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Homicide at Walmart in Florida
You are here: /commentary/homicide-at-walmart-in-florida/2023-05-07
The word homicide just means someone killed someone else. It doesn't imply guilt. It's much like using the word decedent which means a person who is dead or the person who died. Both the word homicide and decedent are neutral and unbiased which is a grammatical and vocabulary requirement in court proceedings.
The word murder on the other hand carries a presumption of guilt. It means the unlawful and premeditated killing of a human by another human according to Bing dictionaries. Premeditation means the homicide was planned beforehand whereas murder traditionally means a grotesque homicide like murdering someone with an ax in self defense because they kept attacking and attacking with a knife or metal pipe.
Let's examine the victim (this is potentially illegal or unethical. Hotlinking is copyright theft). Will update with a stock photo or licensed image later, this is urgent for many people.
Traditionally, premeditated murder applied to martial artists doing yoga or feng shui before embarking on a journey to obliterate their opponents, often outside the battlefield and often with graphic descriptions to others beforehand. Today, pre-meditated just means preplanned. Much like conspiracy means planning.
Most charges in the USA are for homicide, first the courts establish who committed the homicide. If they can do that, the investigator or prosecutor must then decide if they feel the homicide was illegal or carries a penalty. They must bring another charge which is usually premeditated homicide, assault leading to homicide (unintentional homicide or manslaughter) or homicide during the commission of a crime for furtherance of criminal gains. It can be various charges. The law is quite extensive in this regard. To simplify:
* Homicide in and of itself, is not a crime.
* Homicide done as a crime usually has other factors attached to it.
* Homicide in self defense is never a crime.
In the photos, both people are black, both people have tattoos. In many parts of the world, this would be a mutual combat determination and the case would be closed. Developed and developing nations tend not to keep people involved in mutual combat in prison or jail unless the conflict spills over to affect those non involved. Non involved as in had violence committed against them, not as in they were frightened by what they saw.
As with Travon Martin, the use of his boyhood picture creates empathy towards the decedent and creates biased against the defendant. The picture of Trayvon in the black shirt is most neutral as the pictures of him smoking and taking selfies with a gun are also inappropriate for court proceedings.
In the Florida Walmart incident 2023, the picture shows a neutral face and it is honest about the arm tattoo. The inclusion of the decedents young infant son creates bias however. Things like this should never be done in court and it should not be done by the media. This can create an inadvertent jury bias. The pictures should always show a neutral photo or an image from the actual incident.
Lets continue.
The way I learned of the story was someone alerted me that there was a shooting at the Walmart, and they were very upset. I looked up the incident and it was in Florida. We talked about it and they calmed down a bit but were still upset about something like that happening at Walmart, a place where everyone shops and goes to often. Statements like this also create bias however and take the focus away from the actual facts of the incident.
After they left, I re-examined the headlines and made two phone calls, one to a local news agency and one to the local sheriff at the place of incident.
This are the findings I made from the news articles alone:
Deadly Lauderdale Lakes Walmart shooting involved customer trying to stop fight between 2 workers by CBS News Miami
A better headline because of jury selection, court procedure and community safety would have been:
Walmart shooting involved a customer and 2 workers, resulted in homicide
Unbiased part starts on paragraph 7
* Employee (e1) went to Walmart on day off to speak with another employee (e2).
* The two began arguing, the dispute turned physical.
* Employee 1 (e1) dropped a gun, Employee 2 (e2) had a cellphone that e1 tried to take.
* Customer 1 (c1) intervened in the incident and began physically fighting with e1.
* E1 retrieved the gun and shot c1, who was fighting with him, several times.
* E1 left the store.
* E2 was hurt/injured. (p3)
* Walmart suspended E1 and is going through procedures to fire E1. (p16)
The rest of the story should not be released until during the court proceedings and after jury selection. For example, witness statements once trial starts and no one is to talk about the cases with jurors at home, work or anywhere outside the courtroom. Even after the proceedings, there is an appeals process.
It can also take up to 72 hours for the person accused of a crime to have their arraignment. It can then take a few days to several months before preliminary trial. Discovery is the collecting of statements and evidence and then there is the actual trial. In the US, a trial should be conducted quickly and professionally but not rushed or negligently.
The 2nd story I read was from Global News, the headline makes it appear E1 is a hero but the story is very biased towards C1 and against E1.
