Mass Shooting Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Us & Them Encore: The Gun Divide

At a time when an alarming number of mass shootings continue to happen all over America, the Us & Them team was recently honored with a first place award for best documentary from Virginias Associated Press Broadcasters. In this report, we explore the foundations of the Second Amendment and the cultural and historical beliefs and myths that contribute to our very American divide over guns.

Us & Them was recently honored with a first place award for best documentary from Virginias Associated Press Broadcasters.

Our episode called “The Gun Divide” looks at gun ownership in America, and the way our social, political and racial divisions fuel gun purchases. The year 2020 showed a historic rise in gun violence. Guns killed a record 45,000 people, the majority of them by suicide.

Us & Them host Trey Kay explores the foundations of the Second Amendment and the cultural and historical beliefs and myths that contribute to our very American divide over guns.

Gun ownership is at record levels across the country with 40 percent of adults saying they have at least one firearm in their home. But what rights does the Second Amendment give us?

We’re sharing this award-winning episode with you again, from our archives.

This episode of Us & Them is presented with support from the West Virginia Humanities Council, The Greater Kanawha Valley Foundation and the CRC Foundation.

Subscribe to Us & Them on Apple Podcasts, NPR One, RadioPublic, Spotify, Stitcher and beyond.

Don Radcliffe is a pharmacist at Good Family Pharmacy in Pinch, WV. In February 2015, Radcliff shot and killed a masked armed robber from behind the pharmacy counter during a failed robbery. *Credit: Trey Kay/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

You can have prescriptions filled at the Good Family Pharmacy in Pinch, WV. They also sell toiletries, vitamins, cosmetics and, as pharmacist Don Radcliff told Us & Them host Trey Kay, they offer customers something a little extra — the pharmacy also sells firearms. This photo shows two of the three gun safes in the pharmacy’s stock room. A stuffed bobcat keeps guard. *Credit: Trey Kay/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Danielle Walker served for five years as a Democratic member of the West Virginia House of Delegates. She recently made history by becoming the first African American to serve as the Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia. She is photographed here with *Us & Them* host Trey Kay. Walker reluctantly bought a firearm after receiving death threats. She says these threats started in 2020 after she attended a Black Lives Matter rally in Kingwood, WV. *Credit: Trey Kay/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

In the United States, Black Americans are 10 times more likely to die from gun violence than white Americans. The number goes up for Black children and teens — who are 14 times more likely than white children to die from a gunshot. The small state of West Virginia reveals similar disparities. Data show Black West Virginians are victims of gun homicide at 5 times the rate of white West Virginians. Across the state each year, an average of nearly one person a day is killed by guns. Reverend Matthew Watts has been a pastor at Grace Bible Church on Charleston’s West Side for more than three decades. He also lives in the community, and tries to bring attention to its struggles. *Credit: Grace Bible Church*

Jim McJunkin is a retired pediatrician in Charleston, WV. He now spends much of his time as an unpaid legislative representative for Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense. That’s a program launched ten years ago after Sandy Hook — the mass shooting of school children in Newtown, CT. The group is an arm of Everytown, a national organization devoted to stopping gun violence. He is pictured here with Deanna McKinney, a mother whose son was shot and killed on the front porch of her home on Charleston’s West Side. *Credit: James McJunkin*

Historian Jennifer Tucker specializes in the history of industrialization, science and law. Tucker recently launched the Center for the Study of Guns and Society at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. *Courtesy Photo*

Darrell Miller is a Duke University law professor and co-founder of the Duke Center for Firearms Law. He writes and teaches in the areas of civil rights, constitutional law, civil procedure, state and local government law, and legal history. His scholarship on the Second and Thirteenth Amendments has been published in leading law reviews such as the Yale Law Journal, the University of Chicago Law Review, and the Columbia Law Review, and has been cited by the Supreme Court of the United States, the United States Courts of Appeals, the United States District Courts, and in congressional testimony and legal briefs. *Credit: Duke Law*

*Us & Them* host Trey Kay practicing his shooting with friends in Bath County, VA. *Credit: Christopher Kay*

Morgantown LGBTQ Community Fears For Safety After Club Q Shooting

The shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs this past weekend was an all too familiar story for many in the LGBTQ community, and one that highlights local safety concerns.

