[UA] Covering up your PCs' actions (LONG-attached articles)

[Rev Kev]

Perhaps I think more about this strange sequence of events
because it happened about a mile up the road from my
workplace (I got to see all the smoke and parked news crews
on my way home into downtown Kansas City while the downtown
exodus traffic grinded to a halt).  But I couldn't help but
think of this in a UA light.

How many scenarios involve the PCs breaking into someone's
house because he's a serial killer or a cultist or some
other nastiness?  Whether you're playing Unknown Armies,
Call of Cthulhu, or Men in Black, the PCs rarely work along
with law enforcement, so most of their actions are
blatantly illegal, even if it's for the good of society.  

And how do PCs deal with a bad guy they just shot in a
quiet neighborhood?  How would the Sleepers treat it? 
These two articles kind of show how the Sleepers (or very
resourceful PCs) can take a bad situation and make it too
confusing for the PCs to be followed.

Disclaimer:  What happened is a tragedy, and I am grateful
that the paramedic featured in these articles is going to
survive.  Had the shooter waited just a brief moment,
Kansas City would suffer from the deaths of six
firefighters, even more paramedics, and probably some
police officers.  But, the events are over, and while the
shooter may not have been an evil man (but quite unstable),
I cannot let that stop my brain from concocting "what if"
stories.  

I am posting the articles in their entirety, as the KC Star
requires registration.  Also, the paper has been known to
pull articles and invalidate URLs, so I don't want to lose
these.

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/8041829.htm

Details emerge at site of blasts
 
Police search for two persons
 
By KEVIN HOFFMANN The Kansas City Star
 
“He showed me a gun he used to carry on him. He would say,
‘You know why we don't have any urban kids in the
neighborhood? Because I'll shoot them.'”
Bret Hedenkamp, neighbor of Donin Wright
 
Authorities on Wednesday continued the slow process of
sifting through evidence and identifying human remains
found at the south Kansas City site of a shoot-out and two
fiery house explosions.

Police confirmed they were searching for Janet Clark, who
lived with Donin E. Wright at 9400 Grandview Road, one of
two houses that exploded Monday afternoon near Bannister
Road and U.S. 71.

During the fires that led up to the explosions, gunfire
rained down on emergency workers, leaving a MAST paramedic
critically wounded.

Officials had been unable to locate either Wright or Clark,
his girlfriend, for interviews. According to Jackson County
records, Clark co-owned several properties with Wright and
lived at the same address, 9400 Grandview.

Police would not speculate on whether the remains found
Tuesday belonged to either Wright or Clark.

In other developments Wednesday:
• The Jackson County medical examiner's office continued to
examine the remains recovered from 9400 Grandview and said
both sets appeared to be from adults. The office confirmed
that a third set of remains, found at 9409 Grandview Road,
belonged to an animal.
• Police and agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives said they had recovered
“a large amount of ammunition” from the site. Some of it
was live; some had exploded during the fires. The
ammunition, of many different calibers, was found in the
rubble of both houses. Police also found several weapons in
the rubble.
• Mary Seymour, the paramedic who was wounded with two
shots to the chest, was upgraded to fair condition at the
hospital where she's being treated.
Police said Wednesday that they had sought DNA samples from
Clark's relatives and others.

Clark's mother declined to comment, other than to say: “The
police have asked us not to say anything.”

Wright and Clark were friends at least as early as 1998,
when Donin and Beverly Wright were in the midst of a
contentious divorce. Beverly Wright's lawyers asked for a
deposition from Clark, who lived in Prairie Village at the
time.

Just last month, Wright and Clark deeded over part of their
property to a south Kansas City woman. Both Wright and
Clark signed the paperwork.

Acquaintances painted a mixed picture of Wright. Some
described him as a bright, charismatic, resourceful man;
others said they chose to avoid him, especially after he
brandished a weapon.

Some say Wright was the type of man who would put up a
battle over his property.