Florida Walmart employee shoots, kills customer trying to break up fight
A better headline would be:
Customer Killed by Walmart employee in Florida.
The story is very biased, which I'll outline later, but I picked up additional details.
* E1 threw E2 on the floor and started pounding E2.
* C1 was shot in the chest, possibly the back and legs (lower extremities).
I add possibly the back because of entrance/exit wounds can be confusing and its unclear where the information came from.
At this point I called the news and asked if they were going to publish the actual video. Video of shootings are all over the internet, usually hosted on YouTube. I also called the Sheriff to ask the same question.
The point of a news story is for a few reasons:
* Events, outings and weather reports.
* Notice of elections and similar government items.
* Alert locals of any dangers (storms, floods, tornados, riots, looting, natural disasters) so they can prepare or seek safety.
* For crimes or potential crimes, should be factual and unbiased because of jury selection and court procedures. Alerts the locals there might be a court case coming up.
This was all being discussed pre-covid. Technology, Civil Rights, shortage of tech workers in government, what to do about it?
Freedom of the Press includes the right to receive timely information. e.g. "free" 10 o'clock news and 35¢ news papers.
One of the problems is a lot of people in the USA think the news is all satire or that they tell stories like little kids. This is not necessarily true and has been addressed with the BBC, which is in London and not the USA and with several newspaper and news broadcasters in the USA.
Let's examine how the news comes off in this story. The above summary is a professional report can be brought to court to hand to a potential juror as a newspaper clipping during jury selection, none of the published stories can be presented to jurors as is and lets look at the concept of beyond a reasonable doubt which is why videos are more popular in court instead of witness testimony alone, which will often be counted as hearsay pending no evidence.
As is, the articles presume guilt and create bias. With a professional report, the jurors would have three things to look at; the newspaper clipping, the video, the legislation. Possibly a dictionary or thesaurus. They would then review testimony in court, sometimes video/audio statements today or through remote webcam, arguments for defense and prosecutor and make a decision.
With video recordings, the police report and witness statements sometimes become unnecessary but can still be helpful to describe things outside the area of the video or things that were unclear in the video such as what led up to the police responding to the incident. Grainy video and an incident blocked or partially blocked during recording can create doubt. Whether a recording was clear and the validity of witness statements depends on each case, the quality of the recording, the type of incident, and the education level and communication skills of the people at the place of incident.
Global News - employee shoots, kills customer trying to break up fight
What the hell kind of headline is this? it sounds like two customers where fighting and the employee shot one of them. Or, like a customer was breaking up a fight and got shot by an employee. Or, like the employee tried to break up a fight and ended up shooting someone. Its very unclear.
Lots of sensationalism, lots of attention grabbing, makes the employee look like a hero if one of them had a knife or a brass knuckle or something dangerous.
Now lets read the story, which is bait and switch style. In summary:
* Picture of decedent holding infant son
* Off duty Walmart employee killed a good samaritan
* Tironie Sterling was his name, age 22
* Had a dispute with another Walmart employee
* Threw her on the ground and pummeled her
* An initial argument escalated to a physical fight
* A male customer witness, came over to fight for the woman in her aid
* Tironie shot him; several times, in the chest, back and legs (lower extremities)
* There were 10 shell casing
* The victims name was not released. Its Thierry Bastien age 41.
* He was airlifted to a hospital, where he died.
* Tironie was arrested hours later, because he fled the shooting.
* He was charged with 1st degree murder and is behind bars. Awaiting trial, denied bail.
* Theirry's girlfriend was with him that day and their 4 month old child.
* The baby witnessed the murder, the fathers dying breaths.
* The mama layed next to him and whispered, stay with me. Her name is Makia Ford.
* Theirry's girlfriend and cousin where on NBC6 and 7News Miami, they did interviews.
* Theirry went out a hero, good person, dedicated to his family.
* No one was surprised Theirry stepped in to help a person in need.
* There was already $12k raised for his funeral on GoFundMe.
* Senseless violence should not be tolerated, everyone's heartbroken.
* He intervened and died of his injuries.
* Tironie's been suspended from work, Walmart trying terminate his employment.
WTF?! or, is it just me?
Obviously this part of the story is for reviewing jury profiles after they read just the facts and recounted the facts as they understood them. This would be presented as a witness statement, but did the witness have a chance to look at the video or are they just repeating what they heard or did they actually see all of this?
