Tag Archives: Eric Smith

News, Politics, Government

Video shows suspect killing Mississippi detective, self at police headquarters

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Authorities have a video from a police interrogation room that shows a murder suspect shooting a detective to death before killing himself with the officer’s gun, a person with knowledge of the investigation said Saturday.

The suspect, Jeremy Powell, was not handcuffed during questioning at the Jackson Police Department on Thursday, the person said on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the ongoing investigation.

Powell overpowered Det. Eric Smith and took his gun, shooting the veteran detective four times before shooting himself in the head inside a third-floor room of the department’s headquarters, the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation said. Other officers heard the shots ring out and rushed to the interview room, but both men were dead.

The AP has asked for the video to be released under open records laws, but have not done so, saying it’s part of their investigation.

Powell, 23, was being questioned about the stabbing death of a man whose body was found Monday near a Jackson street.

Ken Winter, executive director of the Mississippi Association of Chiefs of Police, said it’s not unusual for a suspect to be unrestrained during questioning.

“It depends on the demeanor of the individual at the time. I would assume that the detective had no reason to believe this guy was aggressive or he wouldn’t have been interviewing him in the first place,” said Winter, who spent 36 years in law enforcement as a police chief, a detective and as director of the state crime lab.

Winter also said it’s not uncommon for an officer to be armed during an interrogation.

“I don’t think this detective was doing anything out of the ordinary. Sometimes you can do everything right and it still turn out bad,” Winter said.

Smith, 40, is survived by his wife, Eneke, a sergeant with the Jackson Police Department, and two sons.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News

News, Politics, Government

APNewsBreak: Video shows Miss. police HQ deaths

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A person with knowledge of the investigation of a police officer who was killed by a murder suspect in an interrogation room says the shooting was recorded on video.

The person spoke to The Associated Press on Saturday on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the ongoing investigation. The person also said the suspect, Jeremy Powell, was not handcuffed during the questioning.

The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation says Powell overpowered Det. Eric Smith on Thursday and took his gun. Authorities say Powell shot the veteran detective four times before killing himself.

The AP has asked for the video to be released under open records laws, but authorities have not done so, saying it’s part of their investigation.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News

Articles of Interest

Eric Smith, Detective, And Jeremy Powell, Murder Suspect, Shot And Killed In Police Station

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By The Huffington Post News Editors

JACKSON, Miss. — Stunned police officials in Jackson, Miss., are trying to determine how a suspect was able to shoot and kill a homicide detective inside an interrogation room at police headquarters – and how the suspect himself ended up dead.

Authorities said Det. Eric Smith, a tall, fit investigator and decorated homicide detective who had been with the department since 1995, was gunned down inside an interview room late Thursday afternoon as he was questioning the 23-year-old murder suspect, Jeremy Powell.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at Huffington Post

Articles of Interest

Detective, Suspect Killed at Miss. Police Station

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By Matt Cantor A murder suspect and the detective who was questioning him were both found dead at Jackson, Mississippi’s police headquarters. As detective Eric Smith, 40, interviewed Jeremy Powell, 23, other officers heard gunshots. They entered the room to find the men dead, CNN reports. Police haven’t offered a sequence of events… …read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Newser – Home

News, Politics, Government

Murder suspect shoots Mississippi cop inside police headquarters

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A murder suspect being interviewed at the Jackson, Miss., police headquarters shot a detective Thursday and those who came to investigate the gunfire found both men dead, authorities said.

The suspect, who was not identified, was being questioned on the third floor of the building when the shooting happened, said Police Chief Rebecca Coleman. Police did not release any details on the sequence of what happened but scheduled a news conference for later Thursday night.

The officer was identified as Eric Smith, a homicide detective.

Jackson City Councilman Chokwe Lumumba was in police headquarters with the mayor and said Smith was shot by the suspect. He did not know how the suspect ended up dead.

“I understand there may have been more than one police officer in the room,” Lumumba said outside the police building.

The headquarters was blocked off and surrounded by crime tape. Law enforcement and Jackson city officials rushed to the scene.

City spokesman Chris Mims said the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation will take over the investigation, which is standard procedure.

“We’re asking for everybody’s patience, we will be releasing information as soon as we have it,” he said. “This is an extraordinarily tragic situation.”

At least 30 Jackson Police and Hines County Sheriff’s office cars were haphazardly parked across multiple, major downtown Jackson streets.

Lumumba, who is a lawyer, said Smith is rather new to being a homicide detective and that he met Smith in the late 1990s. The then-officer had testified on some of Lumumba’s cases.

“I had great respect for his work and his integrity,” Lumumba said. He added that Smith’s stepson had played basketball on an Amateur Athletic Union team that Lumumba worked with.

“Eric helped take young men all over the country,” the councilman said. “He’s a real man in every sense of the word.”

Mayor Harvey Johnson, Jr. also addressed the officer’s death.

“Detective Smith was an excellent officer in all respects,” the mayor said. “I want everyone to keep the Smith family in their prayers and in their thoughts.”

Lumumba said that Smith was married and had another son.

A monument outside police headquarters lists 14 officers killed in the line of duty — before today.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News

Linux

Cinnamon proposed to replace GNOME Shell as default DE on Fedora 19

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By finid

It was lobbying by the GNOME devs that made GNOME 3 the default on Fedora, but now it seems that somebody has had enough. That somebody has proposed making the Cinnamon the default desktop environment on Fedora 19.

I don’t blame him.

I’ve always been of the opinion that as far a desktop computing goes, and how people interface or interact with their desktop, that there’s something fundamentally wrong with GNOME Shell. It sits atop beautiful technology, but that UI just doesn’t compute. And the problem is that the GNOME devs are not willing to accept that simple fact.

But if this proposal is accepted, they will lose a major distro and, hopefully, will be forced to rethink the GNOME Shell.

According to Eric Smith, the guy behind this proposal:

The Gnome 3 interface is substantially different that the traditional desktop interfaces on both Linux and Windows. While it is good that there is research into new user interface concepts, many users prefer to have a traditional interface that they are accustomed to. … I’m not trying to start (or continue) a flame war here, so I won’t state any of my own criticisms of Gnome Shell here, but I will observe that a number of very high profile people in the Linux community, such as Linus Torvalds and Alan Cox, have publicly announce that due to problems with Gnome Shell they are switching to a different desktop and/or Linux distribution.

I submit the proposition that it is easier for a user doing a new Fedora install to start with a traditional desktop, and switch to the Gnome Shell if they prefer that, than to start with Gnome Shell and switch to a traditional desktop.

His proposal gets my vote.

Source: FULL ARTICLE at LinuxBSDos