She is something else, a hero at the least.

KILLEEN, Tex. — The police officer who brought down a gunman after he went on a shooting rampage at the Fort Hood Army base here was on the way to have her car repaired when she responded to a police radio report of gunfire at a center where soldiers are processed before being sent overseas, the authorities said Friday.

As she pulled up to the center, the officer, Sgt. Kimberly Denise Munley, spotted the gunman, later identified as Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, brandishing a pistol and chasing a wounded soldier outside the building, said Chuck Medley, the director of emergency services at the base.

Sergeant Munley — a woman with a fierce love of hunting, surfing and other outdoor sports — bolted from her car, yanked her pistol out and shot at Major Hasan. He turned on her and began to fire. She ran toward him, continuing to fire, and both she and Major Hasan went down with several bullet wounds, Mr. Medley said.

Whether Sergeant Munley was solely responsible for taking down Major Hasan or whether he was also hit by gunfire from her partner is unclear, but she was the first to fire at him, the authorities said.

This was kind of neat. An insurance company owns it now. Wonder what they are going to do with it.

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) – A 1965 Volkswagen van stolen 35 years ago in Spokane, Washington, was found by customs agents in a shipping container in the Los Angeles port last month, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection official said.

The blue van, in pristine condition, was bound for Germany along with several vintage Volkswagens, Customs and Border Protection Port Director Todd Hoffman said.

The Arizona company that was shipping the van had no idea the vehicle was stolen from a Spokane auto shop in 1974, Hoffman said.

Haven’t they gone through enough already.

(CNN) — The 12-year-old girl plucked cold, slimy potato peels out of the garbage containers in a village in eastern Poland. When those trash scraps became scarce, she ate clover.

Crumbs and decomposed food sickened Betty Potash Gold and her family members, causing diarrhea and bloody vomiting, as they hid from the Nazis.

Although Gold lived through extreme hunger, mental duress and near-death experiences during the Holocaust, she and other survivors face another peril decades after the war.

“Jewish survivors of World War II who were potentially exposed to the Holocaust were at a higher risk for cancer occurrence later on in life than those not exposed,” concluded a study published in the November issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Intense calorie deprivation, such as what Gold experienced, has long-term effects on survivors, said Dr. Micha Barchana, one of the study authors.

“We know that people who went through the Holocaust suffered severe calorie restriction,” he said. “Calories they were taking in were 200 to 800 in this period.”

Click here for the full story.

Been Hanging out at Jack’s Place reading stuff like:

I should blogroll this guy or at least send him an email saying that I think that his writing is pretty good.

I am looking forward to seeing the next movie. Want to learn more? Click here.

There is a conversation about this topic right here.

Can’t say that I am surprised by this. It is just too bad that such a mean old man has had such a long life. One of those weird quirks, when so many good die young and we are left with people like this guy.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — A handwritten message in a notebook found in the car of the man accused of fatally shooting a Holocaust museum security guard boasted, “You want my weapons — this is how you’ll get them,” an FBI criminal complaint says.
The purpose of the complaint is to establish probable cause for bringing charges against white supremacist James von Brunn, 88, in the shooting death Wednesday of a security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Von Brunn will be charged with a federal count of murder and, if convicted, could face the death penalty, acting U.S. Attorney Channing Phillips said.

The suspect also faces a charge of killing while in possession of a firearm in a federal facility, said Cathy Lanier, chief of the District of Columbia’s Metropolitan Police Department.

Von Brunn remained hospitalized in critical condition Thursday from shots fired by other security guards. The complaint says he was shot in the face and fell backward outside the museum’s front door.

Stephen Tyrone Johns, the security guard who was shot to death, had opened the door for the gunman, who then raised a rifle and killed him, authorities told reporters Thursday.

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