Rev. Zac Morton of the First Presbyterian Church in Morgantown said the news out of Colorado this weekend was devastating — and exhausting.

“It has a certain level of familiarity to it, that we’ve been, not only through mass shootings before, but experiencing the fact that it’s targeted at an LGBTQ group,” he said.

Morton, who counts many local LGBTQ community members as part of his congregation, sees the shooting, even two time zones away, as a harsh reminder that security is a constant concern.

“I worry that our local communities here, events from Pride, our local LGBTQ clubs and even our church could potentially be targeted,” Morton said. “Heaven forbid, in an act of gun violence, but there’s a lot of other ways in which we can be targeted, too.”

BD Voss is a master’s student in geology at West Virginia University and the social media manager for the LGBTQ+ club on campus. This year, they chose to carpool with relatives to a family Thanksgiving gathering in Virginia because traveling in the same area was already uncomfortable for them.

“Now with the surge of hate crimes, and as someone who is very visibly not gender conforming, it’s very scary to think of going and pumping gas by myself on the way to go visit relatives,” Voss said.

They said since the relaxing of COVID-19 restrictions, there has been a concerted effort on campus to build a community. There are talks to hold a vigil when students return to campus next week, but Voss acknowledges that things are going to be difficult moving forward.

“Treat your fellow students and fellow staff members and fellow faculty and people you interact with on a daily basis with compassion as much as you possibly can,” they said.

Brad Grimes is the program coordinator of the WVU LGBTQ+ Center. He said the security of staff and students has been a primary concern for his office for years, in no small part because of increased anti-LGBTQ rhetoric.

“If you think that like last year alone in 2021, there were over 300 anti-LGBTQ bills and pieces of legislation passed,” Grimes said. “Then you see a headline, like the recent one this past weekend, it’s beyond political attacks and generalized attacks. People are dying just for who they are.”

Rev. Jenny Williams is the faith organizer at the ACLU of West Virginia. She said no place is immune to this type of violence.

“It’s just yet another assault on the daily freedoms of people because of how they identify, who they love, trying to feel comfortable in their own skin,” she said.

Williams said a lot of work needs to be done, both in the short and long-term, to create infrastructure to keep LGBTQ people safe.

“In West Virginia, we’re tied for last in the country and acceptance of queer people,” she said. “There’s long term work that needs to be done in terms of legislation, in terms of changing the conversation and faith communities.“

The shooting occurred at midnight on Nov. 20, just as the National Transgender Day of Remembrance began. Morton said the day is meant to be about confronting and remembering the devaluation of human life through rhetoric and actions that left 36 trans people dead in 2021.

After Club Q, the number is now 38.

“Different groups of people are made to kind of live with this lingering anxiety and grief. They have to ask, ‘Am I in a safe space?’ We need to move towards a society where people have to do as little of that as possible. And that’s the only way it can get done is together.”

West Virginia Man Indicted For Fatal Maryland Shootings

A grand jury has indicted the West Virginia man accused of shooting and killing three coworkers at a Maryland machine shop and then shooting and wounding a state trooper who was responding to the incident.

Joe Louis Esquivel, 23, of Hedgesville, West Virginia, was indicted June 29 in two separate criminal cases, including charges of murder, attempted murder, assault and use of a firearm in a crime of violence, said Christine Remsburg, Assistant State’s Attorney for Washington County, Maryland.

Authorities say Esquivel arrived June 9 for his normal shift at Columbia Machine Inc. in the rural community of Smithsburg in western Maryland. He allegedly worked until he left the building to retrieve a weapon, went back inside and fired on employees near a breakroom.

Smithsburg police responding to a 911 call found a wounded person outside the business. The Washington County Sheriff’s Office said deputies found three shooting victims inside, all of whom were dead.

Esquivel left the scene in a car and encountered Maryland State Police. A 25-year veteran trooper was shot when police said Esquivel fired at troopers. At least one trooper returned fire, striking the suspect, state police said.

W.Va. Man Is Maryland Mass Shooting Suspect

A West Virginia man accused of fatally shooting three co-workers at a western Maryland machine shop remained under police guard at a hospital Friday, but authorities said a Maryland state trooper injured in a shootout with the suspect was treated and released.

