Tag Archives: #Crime

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Hold them accountable! Why shouldn't a Parole Board which released a violent criminal early be punished when the criminal raped a young woman?

We have previously said that the problem is not, as the left tell us, “mass incarceration,” but that not enough people are incarcerated, for not a long enough time. We noted yesterday that had the criminal justice system treated Aramis Murray seriously in the multiple times he had been arrested between July 27, 2017 and February 22, 2018, he might have been behind bars on April 23, 2018, the day he murdered Jason Lemer Smith, and wouldn’t now be looking at spending 25 years behind bars. Had the criminal justice system treated Mr Murray seriously, Mr Smith might still be alive today.

In the end, the criminal justice system did Mr Murray no favors; by treating him leniently, they gave him the opportunity to get himself in worse trouble.

And so we come to the case of Cody Allen Arnett, whom we have previously mentioned. Mr Arnett was convicted for two robberies in Lexington, on August 7, 2015, and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. As early as June 26, 2018 he was recommended for parole, and was scheduled to be released on August 1, 2018. This would mean that he served a week less than three years for his fifteen year sentence. Within 76 days of his release, Mr Arnett was arrested for the forcible rape at knifepoint of a Georgetown College coed, at a time in which he could have and should have still been in prison. Mr Arnett had five violent felony offenses on his record. Mr Arnett was only able to rape his victim because the Parole Board let him out early.

Mr Arnett’s trial had been delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but he was finally brought before the bar in July of 2021.[1]I would have caught this story earlier, but the Lexington Herald-Leader, which reported on the original charge, never reported on Mr Arnett’s trial or conviction.

    Jury hands Arnett six consecutive life sentences

    By Kyle Woosley | Georgetown News-Graphic | July 30, 2021

    Cody Allen Arnett

    Cody Alan Arnett was sentenced to six consecutive life sentences after jury found him guilty on seven charges relating to the rape of a Georgetown College student in 2018.

    After less than two hours of deliberation, a jury found Arnett guilty on seven counts — one count of first-degree burglary, three counts of first-degree rape, two counts of first-degree sodomy and one count of first-degree tampering with physical evidence.

    Following the verdict, the jury went back into deliberation for 15 minutes and found Arnett guilty on an additional first-degree persistent felony offender charge. State law prohibits the jury of knowing prior convictions as it might prejudice the jury, therefore these charges were not presented prior to the other charges. Arnett had previously been convicted of three felonies.

    The trial concluded Tuesday afternoon after emotional testimony from the victim and her parents. Previously the victim’s roommates, first responders, investigators and forensic experts testified. Arnett also testified as his defense team’s one and only witness.

    As the verdict was read, Arnett was chewing gum and grinned when the persistent felony offender charge was read. Commonwealth Attorney Sharon Muse also said Arnett winked and smiled at the victim as he exited the court room following his sentencing.

    In her opening statement to the jury at sentencing, Muse said she was seeking maximum sentencing on each charge. Because Arnett was found guilty of the persistent felony offender charge, she was able to ask the jury to sentence him to life in prison on six of the seven charges he was facing. This excluded the tampering with physical evidence charge, which could only be a maximum sentence of 20 years. The jury went with this recommendation and gave Arnett the maximum 20-year sentence.

    Arnett’s defense team attempted to blame his rough childhood, having several family members and a close friend testifying during sentencing on his behalf. The defense begged for “empathy” and “mercy” to the jury.

Oh, the poor baby! He had a “rough childhood!” Well, now he’s going to have a rough rest of his worthless life, living behind bars and barbed wire, which is exactly what he deserves.

There’s more at the original, including a parole officer’s statement that, regardless of the sentence, Mr Arnett would be eligible for parole in twenty years. But, perhaps if the previous parole board hadn’t shown Mr Arnett “empathy” and “mercy,” he’d have still been in prison on September 23, 2018, when he broke into the coed’s apartment and raped her, repeatedly, at knifepoint. The victim would not have been harmed, not have been raped, and Mr Arnett would not be looking at spending the rest of his miserable life in jail.

