A US lawmaker was in critical condition yesterday after being shot in the head when a gunman opened fire at a public event, killing six people in an attack that shocked the nation.
US Representative Gabrielle Giffords, 40, a member of US President Barack Obama’s Democratic Party, was meeting constituents at a supermarket in Tucson, Arizona, when the assailant unleashed a volley of automatic fire. A nine-year-old girl and a US federal judge were among those killed, and 12 others were wounded.
Obama called the attack a “tragedy for our entire country.” The US House of Representatives, which opened under new Republican leadership just three days earlier, called off proceedings for this week.
PHOTO: AFP
Bystanders tackled the gunman, identified as 22-year-old local resident Jared Lee Loughner. News reports said he had filled the Internet with angry and largely incoherent condemnations of the government, while the army said he had tried to enlist but was rejected.
A Loughner profile posted on YouTube listed Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ The Communist Manifesto and Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf among his favorite books.
“There’s some reason to believe that he came to this location with another individual,” Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik told reporters, saying the gunman “has kind of a troubled past, and we’re not convinced that he acted alone.”
Doctors said a bullet passed through Giffords’ brain. Despite initial media reports she had died, local television networks said late on Saturday she was awake in her hospital bed and recognized her husband, NASA astronaut Mark Kelly.
“She is in critical condition [but] I’m optimistic about recovery,” University Medical Center trauma chief Peter Rhee said. “We cannot tell what kind of recovery, but I’m about as optimistic as you can get.”
At a later briefing, however, Giffords family friend and former US surgeon-general Richard Carmona was more cautious, saying: “With guarded optimism, I hope that she will survive, but this is a very devastating wound.”
Giffords was hosting an event dubbed “Congress on Your Corner” at a Safeway supermarket in a strip mall off a major intersection in Tucson, a city of rolling desert and cactus trees in the fast-growing southwestern state.
Giffords, like most rank-and-file US legislators, traveled without any security detail, according to witnesses.
The incident came amid heightened security after packages ignited in a post office in Washington on Friday and two government buildings in neighboring Maryland on Thursday.
Dupnik noted two incidents involving Giffords during the recent election campaign — one when at a meeting “someone in the audience dropped a gun out of their pants,” while in another windows were broken at her offices.
Denouncing “vitriol” notably by some media outlets, he added that a suspicious package had been found at her headquarters since the shooting, which was being investigated.
Giffords, the first Jewish woman to be elected to US Congress from Arizona, barely survived a bruising re-election bid last year to a Republican rival from the right-wing “Tea Party” movement.
Giffords is a centrist and a member of the so-called Blue Dog Coalition of Democrats who support fiscal conservative, pro-business policies.
Obama condemned the attack as an “unspeakable tragedy” adding: “Such a senseless and terrible act of violence has no place in a free society.”
Arizona US Senator and former US presidential candidate John McCain said: “Whoever did this; whatever their reason, they are a disgrace to Arizona, this country and the human race.”
While the US has witnessed a stream of shootings, assassination bids against elected officials are rare. The last major incident was in 1981 when then-US president Ronald Reagan was shot and injured at a Washington hotel.
The only member of Congress ever to die in the line of duty was Leo Ryan, a California Democrat killed in 1978 in Guyana, as he investigated a cult that later carried out a notorious mass suicide.
Conservative standard-bearer Sarah Palin had controversially placed Giffords on a political hit list, putting her under an image of a gun’s crosshairs for her support of Obama’s healthcare overhaul.
Palin offered condolences for the victims, writing on her Facebook page: “We all pray for the victims and their families, and for peace and justice.”
PEACE AND STABILITY: Maintaining the cross-strait ‘status quo’ has long been the government’s position, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Taiwan is committed to maintaining the cross-strait “status quo” and seeks no escalation of tensions, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday, rebutting a Time magazine opinion piece that described President William Lai (賴清德) as a “reckless leader.” The article, titled “The US Must Beware of Taiwan’s Reckless Leader,” was written by Lyle Goldstein, director of the Asia Program at the Washington-based Defense Priorities think tank. Goldstein wrote that Taiwan is “the world’s most dangerous flashpoint” amid ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He said that the situation in the Taiwan Strait has become less stable
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi yesterday lavished US President Donald Trump with praise and vows of a “golden age” of ties on his visit to Tokyo, before inking a deal with Washington aimed at securing critical minerals. Takaichi — Japan’s first female prime minister — pulled out all the stops for Trump in her opening test on the international stage and even announced that she would nominate him for a Nobel Peace Prize, the White House said. Trump has become increasingly focused on the Nobel since his return to power in January and claims to have ended several conflicts around the world,
REASSURANCE: The US said Taiwan’s interests would not be harmed during the talk and that it remains steadfast in its support for the nation, the foreign minister said US President Donald Trump on Friday said he would bring up Taiwan with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) during a meeting on the sidelines of the APEC Summit in South Korea this week. “I will be talking about Taiwan [with Xi],” Trump told reporters before he departed for his trip to Asia, adding that he had “a lot of respect for Taiwan.” “We have a lot to talk about with President Xi, and he has a lot to talk about with us. I think we’ll have a good meeting,” Trump said. Taiwan has long been a contentious issue between the US and China.
UKRAINE, NVIDIA: The US leader said the subject of Russia’s war had come up ‘very strongly,’ while Jenson Huang was hoping that the conversation was good Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and US President Donald Trump had differing takes following their meeting in Busan, South Korea, yesterday. Xi said that the two sides should complete follow-up work as soon as possible to deliver tangible results that would provide “peace of mind” to China, the US and the rest of the world, while Trump hailed the “great success” of the talks. The two discussed trade, including a deal to reduce tariffs slapped on China for its role in the fentanyl trade, as well as cooperation in ending the war in Ukraine, among other issues, but they did not mention
RSS