The 25-year veteran of the Maryland State Police was shot when police said the fleeing suspect fired multiple rounds at troopers who tracked him down in western Maryland. At least one trooper returned fire, striking the suspect, state police said. The injured trooper and suspect were both taken to a hospital.

The trooper has been released, but the suspect remained under police guard while undergoing treatment, police said late Thursday. Charges are pending consultation with the Washington County State’s Attorney’s Office, police said. The troopers involved in the shooting will be placed on administrative duty while an investigation is conducted.

Washington County Sheriff Doug Mullendore said three men were found dead at Columbia Machine Inc. in Smithsburg on Thursday afternoon and a fourth was critically injured. The victims and suspect were all employees at the facility, he said. The sheriff identified those killed in the shooting as Mark Alan Frey, 50; Charles Edward Minnick Jr., 31; and Joshua Robert Wallace, 30.

Reached by telephone Friday, Nelson Michael, the father of Brandon Michael, 42, who was wounded in the machine shop shooting, said his son was still in the hospital, but he didn’t know more about his condition.

“He’s surviving,” he said. “I’m glad he’s alive, but it’s going to work on his nerves. I know that.”

Nelson Michael said he didn’t know why the gunman shot the victims.

“I’m not saying any more. I’m just glad my son’s alive, and I feel so bad for the families of the other ones,” he said.

The shooting suspect was identified as a 23-year-old man who lives in West Virginia, but the sheriff’s office said his name wouldn’t be released until charging documents are filed. Authorities declined to release a motive.

Mullendore said the suspect used a semiautomatic handgun, which was recovered after the shootout.

Smithsburg, a community of nearly 3,000 people, is just west of the Camp David presidential retreat and about 75 miles (120 kilometers) northwest of Baltimore. The manufacturing facility was in a sparsely populated area northeast of the town’s center with a church, several businesses and farmland nearby.

Columbia Machine manufactures equipment for concrete products, and its Smithsburg location builds molds and works on parts and repairs for other plants. The company’s CEO, Rick Goode, issued a statement calling the deaths of three employees and the wounding of a fourth tragic.

“Our highest priority during this tragic event is the safety and wellbeing of our employees and their families,” he said.

Frey, one of the victims, lived about a half-mile from Dennis Stouffer.

He described Frey as “a solid individual” and “a good guy.”

Stouffer said he would see Frey at the mailbox when he drove by. Stouffer said in a phone interview that Frey once made meat hooks for a deer-meat processing shop he used to run in the small rural community of Smithsburg.

“He didn’t make a bunch of noise or anything. He just went about his work,” Stouffer said.

Speaking late Friday morning, Stouffer said the reason for the shooting remained “a big mystery” to people in the community.

“We’re all in shock and disbelief, and that’s an understatement,” Stouffer said.

As mass shootings continue to fuel debate about gun control around the nation, Stouffer said the Maryland deaths did not change his mind about Second Amendment rights.

“It’s most unfortunate, but you always have to be prepared,” Stouffer said. “Whether it’s church property or your own property or wherever you go, you’re not going to prevent criminals from having guns by passing gun-control laws.”

Us & Them: The Gun Divide

We explore the foundations of the Second Amendment and the cultural and historical beliefs and myths that contribute to our very American divide over guns.

America has roughly 400 million guns in circulation. Our divisions – social, political and racial – and our fear of those differences fuel even more gun purchases. 2020 showed a historic rise in gun violence. Guns killed a record 45,000 people, the majority of them by suicide.

In this episode of Us & Them we explore the foundations of the Second Amendment and the cultural and historical beliefs and myths that contribute to our very American divide over guns.

Gun ownership is at record levels across the country with 40 percent of adults saying they have at least one firearm in their home. But what rights does the Second Amendment give us? And what happens if our collective arsenal intersects with our widespread distrust of our institutions, our government, and each other?

This episode of Us & Them is presented with support from the West Virginia Humanities Council, The Greater Kanawha Valley Foundation and the CRC Foundation.

Subscribe to Us & Them on Apple Podcasts, NPR One, RadioPublic, Spotify, Stitcher and beyond.