The Kentucky Parole Board failed! They failed to protect the victim, and they did no favors for Mr Arnett. If they hadn’t let him out early, he would still be looking at a future in which he’d eventually be released. The Parole Board members who decided to release Mr Arnett, despite his previous, violent record, should be held accountable for their decision. Quite frankly, they need to be locked up right beside him!

As for Mr Arnett’s victim? She’s a strong young woman, who has come forth to fight!

    ‘I’m ready for my voice to be heard’: Georgetown rape survivor discusses trial and resilience

    Woman speaks publicly for first time since attack

    by Leigh Searcy | August 2, 2021 | 7:00 PM EDT | Updated: August 3, 2021 | 11:22 AM EDT

    GEORGETOWN (LEX 18) — In the nearly three years since a rape was reported at Georgetown College, the name of the woman who was attacked had not been released. Now, after the man accused was convicted on multiple counts, Ava Stokes says she wants to show the public — and others who’ve been through a similar nightmare — that she’s a survivor, not a victim.

    Leigh Searcy (L) interviews Ava Stokes. From LEX18.com. Click to enlarge.

    On the night of Sept. 23, 2018, Stokes, then an 18-year-old Georgetown College freshman, told police she was held at knife-point and raped multiple times by a stranger who wandered in through the unlocked door of her student housing unit.

    As is typical in sexual assault cases, Stokes’ name was kept largely private during the investigation and the trial that followed. A recent interview with LEX 18 was the first time she’s spoken about what happened publicly outside of a courtroom.

    “Now I’m ready for my voice to be heard,” Stokes said. “I want other survivors to know that you are allowed to be proud of yourself for surviving something like this, you’re allowed to feel angry and want justice.”

    Stokes survived not only the rape but the reliving of the gruesome details of that assault in front of a courtroom of people as she took the stand at 35-year-old Cody Arnett’s July jury trial.

    “I’m not gonna lie, that was the hardest thing I ever had to do, especially with my family in there and describing the awful things he did to me for hours,” Stokes told LEX 18.

There’s more at the original, including the video of Leigh Searcy’s interview with Miss Stokes. She’s a strong woman, and is trying to help other women who are victims of monsters like Mr Arnett. Miss Stokes survived the rape because she was able to seize the knife and she stabbed Mr Arnett a few times. As he fled the apartment, wounded, he was apprehended.

And Miss Stokes asks the obvious question: why did the Parole Board release Mr Arnett so early? Why did they release a man with five previous violent felony convictions and think he’d somehow straighten up and fly right? She didn’t ask the question I have asked: why shouldn’t the members of the Parole Board who decided to let that cretin out early be held accountable for the consequences of their decision? Why shouldn’t they be locked up right next to the violent criminal they set free, the rapist they helped to create?

A crime like this leaves all sorts of chaos in its wake. Miss Stokes has alleged that Georgetown College did not do enough to protect students, and her volleyball coaches and other staff wanted to minimize the fallout from the crime. Why, Heaven forfend! it might have discouraged some other potential students from matriculating there!

There have been a whole lot of people who have not done the right thing in this case, when the right thing to do has been so blatantly obvious.

References

References
↑1 I would have caught this story earlier, but the Lexington Herald-Leader, which reported on the original charge, never reported on Mr Arnett’s trial or conviction.
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Lock him up!

Aramis Murray, 30, is not your quintessential good guy. Despite his claim that it was self-defense, a jury in Fayette County convicted Mr Murray of murder:

    ‘Senseless act.’ Jury convicts man in Lexington murder despite self-defense argument

    by Jeremy Chisenhall | Wednesday, November 17, 2021 | 3:49 PM EST | Updated: Thursday, November 18, 2021 | 8:13 AM EST

    Aramis Murray, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

    A Fayette County jury on Wednesday convicted a man of murder in a Lexington shooting death despite the defendant’s claim that he fired in self-defense.