Based on these two stories I called and asked the news and sheriff to publish the video. People have filters these days on their internet so people that watch stories like this want to see the surveillance footage (video).
My initial thoughts from the CBS story where:
* Dude walks into Walmart
* Arguing with Co-Worker
* Drops a gun
* Co-worker has a cell phone that dude pulls out of co-workers hands
* Someone runs over to intervene, struggles with dude
* Dude picks up the gun dropped earlier, shoots, leaves Walmart unharmed
* Police arrest dude hours later
My initial thoughts were:
* Did dude drop the gun as they were arguing, possibly because it was tucked in the waistband?
* Did co-worker pull out the cell phone after dude had dropped the gun or did co-worker have the cell phone out during the whole argument?
So I went to read more stories. There were only 3 stories total which were CBS, Global News and SunSentinel. SunSentinel which was about the length of a tweet and is now behind a paywall, it first loads with pictures and the stories a bit longer now but then the paywall activates.
Made the phone calls, re-read the two stories and explained my confusion and left it alone.
Now, a few days later; there are lots of stories and publishers but they all have similar issues with the headlines:
Florida Walmart worker charged with murdering customer by New York Post
First, most people don't know the difference between the New York Post, the New Yorker, Politico or The Onion and whether the four publications are actual news or satire. The headline can be taken as Walmart Employee Humiliated a Customer and got Written Up by their Supervisor by contemporary news readers and internet browsers. This was one of the problems BBC was having with its news publications. They now have BBC One and BBC World News as serious journalistic broadcasts and local serious news. And they have a separate BBC (undisclosed to prevent confusion) on a comedy segment to broadcast its satire which is insanely popular in the UK and abroad. Even if considered a bit macabre by some.
Other headlines that can also be taken with double entendre :
Florida Walmart employee shoots, kills customer by Global News
Gunman Arrested After Customer Killed Shooting Inside Lauderdale by Florida6
A man has died after a shooting inside a Walmart at Lauderdale Lakes (search engine excerpt)
These two could be taken as of a sexual nature, depending on news feed or publication type. For example, it can come up alongside Reddit or 4Chan and refer to hooking up with a customer. The one by GlobalNews might also come up next to or in a gaming feed and be taken as a video game match on the Walmart game demo kiosk.
Florida Walmart employee accused of murdering a customer by MSN News
An off-duty Florida Walmart worker was arrested on charges
And then you see some more serious posts trying to call attention to the incident. These posts use less of the popular culture slang that can be taken with double entendre and are written in a more square writing style so people understand its an actual and serious incident:
Walmart employee fatally shoots customer, investigators say by Yahoo!News
An off-duty Walmart employee fatally shot a customer who tried to help a female employee who had gotten into a fight
Walmart customer killed trying to break up altercation between 2 employees, Broward Sheriff's Office by WPTV 5
A Walmart shopper was shot and killed when he tried to break up a fight between two employees
Customer killed in shooting inside Florida Walmart by WSB-TV
Officials say the shooting happened after some kind of argument between an off-duty employee and a woman working at the store
Florida Walmart customer killed trying to break up fight by Scripps News
A man was shot at a Florida Walmart when he allegedly tried to protect a female employee
Walmart customer killed trying to stop fight between 2 employees by WCPO Cincinnati
A Walmart shopper was shot and killed when he tried to break up a fight between two employees of a store in South Florida.
Note that ending a sentence with "says" can make people laugh at the notion of one person dictating how things will go or conjure images of a mafia clown putting a hit on someone. This is due to memes and other publications poking fun of gangster culture in the USA. However, many people will occasionally overlook that or are not yet aware of the memes and jokes about the government worker mafia hitman.
Why is this important to me or why am I writing about this issue?
The specific incident just came up in my feed and I was alerted to it in person by someone I know who learned about it elsewhere and was distressed about the situation. The larger issue of media accuracy, press freedoms, professional ethics and responsibilities and the use of news reports for community planning, court procedures and police response planning is a long term issue that's been in discussion since about 2015.
I normally worked in IT before Covid and had been asked about working in different industries besides Manufacturing, Water Management, Startup Prototypes and Website Management for those without a Webmaster. The industries I've been approached about are Medical, FinTech, Large Retail and initially media and entertainment but later they decided if I'd be interested in Newspapers and News Broadcasters. Then Covid happened. I explored Warehousing, Construction and Food Service during Covid as well. I find newspapers and news broadcasters interesting and explored the US Constitution and Press Freedoms extensively during Covid in addition to journalist protections and implementation of lawful use of technology in the news room.