“He believed right was right, and he was against Big
Brother when it infringed on his rights,” said Shirley
Strevell, whose deceased husband was friends with Wright
and hunted with him. “He didn't like it on him or anybody
else either.”

Still, Strevell, who had not heard from Wright in about
five years, said she was shocked to learn of the events
Monday.

“He was extremely bright,” she said. “I don't know any
other way to put it.

“He could make anything work and fix anything. He rebuilt
my basement.”

On Monday, one of Wright's neighbors, Bret Hedenkamp, along
with his wife and daughter, found themselves in the middle
of gunfire soon after they pulled down their street and saw
Wright's home in flames.

Hedenkamp said Wright was friendly when he first moved into
the neighborhood. But after talking with him a few times,
Hedenkamp decided he should avoid Wright when possible,
saying he often acted eccentric.

“He showed me a gun he used to carry on him,” Hedenkamp
said. “He would say, ‘You know why we don't have any urban
kids in the neighborhood? Because I'll shoot them.'”

Nearly 50 guns were listed among property Wright owned in
his 1998 divorce file.

Joe Vince, former chief of the crime guns analysis branch
of the ATF, reviewed the list at The Star's request.

“There's no rhyme or reason to this collection. It is just
a mishmash of a gun collection, from high-quality guns to
cheap ones,” said Vince, now president of Crime Gun
Solutions in Frederick, Md.

None of the guns on the list is illegal for private
citizens to own, Vince said, “unless Wright was in a
prohibited category.” Vince said the list included civilian
versions of the standard military assault rifle, the M-16.

Vince said Monday's shootout “shows the type of damage one
person can do when he has these kinds of weapons.”

In the last several years, Wright also shopped at American
Fire Arms Specialty in Grandview, buying supplies to reload
spent cartridges.

Charlie Zonko, the business manager, said that he had
become casually acquainted with Wright, who had come into
the store at 12138 Blue Ridge Extension seven or eight
times.

“We weren't chums,” Zonko said, “He didn't buy a whole lot,
just some reloading supplies.”

Zonko said he had not sold him any guns. Wright bought
primers, Zonko said, used in reloading cartridges.

A primer contains a small charge that explodes when struck
by a gun's firing mechanism, igniting a larger amount of
gun powder in a cartridge.

Wright bought about 200 primers at a time.

Zonko said that when he heard about the explosion at
Wright's house, he thought that Wright probably had an
accident while reloading.

He was surprised to hear that someone had fired on
emergency personnel.

Authorities said that it was likely their investigation at
the two houses would run into Friday. Larry Scott,
spokesman for the ATF, said six technicians were studying
every bullet hole and every piece of ammunition found.

That could number in the hundreds. As a tow truck pulled a
Kansas City Fire Department ladder truck from the scene
Wednesday, bullet holes could be in seen in the windows and
on compartments along one side.

A bullet-riddled ambulance remained at the site Wednesday
night.

“The people of Kansas City should be extremely proud of
their emergency workers and the courage they displayed,”
Scott said. “Those who first responded to this incident
acted quickly and bravely, and from what I've seen of the
scene, we are very fortunate that nobody else was injured.”

Seymour, a paramedic for Metropolitan Ambulance Services
Trust, was the only injury reported among emergency
personnel. She and other emergency workers were outside the
blaze at 9409 Grandview when a gunman opened fire from
across the street.

Six firefighters made a daring rescue of the fallen Seymour
as police laid down cover fire.

On Friday, members of MAST and the Kansas City police and
fire departments will hold a blood drive at the Community
Blood Center in honor of Seymour and others who need blood
in order to recover from injuries.


http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/8042531.htm

Blasts followed haunted history
 
Police confirm two bodies found at site
 
By MIKE McGRAW and DONNA McGUIRE
 
The Kansas City Star
 
Donin Eric Wright's home had been in his family for more
than 100 years. He and his brother — along with generations
of other family members — were born there.

The thought of losing it haunted him, Wright's best friend
said Wednesday.