    Aramis Murray, 30, stood trial this week for murder in the death of 30-year-old Jason Lemer Smith in April 2018. Murray claimed self-defense, alleging that he believed Smith had a gun. But prosecutors said in court there’s no evidence to support Murray’s claim and this shooting was “another senseless act of gun violence.”

    The jury agreed with prosecutors and convicted Murray after several hours of deliberation Wednesday.

    Murray shot Smith on the front porch of Smith’s home, a residence on Corral Street where Murray had also been staying, according to court testimony. Prosecutors alleged that Smith was trying to confront Murray because Murray threatened his and Smith’s girlfriends with a gun. Murray had been arguing with the women and making threats to them all day, prosecutors said.

    Jurors had been told they could convict Murray of murder, second-degree manslaughter or reckless homicide if they found him guilty.

There’s more at the original. The mugshot in this article was not in the Herald-Leader website.

The Lexington Herald-Leader used to publish mugshots of accused criminals, and did so on April 23, 2018, before the adoption of the McClatchy Mugshot Policy. The newspaper used a slightly older mugshot, dated February 22, 2018, rather than the one taken the date of his reported arrest. The jail website also has mugshots of Mr Murray dated July 27, 2017, December 21, 2017, and December 28, 2017.

Mr Murray, it seems, had a bad habit of getting himself arrested. Sadly, whatever got him arrested on February 22, 2018, didn’t keep him behind bars on April 23, 2018, when he murdered Jason Smith. If he had been behind bars on that day, Mr Smith would (probably) still be alive today. More, Mr Murray would not be looking at spending the next 25 years of his miserable life, the sentence recommended by the jury, in prison. Lenient treatment, in the end, did Mr Murray no favor.

This is the problem with the left’s continual complaints about “mass incarceration.” The really bad guys are almost always the people previously treated leniently by the system, the people who could have, and should have, already been behind bars for a lesser term. when they committed the acts that got them the big time sentences.

The mugshot? Why of course the newspaper didn’t print the photo of a convicted killer! The photo of an accused, but not yet tried or convicted suspect, a white suspect, is still up on the newspaper’s website, because they engage in race-based reporting.

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Killadelphia A trauma nurse laments over all of the bodies which are brought into her emergency room

As I do every weekday morning, I checked the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page, and I saw that three more people had been sent untimely to their eternal rewards yesterday. 486 homicides ÷ 320 days elapsed = 1.51875 per day x 365 days = 554.34375 projected homicides for the year. With only 14 more killings needed to tie the record of 500, at the current rate that should happen in just 9 days, or on November 25th, which is Thanksgiving Day.

Philadelphia Inquirer writer Robert Moran reported, briefly, on one of the killings:

A 67-year-old woman was fatally shot during an attempted robbery inside a check-cashing store Tuesday afternoon in the city’s Ogontz section, police said.

About 1:10 p.m., the woman, who was believed to be the owner, was shot in the chest inside Any Checks Cashed at 5812 Old York Rd., which is next door to a day-care center. She was pronounced dead at the scene by medics.

That’s it, that’s all, a 67-year-old woman’s life, and death, reduced to two paragraphs. There were a couple more which told readers that the police had very little information thus far. The story had been superseded by others, and was not visible on the Inquirer’s website main page.

But it was this article, blurbed on that main page as “I wake up every day knowing that I will have to watch another Black man take his last breath. And over what?” that caught my attention, though the title, when I opened it, was different:

A trauma nurse’s letter to a Philly shooter | Opinion

I wish you would wait before you pick up that weapon. I wish you could come talk to me. I would’ve begged you not to do this.

by Ruqiyya Greer, For The Inquirer | Wednesday, November 17, 2021

Dear Gunman,

When the alarm goes off, I know that first responders are on the way with your target.