Now that Covid is over it's business as usual or back to normal for many people and that includes news publishing and broadcasting which is expected to go more high tech and be more professional (as of pre-covid). I'm not sure if I'll be able to find any more IT Projects or a long term single job employer anymore due to the career gap but wanted to comment on what we were all talking about pre-covid anyways.
* Much of IT is covered by professional ethics, requires licensing and insurance.
* Hacking is something we all did as kids. Its called breaking and entering now or breaching private property.
* IT pays very well. If most people made $12 to $15 and most of your friends made $15-$25 would you knock over a liquor store?
* SEO manipulation is hacking, its fraud. It can result in various other crimes and business violations. It can lead to a defamation claim from your client or employer or the industry where you misplaced content.
* Competing for rankings when there are 500 sites and only 30 spots on the top 3 pages is not considered hacking when content is relevant.
* SEO content should always be relevant and not make use of bait and switch, eg SEO for trendy word on car paint but site sells asparagus and garlic.
* Many business processes are confidential. The search engines publish their algorithms to professional journals for peer review regularly. SEO shops, agencies, firms or offices should develop their techniques based on the published algorithms not by hitchhiking off a buzzword.
As it relates to this story and the relevant content there are a few things that are of issue:
* It relates to a crime and ongoing/pending investigation.
* The stories can skew jury opinion resulting in a mistrial or case dismissed.
* The stories and excerpts can be introduced to the courtroom for comparison to actual court statements.
* Canonical links. URLs/URIs for major publications should not be constantly changing and the first and original source should receive attribution (this is being done now already). More updates pending (e.g. original source is a deleted tweet or blog post, licensed for pay).
* 301 redirects and 404 messages. (Should updates to stories 301 redirect or link to new story).
* Updates to content, especially for content that may be used in court procedures. Content is usually hashed which presents a problem for JavaScript generated content on page. A content section on a publication covering a crime should not change, it is a snapshot.
* Licensing and payment for content posted elsewhere, such as embedded on a personal blog or corporate website.
* Licensing of images, video and audio for repost on a personal blog or corporate website.
* Terms to create links between content.
* Professional writing in news stories.
* Selling pictures, videos or short articles to news (who might get funding from a tax payer fund for news content).
There are also questions about
* Changing and updating content as the story progresses. How to do this without affecting the content hash.
* Tracking changes and reviewing all content for a story someone is following. For example CBS Miami released 2 stories on 2 different days, how to find all of them when the trial begins?
Sample Links in Search Engine as of 5/7/23
CBS News Published May 3rd
https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/large-police-presence-at-broward-walmart-for-possible-shooting-investigation/
CBS News Published May 4th
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/walmart-shooting-florida-employee-tironie-sterling-kills-customer-fight-inside-store-officials-say/
Global News Published "Friday" "May 5th"
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/florida-walmart-employee-shoots-kills-customer-trying-to-break-up-fight/ar-AA1aNeim
WSB-TV Published May 3rd
https://www.wsbtv.com/news/trending/customer-killed-shooting-inside-florida-walmart/4L7FFUVAXVFQXJU5UTWWKTDXI4/
WPTV5 Published May 3rd
https://www.wptv.com/news/state/broward/walmart-customer-killed-trying-to-break-up-altercation-between-2-employees-broward-sheriffs-office-says
WPLC7 Published May 3rd
https://www.kplctv.com/2023/05/03/walmart-employee-fatally-shoots-customer-florida-investigators-say/
The New York Post on May 4
https://nypost.com/2023/05/04/walmart-worker-tironie-sterling-charged-in-deadly-shooting/
The Sun Sentinel PayWall (remove brackets around www)
https://[www].sun-sentinel.com/2023/05/03/walmart-employee-fatally-shot-customer-after-he-intervened-during-fight-with-female-coworker/
Scripps News Published by Microsoft News on May 3rd
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/florida-walmart-customer-killed-trying-to-break-up-fight/vi-AA1aHWof
WCPO Cincinnati
https://www.wcpo.com/news/national/walmart-customer-killed-trying-to-stop-fight-between-2-employees-police-say
Florida6
https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/man-dies-after-shooting-inside-lauderdale-lakes-walmart/3026374/
Wesh Orlando on MSN News
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/florida-walmart-employee-accused-of-murdering-customer/ar-AA1aH4Vz
WPTV5
https://www.wptv.com/news/state/broward/walmart-customer-killed-trying-to-break-up-altercation-between-2-employees-broward-sheriffs-office-says
Yahoo!News
https://news.yahoo.com/walmart-employee-fatally-shoots-customer-152538101.html
Traditionally, premeditated murder applied to martial artists doing yoga or feng shui before embarking on a journey to obliterate their opponents, often outside the battlefield and often with graphic descriptions to others beforehand. Today, pre-meditated just means preplanned. Much like conspiracy means planning.
