Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Neighbors: Marine-of-the-year is man-of-the-hour

Daniel Cotnoir, the Marine-of-the-year who is jailed for attempted murder in Lawrence, Mass., is regarded as a hero by his neighbors. After someone in a crowd of drunks outside an illegal after-hours nightclub threw something against his house and then threw a bottle through his window, Daniel took a potshot at the crowd. The bullet shattered against a piece of concrete, slightly wounding two of the revelers.

Neighbors charge that they have been complaining to the city government for a long time about the crowds of drunks that gather in the street outside the nightclub well after the club should be legally closed. The neighbors say, while not condoning what he did, that the situation has been building for a long time and was not a "spur-of-the-moment affair" by a deranged former soldier.

The response from the city government, in addition to the attempted murder charge against the unfortunate Marine, was the typical political bloviating: Mayor Sullivan said that he would be meeting with his police chief "in the next few days" to "discuss" the situation. And this is not the first incident. A shooting in March outside another illegal after-hours club left an 18 year-old basketball star paralyzed. And hizzoner has discovered, "These two events took place near two after-hour clubs and involved teens," which is what the citizens had been screaming about for months. And from the state government? Mandatory mental health evaluations of all troops returning from Iraq. Blame the messenger.

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