We stand outside, dressed in plastic gowns, gloves, and bonnets. We are sweating profusely as we wait for your target’s arrival. We hear the sirens from a distance. They get louder as they get closer. They race down the hill and come to an abrupt stop. We can smell the burning rubber of the tires. The door swings open and there lays your target, bloody and unconscious.

We struggle to pull his lifeless body, covered with bullet holes and blood, out of the car. It becomes a struggle to get him out as the moisture from the blood makes it difficult to get a tight grasp.

We get your target to the trauma bay as we empty several code carts full of medical supplies, injecting several lifesaving medications into his still body. Techs stand in line taking turns performing chest compressions. The trauma team cracks his chest open to manually compress his heart to keep what little blood he has left circulating.

After we have exhausted all measures, the attending doctor announces, “time of death.” The techs bag his cut-up clothes as well as his body. Two tags are applied, one to his big toe and the other to the outside of the body bag.

There’s more at the original, describing what Ruqiyya Greer, the author and a trauma nurse in the emergency room at Temple University Hospital, sees and feels, practically every day, on the job. And she points out what Mr Moran’s brief stories, the Inquirer in general,[1]We have noted previously Elizabeth Hughes, publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer, and her determination to make her newspaper “an anti-racist news organization,” has turned it into exactly … Continue reading and the Police Department figures, obscure, because it’s inconvenient reporting: the vast majority of the homicide victims in the City of Brotherly Love are young black males, sometimes men, and sometimes still boys.[2]The Philadelphia Tribune, a publication for the city’s black community, noted that, in 2020, black victims accounted for about 86% of the city’s 499 homicide victims, and 84% of the 2,236 … Continue reading

She concluded:

There’s so many times I want to walk away, but if I do, I will be deserting my community and my culture. I can’t do that. But these days it feels like I am a nurse in the middle of a war. I wake up every day knowing that I will have to watch another Black man take his last breath. And over what?

Our ancestors fought for our freedom; they were murdered for our freedom. I don’t think they risked it all for us to murder each other.

Please, before you pick up that gun again, placing your life at risk, risking your freedom and ending another life, talk to whoever plays a significant role in your life. A parent, uncle, pastor. You are about to make the worst mistake of your life.

I really don’t like quoting so many paragraphs from an Inquirer article, but Miss Greer’s concluding point is important: she is asking the potential shooters out there — people who will almost certainly never read her ‘letter’ anyway — to think before they act.

But they don’t think, at least they don’t think about the act itself. Oh, they may well think, and plot, and plan about how they are going to get away with it, but seem to give little thought or care about what will happen if they do get caught, very possibly spending the rest of their miserable lives locked up.

Miss Greer has been far more honest than most. While so many Philadelphia politicians want to blame the guns, she noted the people who “pick(ed) up that gun,” the people who shot, and frequently killed, other people, most often members of their own communities.

References

References
↑1 We have noted previously Elizabeth Hughes, publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer, and her determination to make her newspaper “an anti-racist news organization,” has turned it into exactly that, a newspaper more concerned with racial identity and sorting out its news coverage that way than it has been about the “public’s right to know.” The vast majority of homicide victims in Philadelphia are black, but when one black gang banger kills another black gang banger, it isn’t really news anymore, not to the Inquirer. Instead, the paper paid more attention to the accidental killing of Jason Kutt, a white teenager shot at Nockamixon State Park, an hour outside of the city. That’s four separate stories; how many do the mostly black victims get?
↑2 The Philadelphia Tribune, a publication for the city’s black community, noted that, in 2020, black victims accounted for about 86% of the city’s 499 homicide victims, and 84% of the 2,236 shootings; non-Hispanic black Americans make up only 38.3% of the city’s population. The current statistics for this year I have not been able to find.
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Philly ties for 3rd place!

It wasn’t really that much of a stretch to guess that 475 wouldn’t be the final homicide number for Thursday, and it wasn’t: the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page shows that 476 Philadelphians have been murdered so far this year, up from ‘just’ 428 on the same day last year. Last year being a leap year, the gang bangers had an extra day to hit that 428 number.