Most charges in the USA are for homicide, first the courts establish who committed the homicide. If they can do that, the investigator or prosecutor must then decide if they feel the homicide was illegal or carries a penalty. They must bring another charge which is usually premeditated homicide, assault leading to homicide (unintentional homicide or manslaughter) or homicide during the commission of a crime for furtherance of criminal gains. It can be various charges. The law is quite extensive in this regard. To simplify:
* Homicide in and of itself, is not a crime.
* Homicide done as a crime usually has other factors attached to it.
* Homicide in self defense is never a crime.
In the photos, both people are black, both people have tattoos. In many parts of the world, this would be a mutual combat determination and the case would be closed. Developed and developing nations tend not to keep people involved in mutual combat in prison or jail unless the conflict spills over to affect those non involved. Non involved as in had violence committed against them, not as in they were frightened by what they saw.
As with Travon Martin, the use of his boyhood picture creates empathy towards the decedent and creates biased against the defendant. The picture of Trayvon in the black shirt is most neutral as the pictures of him smoking and taking selfies with a gun are also inappropriate for court proceedings.
In the Florida Walmart incident 2023, the picture shows a neutral face and it is honest about the arm tattoo. The inclusion of the decedents young infant son creates bias however. Things like this should never be done in court and it should not be done by the media. This can create an inadvertent jury bias. The pictures should always show a neutral photo or an image from the actual incident.
Lets continue.
The way I learned of the story was someone alerted me that there was a shooting at the Walmart, and they were very upset. I looked up the incident and it was in Florida. We talked about it and they calmed down a bit but were still upset about something like that happening at Walmart, a place where everyone shops and goes to often. Statements like this also create bias however and take the focus away from the actual facts of the incident.
After they left, I re-examined the headlines and made two phone calls, one to a local news agency and one to the local sheriff at the place of incident.
This are the findings I made from the news articles alone:
Deadly Lauderdale Lakes Walmart shooting involved customer trying to stop fight between 2 workers by CBS News Miami
A better headline because of jury selection, court procedure and community safety would have been:
Walmart shooting involved a customer and 2 workers, resulted in homicide
Unbiased part starts on paragraph 7
* Employee (e1) went to Walmart on day off to speak with another employee (e2).
* The two began arguing, the dispute turned physical.
* Employee 1 (e1) dropped a gun, Employee 2 (e2) had a cellphone that e1 tried to take.
* Customer 1 (c1) intervened in the incident and began physically fighting with e1.
* E1 retrieved the gun and shot c1, who was fighting with him, several times.
* E1 left the store.
* E2 was hurt/injured. (p3)
* Walmart suspended E1 and is going through procedures to fire E1. (p16)
The rest of the story should not be released until during the court proceedings and after jury selection. For example, witness statements once trial starts and no one is to talk about the cases with jurors at home, work or anywhere outside the courtroom. Even after the proceedings, there is an appeals process.
It can also take up to 72 hours for the person accused of a crime to have their arraignment. It can then take a few days to several months before preliminary trial. Discovery is the collecting of statements and evidence and then there is the actual trial. In the US, a trial should be conducted quickly and professionally but not rushed or negligently.
The 2nd story I read was from Global News, the headline makes it appear E1 is a hero but the story is very biased towards C1 and against E1.
Florida Walmart employee shoots, kills customer trying to break up fight
A better headline would be:
Customer Killed by Walmart employee in Florida.
The story is very biased, which I'll outline later, but I picked up additional details.
* E1 threw E2 on the floor and started pounding E2.
* C1 was shot in the chest, possibly the back and legs (lower extremities).
I add possibly the back because of entrance/exit wounds can be confusing and its unclear where the information came from.
