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Calamity befell Michael McLendon's extended family in rural Alabama. All three national newscasts led with the local story--the carnage that left eleven people dead. The source of the horror was McLendon himself. The 28-year-old shot and killed his own mother and her dogs in Kinston before driving to Samson where his grandmother, his uncle, two cousins and two neighbors were next to be blown away. Then he headed for Geneva, killing a pedestrian, a gas station customer and a passing motorist en route. When he arrived at the metals factory where he used to work, McLendon killed himself. McLendon's rampage was the first local violent crime to be the national newscasts' Story of the Day since the shooting spree at Northern Illinois University last February. McLendon doubled that campus death toll.

NBC's Ron Mott interpreted the killings thus: "It started as a methodical, deliberate attack but ended with mass murder." CBS' Mark Strassmann had the same take, narrating a crime that started as a family affair but turned into "firing randomly at anyone and anything." Confusingly, ABC's Steve Osunsami reported that "at his home authorities found what appears to be a clue, a list of former employers," none of whom were harmed in the rampage. "Officials do not agree on what it means but one of them said it appears to be a list of those who had done him wrong." By the way, Osunsami's tick-tock of each of the gruesome deaths accounted for only ten of the eleven corpses.

ABC followed on Osunsami's report with a mournful First Person replaying of Deputy Josh Myers' soundbites in reaction to the murders. He was assigned to the case by the Geneva County Sheriff's Department so was away from his home in Samson when McLendon arrived in town. It happened that his own wife and baby daughter were the neighbors of McLendon's uncle to be killed. The deputy recalled talking to his surviving four-year-old son. "He asked where momma was. I had to tell him that she was with Jesus. It is supposed to be me getting shot not my family."


Andrew Tyndall 3/12/09 9:47:37 pm

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