The numbers are ugly: 476 homicides in 315 days works out to 1.5111 per day, or a projected 551.5555, rounding up to 552 for the year.

With 50 days left in the year, and ‘only’ 24 murders needed to tie the all-time record of 500, set in 1990, the homicide rate would have to drop to slightly less than a third of what it is right now, and, at this point, only God could make that happen. At the current rate, the city should tie the all-time high in just 16 days, or Saturday, November 27th.

Mayor James Kenney (Democrat-Philadelphia), District Attorney Larry Krasner (Soros stooge-Philadelphia), and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw (Kenney Puppet-Philadelphia) have certainly done a fine, fine job, haven’t they?

But hey, Philadelphians must like all of those bodies stacked up like cordwood, because they just re-elected George Soros stooge District Attorney Larry Krasner. No one can say that they didn’t know what they were getting.

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Killadelphia

This brings the homicide total in the City of Brotherly Love to 475 for the year; one more, and Philadelphia ties 1989’s Bronze Medal for most murders! Of course, as of this writing, Thursday isn’t over, and the police could still report more killings.

    Nicetown fire that killed 2 ruled arson

    The fire occurred on the 1400 block of West Jerome Street shortly before 4 a.m. Thursday.

    by Robert Moran | Veterans’ Day, November 11, 2021

    A predawn house fire Thursday that killed two men in the city’s Nicetown section has been ruled an arson and is being investigated as a homicide case, police said.

    Firefighters and police responded to the blaze just before 4 a.m. on the 1400 block of West Jerome Street. Two men in their 50s were found in an upstairs bedroom and were transported to Temple University Hospital and Einstein Medical Center. Both were pronounced dead shortly before 5 a.m. Their names were not released.

    Investigators from the Philadelphia Fire Department and the ATF Arson Task Force found an accelerant was used inside the front door.

    Police said the motive for the arson was unknown.

One thing is certain: whoever started this fire didn’t care for anyone’s life. The 1400 block of West Jerome Street consists entirely of Philadelphia row houses. The Google Maps street view shows them as primarily brick buildings, presumably with brick firewalls between each unit, but there’s still plenty of century-old wood involved, and the arsonist could have burned down a whole side of the street.

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How gun control works Convicted felon tells police that he'd never be caught without a gun

Erich Storck. Photo by Nicholasville Police Department.

Were criminal stupidity an actual legal violation, Erich Storck would be guilty of it.

Mr Storck is a previously convicted felon, and, well, you can read it for yourself:

    Man who fired shots with police in his house said he’d ‘never be caught without a gun’

    by Karla ward | Tuesday, November 9, 2021 | 6:33 PM EDT

    Nicholasville police arrested a man who fired a gun inside his home multiple times while police were there talking with him.

    Police said they went to Erich Storck’s home on the 500 block of Courchelle Drive Monday evening in response to a call about shots fired in the area, according to a police uniform citation.

    When they arrived, Storck, 49, was inside. With three officers inside the home trying to talk to him, police said Storck “fired multiple bullets,” which police said put their lives in danger, as well as the lives of his neighbors.

    Police said two bullets exited Storck’s home, went through a neighbor’s window and lodged in the neighbor’s bathroom wall, which put the lives of the seven residents there “in substantial danger of death or serious physical injury.”

    Police said Storck’s possession of a firearm was also “a violation of his Kentucky DVO.”

    “When advised of this charge the above subject stated he would never be caught with out a gun,” police wrote in the uniform citation.

Naturally, the Lexington Herald-Leader did not publish Mr Storck’s mugshot, but it was easy enough to find.

This is why gun control will never work. Mr Storck is a previously convicted felon, and thus it is illegal for him to have a firearm. He was under a domestic violence order, which also prohibited him from having a firearm. But he was a drug dealer — the police got a warrant after seeing pot plainly visible in his house, and a more thorough search found plenty of evidence — and drug dealers, even small time ones, find firearms to simply be a necessary tool of their trade.