And Wright thought that was a real possibility, said the
friend, Rick Sirdoreus, who spoke with Wright in the days
before explosions and gunfire rocked Wright's Kansas City
neighborhood Monday. “He was very upset about it.”

As authorities continued to sift through debris of Wright's
former house at 9400 Grandview Road on Wednesday, the
Jackson County medical examiner worked to identify two
bodies recovered from the rubble. Other officials collected
DNA samples from relatives of Janet Clark, who lived with
Wright. Police have been unable to locate either Clark or
Wright.

Two houses on Grandview Road burned Monday afternoon, the
same day Wright was to appear in court on a longstanding
dispute with the city. He did not show up for court that
morning, however.

After the first house exploded, arriving emergency crews
came under heavy gunfire from nearby. One paramedic was
shot twice in the chest. Another explosion then rocked a
second house across the road from the first.

Wright owned both properties.

Days before the explosions, Wright told Sirdoreus that the
cost of a city order to clean up 200 truckloads of debris
he let others dump in a gully on his property might cost as
much as $300,000 and force him to sell.

“It sure would be stressful for me if I thought I was going
to lose a property that had been in the family since the
1800s,” Sirdoreus said.

The property had been handed down through the years with
the stipulation the land not be sold to anyone outside the
family, a cousin of Wright's said.

City officials said earlier this week that they doubted
Wright's court battle with the city had triggered Monday's
events, including fires, explosions, machine-gun fire and a
wounded paramedic.

Nonetheless, Sirdoreus says that Wright “knew he was wrong
for doing that (dumping) without a permit, but he felt like
he was in a position where there was no way he was going to
be able to maintain ownership of the property,” Sirdoreus
said.

“Very few people ever picked on Donin Wright. He stood up
for what he thought was right.”

One of the homes that exploded had been a gathering place
for generations of Wright's family.

During World War II, many lived together in one home while
their men were away.

Wright's father, Foster F. Wright, fought as a Marine on
Iwo Jima and other South Pacific battlefields.

Donin Wright told friends that his father was an excellent
marksman, and Donin's divorce papers listed war medals
among his inherited possessions.

When Foster Wright returned from war, he raised his two
boys like little Marines, said Barbara Hogan, a cousin of
Donin Wright's.

“He drilled everything into those kids,” Hogan said.

Donin grew to like guns because of his dad, she said. He
also liked hunting and fishing.

Wright's grandfather, a stonemason, built houses and worked
on the nearby Oakwood Country Club, and his uncles were
groundskeepers at area golf courses.

In the 1970s, Wright was injured severely while working on
a car tire that exploded and blew him into the glass window
of a service station bay, Hogan said.

The accident shattered both his hands and wrists and caused
him to quit working, she said.

Wright had titanium plates and screws in his arms as a
result, Sirdoreus said.

“I bet that's something the police would want to know
about,” Sirdoreus said.

Still, he said, Wright was able to run a foundation repair
business out of his home, and he collected precious gems
for a time. He also spent hours reloading ammunition for
friends and others.

“He was a top-grade hand loader for people all over the
world and built antique ammunition for old firearms,”
Sirdoreus said.

Wright had married at least three times, Hogan said. His
second wife liked to enter dogs in shows, which Wright also
attended. Later, Wright raised attack dogs, Hogan said.

Sirdoreus, who said he has known Wright since 1957, said
that Wright probably brought some of the trouble on himself
“by being assertive and trying to do something without a
permit.”

But that was part of Wright's personality, his friend said.
“At times he was a hell of a nice guy, and at times he was
mad.”

Hogan last remembers seeing Wright about 10 years ago at
the Missouri State Fair in Sedalia, where he displayed a
pen of white chickens.

She remembers acting cordial to him, even though she had
fallen out of touch after he and her father had gotten into
an argument.

In his dispute with the city, Wright had been sentenced to
10 days in jail, something he would have tried to avoid,
Hogan said.

“He wasn't a person that was going to be hassled … or serve
time in jail,” she said, “particularly for something that
in his mind was not fair.”