At this point I called the news and asked if they were going to publish the actual video. Video of shootings are all over the internet, usually hosted on YouTube. I also called the Sheriff to ask the same question.
The point of a news story is for a few reasons:
* Events, outings and weather reports.
* Notice of elections and similar government items.
* Alert locals of any dangers (storms, floods, tornados, riots, looting, natural disasters) so they can prepare or seek safety.
* For crimes or potential crimes, should be factual and unbiased because of jury selection and court procedures. Alerts the locals there might be a court case coming up.
This was all being discussed pre-covid. Technology, Civil Rights, shortage of tech workers in government, what to do about it?
Freedom of the Press includes the right to receive timely information. e.g. "free" 10 o'clock news and 35¢ news papers.
One of the problems is a lot of people in the USA think the news is all satire or that they tell stories like little kids. This is not necessarily true and has been addressed with the BBC, which is in London and not the USA and with several newspaper and news broadcasters in the USA.
Let's examine how the news comes off in this story. The above summary is a professional report can be brought to court to hand to a potential juror as a newspaper clipping during jury selection, none of the published stories can be presented to jurors as is and lets look at the concept of beyond a reasonable doubt which is why videos are more popular in court instead of witness testimony alone, which will often be counted as hearsay pending no evidence.
As is, the articles presume guilt and create bias. With a professional report, the jurors would have three things to look at; the newspaper clipping, the video, the legislation. Possibly a dictionary or thesaurus. They would then review testimony in court, sometimes video/audio statements today or through remote webcam, arguments for defense and prosecutor and make a decision.
With video recordings, the police report and witness statements sometimes become unnecessary but can still be helpful to describe things outside the area of the video or things that were unclear in the video such as what led up to the police responding to the incident. Grainy video and an incident blocked or partially blocked during recording can create doubt. Whether a recording was clear and the validity of witness statements depends on each case, the quality of the recording, the type of incident, and the education level and communication skills of the people at the place of incident.
Global News - employee shoots, kills customer trying to break up fight
What the hell kind of headline is this? it sounds like two customers where fighting and the employee shot one of them. Or, like a customer was breaking up a fight and got shot by an employee. Or, like the employee tried to break up a fight and ended up shooting someone. Its very unclear.
Lots of sensationalism, lots of attention grabbing, makes the employee look like a hero if one of them had a knife or a brass knuckle or something dangerous.
Now lets read the story, which is bait and switch style. In summary:
* Picture of decedent holding infant son
* Off duty Walmart employee killed a good samaritan
* Tironie Sterling was his name, age 22
* Had a dispute with another Walmart employee
* Threw her on the ground and pummeled her
* An initial argument escalated to a physical fight
* A male customer witness, came over to fight for the woman in her aid
* Tironie shot him; several times, in the chest, back and legs (lower extremities)
* There were 10 shell casing
* The victims name was not released. Its Thierry Bastien age 41.
* He was airlifted to a hospital, where he died.
* Tironie was arrested hours later, because he fled the shooting.
* He was charged with 1st degree murder and is behind bars. Awaiting trial, denied bail.
* Theirry's girlfriend was with him that day and their 4 month old child.
* The baby witnessed the murder, the fathers dying breaths.
* The mama layed next to him and whispered, stay with me. Her name is Makia Ford.
* Theirry's girlfriend and cousin where on NBC6 and 7News Miami, they did interviews.
* Theirry went out a hero, good person, dedicated to his family.
* No one was surprised Theirry stepped in to help a person in need.
* There was already $12k raised for his funeral on GoFundMe.
* Senseless violence should not be tolerated, everyone's heartbroken.
* He intervened and died of his injuries.
* Tironie's been suspended from work, Walmart trying terminate his employment.
WTF?! or, is it just me?
Obviously this part of the story is for reviewing jury profiles after they read just the facts and recounted the facts as they understood them. This would be presented as a witness statement, but did the witness have a chance to look at the video or are they just repeating what they heard or did they actually see all of this?
Based on these two stories I called and asked the news and sheriff to publish the video. People have filters these days on their internet so people that watch stories like this want to see the surveillance footage (video).
My initial thoughts from the CBS story where:
* Dude walks into Walmart
* Arguing with Co-Worker
* Drops a gun
* Co-worker has a cell phone that dude pulls out of co-workers hands
* Someone runs over to intervene, struggles with dude
* Dude picks up the gun dropped earlier, shoots, leaves Walmart unharmed
* Police arrest dude hours later
My initial thoughts were:
* Did dude drop the gun as they were arguing, possibly because it was tucked in the waistband?
