It seems that the autorities at the UW did not follow proceedures designed to have made the murderer’s job more difficult.
University Police and the College of Architecture failed to follow well-established procedures by not reporting Rebecca Griego’s pleas for help to a high-level safety team that could have taken steps to protect her, a top University of Washington official acknowledged Wednesday.
Mindy Kornberg, vice president of human resources at the university, said her department should have been notified that Griego had received death threats from her ex-boyfriend at her office in Gould Hall. She said the HR department also didn’t know Griego had filed a report — including a copy of a domestic-violence protection order — with University Police.
Had HR been notified of Rowan’s threats, the workplace violence-prevention assessment team would have met, talked to Griego and developed a plan to reduce the short- and long-term risk to her safety, Kornberg said. She ticked off possibilities such as changing Griego’s phone number, moving her to a different building or stepping up police patrols near her workplace.
I’m still waiting, but I have heard no demands that the folks at the UW who screwed this pooch be fired or even reprimanded. It looks as though this will all be swept under the ever growing “UW Rug of Failures”. Especially after they released this statement,
“Our hearts truly go out to the family and this is a horrible tragedy, and we really are looking to learn from this,” Kornberg said. “We hope this never happens again.”
Sure you do. More likely, you hope that you don’t get caught screwing this up again.
Now, it turns out that the murderer was an illegal alien of the European variety who had stolen the revolver.
Police say Rowan fatally shot Griego, then himself, with a revolver he had stolen from an acquaintance. The owner wasn’t aware the gun was missing until approached by police after the shooting, Wittmier said.
Federal immigration authorities said Thursday that Rowan was living in the United States illegally — the British citizen overstayed a 90-day visa granted him to enter the country in 1996 — and that they had been seeking him for more than three years.
Lorie Dankers, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), said the agency mounted a full-scale investigation and tracked him to Seattle, where a judge several years ago issued an administrative immigration warrant to arrest and deport him.
“The fact he wasn’t located is consistent with the lifestyle we’re hearing about him,” Dankers said.
Yes, it couldn’t be that your agency is underfunded to the point that it is impotent. Likewise, it is so inept that local agencies, if they had caught him, would have just turned him loose on the streets.
They don’t even know if the “Jonathon Rowan” was the guy’s real name.
UW police said Tuesday they’re still not sure. Police have asked Interpol, the international police agency, to verify the identity of Rowan, an elusive character who former friends and business partners say told so many wild stories they didn’t know what to believe about him.
Assistant UW Police Chief Ray Wittmier said Rowan had at least three aliases and two passports and legally entered the United States in 1996 with a green card. But whether the passports really belonged to him isn’t clear. “This identity may have been stolen,” Wittmier said.
Remember all of this, Washington residents. This murder will be brought up sooner rather than later by the local professional gun bigots (and by their hobbyist sycophants as well). Don’t let them lie.
A truly sad story, made even sadder by the incompetence of the goverment.
Do I think that employers should be required to protect their employees? No. Unless they ban said employees from arming themselves at work like the UW does.
Just more proof that you’re on your own out there folks. If they don’t screw it up by legislating your rights, they forget something.
A duty to protect employees if they disarm them?
Now THAT looks like something that the NRA should pursue. In the courts. With lawsuit after lawsuit until some Appeals Judge, somewhere makes it stick.
Gonna blog this one, thx for the idea.
BTW, on a strictly housekeeping note, Word Press seems to have turned off the ability to copy stuff from your posts to the clipboard, as one needs to quote you. This is not good, as it can lead to you being mis-quoted.
The authorities need to find out how he stole the gun he used in the murder. I can’t believe the original owner didn’t know it was stolen.
Actually, I believe Rowan was arrested at least once by Seattle PD, for DUI. But, since Seattle is a “sanctuary city” and doesn’t check immigration status, they never found out he was here illegally. I believe that was within the last year. So, if they had checked, they would have found the federal immigration/deportation warrant, and he could have been deported at that time.
That’s one (more?) death we can blame on Seattle’s “sanctuary city” policy.