Nursing home gunman 'had cancer'

Tom Baldwin in Washington and Anne Barrowclough

timesonline.co.uk

March 30, 2009

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This is an article from the United Kingdom.

Carthage, Massachutes--A gunman who shot dead eight people at a North Carolina nursing home had told family members he had been diagnosed with cancer, according to his ex-wife.

Robert Stewart, 45, walked into the Pinelake Health and Rehabilitation Centre in Carthage and opened fire at 10 am on Sunday, killing seven residents and a nurse, and injuring several others including a police officer before he was himself shot and injured.

Authorities would not comment on the motivation for the latest massacre to scar American society, where firearms-related deaths total about 30,000 each year.

But Stewart's ex-wife Sue Griffin said he had recently told relatives he had cancer, was preparing for a long trip and said he was going to "go away".

Ms Griffin, who was married to Stewart for 15 years before they divorced in 2001, said he had been violent during their marriage.

"He did have some violent tendencies from time to time," she said. "I wouldn't put it (the shooting) past him. I hate to say it, but it is true."

Although the couple had not spoken since their divorce, the week before the shooting Stewart made a number of efforts to contact her through family members, she said.

The nursing home, about 60 miles southwest of Raleigh, has 90 beds. It was recently awarded a five-star rating for the care it offers to people with Alzheimer’s disease.

Police said Stewart did not work at the home and was not believed to be related to any of the victims.

One of the residents called her daughter after the gunman stormed into her room and screamed "They're up here shooting, they're up here shooting."

Ellery Chishole told her daughter Beverly McNeill she hid her face in her shirt so she couldn't see Stewart after had pointed his 'deer gun' at her room mate. He left the room without hurting the women, and began shooting down the hallway.

The shooting will inevitably be seized upon by proponents of greater gun control who have already highlighted a spate of recent attacks.

Earlier this month Michael McLendon, 28, shot dead his mother, his grandmother, an uncle, a nephew and a cousin in a rampage that ended ten lives before he killed himself when cornered by police.

In Covina, California, last Christmas, nine people were killed when Bruce Pardo attacked a family party dressed in a Santa Claus suit. Among those dead were his ex-wife and former in-laws.

Every year, over 30,000 Americans die by gunshot, most of them suicides but including at least 10,000 murders. This is twice the number of 4,260 US soldiers killed in six years of the Iraq war.

Britain - which has some of the tightest firearms laws in the world - had just 50 deaths through gun crime in 2005-06, the last year for which figures are available. Of course Britian is approxiamately the size of Alabama with a population of about 60 million, vs US with a population of over 300 million. A better comparison would be the US vs statistics for the European Union.

Supporters of the so-called "Second Amendment" right to bear arms have said incidents such as the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre when Cho Seung Hui killed 32 people would have been prevented if students had been carrying their own weapons.

President Obama, wary of taking on powerful vested interests like the National Rifle Association, has said he opposes a crack-down on gun ownership. Asked yesterdaywhether he was concerned that 90 per cent of the weapons used in Mexico's drugs war were smuggled in from the US, he told CBS's Face the Nation programme: “I think the main thing we need is better enforcement".

Although both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Attorney General Eric Holder have recently suggested they are interested in reintroducing a ban on assault weapons which the Bush Administration allowed to expire, dozens of Democratic Congressmen have pledged to oppose any such legislation.