* Did co-worker pull out the cell phone after dude had dropped the gun or did co-worker have the cell phone out during the whole argument?
So I went to read more stories. There were only 3 stories total which were CBS, Global News and SunSentinel. SunSentinel which was about the length of a tweet and is now behind a paywall, it first loads with pictures and the stories a bit longer now but then the paywall activates.
Made the phone calls, re-read the two stories and explained my confusion and left it alone.
Now, a few days later; there are lots of stories and publishers but they all have similar issues with the headlines:
Florida Walmart worker charged with murdering customer by New York Post
First, most people don't know the difference between the New York Post, the New Yorker, Politico or The Onion and whether the four publications are actual news or satire. The headline can be taken as Walmart Employee Humiliated a Customer and got Written Up by their Supervisor by contemporary news readers and internet browsers. This was one of the problems BBC was having with its news publications. They now have BBC One and BBC World News as serious journalistic broadcasts and local serious news. And they have a separate BBC (undisclosed to prevent confusion) on a comedy segment to broadcast its satire which is insanely popular in the UK and abroad. Even if considered a bit macabre by some.
Other headlines that can also be taken with double entendre :
Florida Walmart employee shoots, kills customer by Global News
Gunman Arrested After Customer Killed Shooting Inside Lauderdale by Florida6
A man has died after a shooting inside a Walmart at Lauderdale Lakes (search engine excerpt)
These two could be taken as of a sexual nature, depending on news feed or publication type. For example, it can come up alongside Reddit or 4Chan and refer to hooking up with a customer. The one by GlobalNews might also come up next to or in a gaming feed and be taken as a video game match on the Walmart game demo kiosk.
Florida Walmart employee accused of murdering a customer by MSN News
An off-duty Florida Walmart worker was arrested on charges
And then you see some more serious posts trying to call attention to the incident. These posts use less of the popular culture slang that can be taken with double entendre and are written in a more square writing style so people understand its an actual and serious incident:
Walmart employee fatally shoots customer, investigators say by Yahoo!News
An off-duty Walmart employee fatally shot a customer who tried to help a female employee who had gotten into a fight
Walmart customer killed trying to break up altercation between 2 employees, Broward Sheriff's Office by WPTV 5
A Walmart shopper was shot and killed when he tried to break up a fight between two employees
Customer killed in shooting inside Florida Walmart by WSB-TV
Officials say the shooting happened after some kind of argument between an off-duty employee and a woman working at the store
Florida Walmart customer killed trying to break up fight by Scripps News
A man was shot at a Florida Walmart when he allegedly tried to protect a female employee
Walmart customer killed trying to stop fight between 2 employees by WCPO Cincinnati
A Walmart shopper was shot and killed when he tried to break up a fight between two employees of a store in South Florida.
Note that ending a sentence with "says" can make people laugh at the notion of one person dictating how things will go or conjure images of a mafia clown putting a hit on someone. This is due to memes and other publications poking fun of gangster culture in the USA. However, many people will occasionally overlook that or are not yet aware of the memes and jokes about the government worker mafia hitman.
Why is this important to me or why am I writing about this issue?
The specific incident just came up in my feed and I was alerted to it in person by someone I know who learned about it elsewhere and was distressed about the situation. The larger issue of media accuracy, press freedoms, professional ethics and responsibilities and the use of news reports for community planning, court procedures and police response planning is a long term issue that's been in discussion since about 2015.
I normally worked in IT before Covid and had been asked about working in different industries besides Manufacturing, Water Management, Startup Prototypes and Website Management for those without a Webmaster. The industries I've been approached about are Medical, FinTech, Large Retail and initially media and entertainment but later they decided if I'd be interested in Newspapers and News Broadcasters. Then Covid happened. I explored Warehousing, Construction and Food Service during Covid as well. I find newspapers and news broadcasters interesting and explored the US Constitution and Press Freedoms extensively during Covid in addition to journalist protections and implementation of lawful use of technology in the news room.
Now that Covid is over it's business as usual or back to normal for many people and that includes news publishing and broadcasting which is expected to go more high tech and be more professional (as of pre-covid). I'm not sure if I'll be able to find any more IT Projects or a long term single job employer anymore due to the career gap but wanted to comment on what we were all talking about pre-covid anyways.
