commentary by Patrick H. Moore
In Coney Island Baby, the late Lou Reed intones in his distinctive manner, “And just remember certain people have peculiar tastes.” This is undoubtedly true, as we’ve seen so many times here on All Things Crime Blog. And as a certain peculiar “event” that occurred Monday night at the world-famous TCL Chinese theater in Hollywood demonstrates, certain people also have “peculiar ways” of dealing with the stress of confrontation.
I came across this bizarre story on a rather neat website called Mashable.com. Josh Dickey reports on a peculiar woman who, not unlike Chad Oulson, the victim in the Land ‘O Lakes Florida shooting/murder case, was confronted by a theater patron who asked her to turn off her phone because its glowing screen was bothering him. Unlike Chad, who was shot and killed by retired police officer Curtis Reeves at a screening of Lone Survivor, in this case, as their argument escalated, Ms. Glowing Screen arguably got the best of the of the requestor.
Josh Dickey writes for Mashable:
A man who asked a woman to turn off her cell phone at a Monday night screening of Mr. Turner was maced in the face following an awkward confrontation, an eyewitness who was sitting nearby tells Mashable.
The American Film Institute screening of the biopic at the TCL Chinese theater in Hollywood had just gotten underway when a man near the back row asked a woman sitting in front of him to turn off her phone, whose screen was visibly glowing.
According to Mashable’s intrepid eyewitness, the gentleman in the back row was extremely polite to Ms. Glowing Screen, reportedly asking her over and over again:
“Excuse me sir, could you please turn off your screen. (The man had apparently mistaken Screen for a male). After asking her to turn off her screen repeatedly to no avail, the man then resorted to the not unreasonable gesture of tapping the woman on the shoulder.
Screen, however, found “the gentle tapping” quite unreasonable. Eyewitness reports that she “flipped out” on him:
“She stands up and starts cursing, saying ‘You hit me, you hit me, I’m going to call the police.” That did not satisfy her, however, so she turned the phone’s flashlight function on and pointed it directly at the man’s face.
Then the standoff began and lasted for up to 60 seconds. Eyewitness reports that she continued “shining her light upon the world” even as the people around the implored her to “hide her light under a bushel basket” and sit down. Eyewitness calmly defended himself which was probably a mistake. Some people just can’t handle conspicuous calmness on the part of an adversary. In fact, Screen informed Calm (and probably none too calmly) she was carrying mace. She then “started digging in her bag”.
Oh shit! Time to run for cover!
Too late! Gig’s up!
Eyewitness reports that Screen “took the cap off the bottle, pointed it directly in his face and sprayed him at point-blank range.” After sitting there for a moment in shock, as Screen also sat back down, Calm and his female companion left the theater. On his way out, Calm did reportedly manage to slap Screen on the arm while saying something perhaps unprintable. (At least it would have been unprintable if I had been in Calm’s shoes.)
Once she had routed Calm with her mace bomb, Screen sat back to enjoy Mr. Turner. Her enjoyment was cut short 20 minutes later when “volunteers and security with flashlights came to escort (her) out of the theater. She did not put up a fight as she was leaving,” according to Eyewitness.
* * * * *
And thus we see how confused, stubborn and obnoxious we humans sometimes are. Screen was clearly way out of line, but Calm (despite his conspicuous calm) insisting on playing the role of the stubborn, albeit rational, male which drove Screen into a frenzy and led to her macing him.
Nothing infuriates irrational souls like rationality on the part of an adversary.
“Help me in my weakness, I heard the drifter say…”
And just for the record, here is a salient and necessary update on the Curtis Reeves Land ‘O Lakes shooting. Actually it’s old news but it’s new news to me.
Colin Daileda, also of Mashable, reports that Reeves “appears to have sent a text of his own right before the incident to his son, Matthew, minutes before he fired a shot.”
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!
According to the Associated Press, Matthew Reeves, a Tampa Bay police officer, was supposed to meet his parents at the theater but was a bit late because “he had decided to wash his truck beforehand. Moments after he arrived, he heard a gunshot.”
Oddly enough, Matthew is the one who “held a t-shirt against Oulson’s chest as the man bled to death.”
Without a doubt, fate works in peculiar ways. If Matthew hadn’t decided to wash his truck and had arrived a few minutes earlier, Chad Oulson would probably still be alive and Curtis Reeves probably would not be facing murder charges.
“The world it turning/Hope it don’t turn on me.”