When Seconds Count, the Police are 19 Calls Away

There’s some questions, but not many answers, in a tragic murder in Virginia last week.

[38-year-old Minh] Nguyen allegedly broke in through the front door of his ex-wife’s home around 9:30 p.m. Thursday. Once inside, Nguyen opened fire on [Corey] Mattison, his former wife’s new husband, striking him multiple times.

There are no new crimes. Just new jitbags committing the same old crimes. How many guys have been whacked, over the years, by their woman’s creepy ex? No one has ever tried to count, but it’s the kind of thing that gets a knowing grunt out of a homicide investigator. Part of having seen it all, for those guys, is seeing it all over and over again.

No idea whether the woman in question knew her husband was bat guano crazy and potentially violent, or whether she had gotten a restraining order, but the record shows that nothing whatever restrained Nguyen: not law, not morality, not any available defenses.

Maybe she and her new husband put their trust in the police. If so, that trust was badly misplaced:

Loudoun County Sheriff Michael Chapman told FoxNews.com that authorities received 19 emergency phone calls in total from the residence. When deputies arrived, they found the victim dead outside the home, Chapman said.

Why do cops carry guns anyway? Let us explain. That’s for the homicidal criminals they run into. For the homicidal criminals you run into, the police carry chalk. 

So they can draw a line around your cold, dead body.

Still, these police show signs of Holmes-level Clouseau-level detection, here:

While the motive and sequence of events is still under investigation, Chapman said, “there were clearly domestic-related issues with the suspect.” Nguyen had two children with Denise Mattison, who married Corey Mattison nearly six months ago.

No $#!+, Sherlock.

Denise Mattison told ABC News that her husband’s final actions spared her children, who were home at the time, from being harmed.

“He was my knight in shining armor,” she told the network. Mattison reportedly ran for the door, leading the shooter away from the children, who were able to hide in a room upstairs and call 911.

That was an interesting choice of words, by the bereaved Mrs. Mattison. Because back in the old days, one of the markers of a knight was that he had the king’s leave to bear arms.

Now, arming oneself is not a panacea. If Corey Mattison had been armed this whole thing might have gone exactly the same way, and he would have been bringing a firearm into a home with small kids, which is (if we’re honest) a nonzero risk than needs to be properly mitigated. But it also would have offered the potential of a better outcome: Nguyen dead, and Mattison alive.

via Tech mogul charged with murdering ex-wife’s husband | Fox News.

To our amazement, none of the news stories have noted the strange fact that the victims got off 19 phone calls before the police rolled up. This may be something other than a dilatory police response, but it doesn’t look good, and normally the mediots would fix on that.

Instead, they’re fascinated by the irrelevancies, that Nguyen was a Silicon Valley founder (of the annoying Plaxo address-book-scam app, it figures) and Mr. Mattison was a former pro athlete. Do those things matter? Or does it matter, only, that Mattison gave his life to lead an evil man away from his kids, an act of Biblical nobility; and that Nguyen overthrew all his previous attainments to take on himself the title, “murderer”; that last, an act of Biblical betrayal?

Update: Plaxo insiders are running like hell away from Nguyen, suggesting that his connection to Plaxo was minimal or nonexistent. Given that they work for a company that built itself on spam, none of them are in a position to bitch about ethics.

Update II: Nguyen fled from the scene to his mother’s house. Here’s what happened next:

Nguyen… was captured by his own mother. Search warrants reveal that when deputies responded to the town home, they found Nguyen in the garage, being held down by his mother.

The two were struggling over control of the firearm, the warrants showed. Nguyen’s mother told deputies to take the gun, and Nguyen was arrested.

Well played, Mrs. Nguyen. We regret that your son was a disappointment to you, and wish you and your family all the best in this difficult time.