* Much of IT is covered by professional ethics, requires licensing and insurance.
* Hacking is something we all did as kids. Its called breaking and entering now or breaching private property.
* IT pays very well. If most people made $12 to $15 and most of your friends made $15-$25 would you knock over a liquor store?
* SEO manipulation is hacking, its fraud. It can result in various other crimes and business violations. It can lead to a defamation claim from your client or employer or the industry where you misplaced content.
* Competing for rankings when there are 500 sites and only 30 spots on the top 3 pages is not considered hacking when content is relevant.
* SEO content should always be relevant and not make use of bait and switch, eg SEO for trendy word on car paint but site sells asparagus and garlic.
* Many business processes are confidential. The search engines publish their algorithms to professional journals for peer review regularly. SEO shops, agencies, firms or offices should develop their techniques based on the published algorithms not by hitchhiking off a buzzword.
As it relates to this story and the relevant content there are a few things that are of issue:
* It relates to a crime and ongoing/pending investigation.
* The stories can skew jury opinion resulting in a mistrial or case dismissed.
* The stories and excerpts can be introduced to the courtroom for comparison to actual court statements.
* Canonical links. URLs/URIs for major publications should not be constantly changing and the first and original source should receive attribution (this is being done now already). More updates pending (e.g. original source is a deleted tweet or blog post, licensed for pay).
* 301 redirects and 404 messages. (Should updates to stories 301 redirect or link to new story).
* Updates to content, especially for content that may be used in court procedures. Content is usually hashed which presents a problem for JavaScript generated content on page. A content section on a publication covering a crime should not change, it is a snapshot.
* Licensing and payment for content posted elsewhere, such as embedded on a personal blog or corporate website.
* Licensing of images, video and audio for repost on a personal blog or corporate website.
* Terms to create links between content.
* Professional writing in news stories.
* Selling pictures, videos or short articles to news (who might get funding from a tax payer fund for news content).
There are also questions about
* Changing and updating content as the story progresses. How to do this without affecting the content hash.
* Tracking changes and reviewing all content for a story someone is following. For example CBS Miami released 2 stories on 2 different days, how to find all of them when the trial begins?
Sample Links in Search Engine as of 5/7/23
CBS News Published May 3rd
https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/large-police-presence-at-broward-walmart-for-possible-shooting-investigation/
CBS News Published May 4th
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/walmart-shooting-florida-employee-tironie-sterling-kills-customer-fight-inside-store-officials-say/
Global News Published "Friday" "May 5th"
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/florida-walmart-employee-shoots-kills-customer-trying-to-break-up-fight/ar-AA1aNeim
WSB-TV Published May 3rd
https://www.wsbtv.com/news/trending/customer-killed-shooting-inside-florida-walmart/4L7FFUVAXVFQXJU5UTWWKTDXI4/
WPTV5 Published May 3rd
https://www.wptv.com/news/state/broward/walmart-customer-killed-trying-to-break-up-altercation-between-2-employees-broward-sheriffs-office-says
WPLC7 Published May 3rd
https://www.kplctv.com/2023/05/03/walmart-employee-fatally-shoots-customer-florida-investigators-say/
The New York Post on May 4
https://nypost.com/2023/05/04/walmart-worker-tironie-sterling-charged-in-deadly-shooting/
The Sun Sentinel PayWall (remove brackets around www)
https://[www].sun-sentinel.com/2023/05/03/walmart-employee-fatally-shot-customer-after-he-intervened-during-fight-with-female-coworker/
Scripps News Published by Microsoft News on May 3rd
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/florida-walmart-customer-killed-trying-to-break-up-fight/vi-AA1aHWof
WCPO Cincinnati
https://www.wcpo.com/news/national/walmart-customer-killed-trying-to-stop-fight-between-2-employees-police-say
Florida6
https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/man-dies-after-shooting-inside-lauderdale-lakes-walmart/3026374/
Wesh Orlando on MSN News
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/florida-walmart-employee-accused-of-murdering-customer/ar-AA1aH4Vz
WPTV5
https://www.wptv.com/news/state/broward/walmart-customer-killed-trying-to-break-up-altercation-between-2-employees-broward-sheriffs-office-says
Yahoo!News
https://news.yahoo.com/walmart-employee-fatally-shoots-customer-152538101.html
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