornado in May 2008 that killed six people and destroyed the high school.
“A lot of people know coach Thomas for his success as a football coach, but a lot of people here locally know him as a person, as a dad and grandfather, and that’s where our thoughts are right now, with Coach Thomas,” Thompson said.
It’s sad that a man who obviously had such an impact on so many lives was lost this way. Thankfully no students were harmed, but a man lost his life for absolutely no reason.
My heart goes out to Thomas’ family.
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