Mr Storck, allegedly, of course, reacted as a smoked up drug criminal would act: stupidly. But his statement shows that criminals won’t obey gun control laws, regardless of how the left think gun control laws will work.

Of course, there’s more. With his criminal history, he could not have purchased a firearm legally, so someone else must have violated the law in getting it for him. That guy might never be found.

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The Lexington Herald-Leader mugshot policy They love to print photos of Capitol kerfufflers being sentenced to just probation, but hide the photos of convicted sex offenders!

The Lexington Herald-Leader adheres to the McClatchy Mugshot Policy, which begins:

Publishing mugshots of arrestees has been shown to have lasting effects on both the people photographed and marginalized communities. The permanence of the internet can mean those arrested but not convicted of a crime have the photograph attached to their names forever. Beyond the personal impact, inappropriate publication of mugshots disproportionately harms people of color and those with mental illness.

Though I disagree with that policy, its basis is clearly and explicitly stated protection of those charged with crimes, but not yet convicted. Why, then, is what my best friend used to call the Herald-Liberal not publishing the mugshots of those convicted of serious crimes?

2 sentenced to prison time over ‘very disturbing’ sexual assault of a Lexington child

Crystal Secrest. Photo by Fayette County Detention Center, via Lexington Herald-Leader, December 8, 2018.

by Jeremy Chisenhall | Monday, November 8, 2021 | 12:04 PM EDT | Updated: 4:04 PM EDT

A Lexington woman and an Indiana man will each spend more than a decade in prison after entering pleas to sex crimes against a child.

Crystal Annette Secrest and Patrick Christopher Noble were both sentenced in Fayette Circuit Court Friday after pleading guilty in the same case; Secrest was accused of repeatedly forcing the victim to perform oral sex on Noble. Judge Thomas L. Travis, who sentenced Secrest to 16 years in prison and Noble to 18 years in prison on Friday, said the case was a “very disturbing situation.”

“I must say this is one of the more disturbing things that I’ve had the occasion to see and read about while I’ve been here on the bench,” Travis said prior to imposing Secrest’s sentence.

There’s more at the original. Miss Secrest is 32 years old, so if she serves the 13 years remaining on her full sentence — she was credited for time served since her arrest in December of 2018 — she won’t get out of prison until she’s 45 years old. I would like to think that she’ll serve the full term, but don’t really have much confidence of that.

Patrick Noble, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, a public record.

Then there’s Patrick Noble. Mr Noble has been locked up since March 12, 2019, so he’s already served 2¾ years, of his 18 year sentence. Since he’s already 56 years old, we can at least hope he won’t be released until he’s 71 years old.

Mr Noble entered an Alford plea, in which he did not admit guilt, but conceded that there was enough evidence against him to be convicted in a jury trial. Nevertheless, Mr Noble maintains his innocence, and his attorney, Shannon Brooks-English, said that he would appeal. Rosa Noble, his wife, said that she supported her husband 100%, and she knew that he did not commit the crimes.

Uh huh, right.

So, why did the Herald-Leader, which wasted bandwidth on a stock illustration, not publish the mugshots of these two malefactors? Surely their offenses were far greater than those of some of the Capitol kerfufflers, people whose crimes were so heinous that they were allowed to plead guilty to a single misdemeanor charge, the maximum sentence for which is six months, and some of whom have received probation!

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Court-ordered idiocy

So far, 11:30 AM EDT, the Lexington Herald-Leader has nothing on this story, but if they do publish it, watch them not publish the offender’s mugshot, not try to help the police catch the malefactor.

    Lexington Police search for missing inmate

    By: Web Staff | Posted at 10:50 AM, Nov 07, 2021 and last updated 10:50 AM, Nov 07, 2021

    Alan Tatman. Photo by: Division of Community Corrections.

    LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — Lexington Police are searching for a missing inmate named Alan Tatman.

    According to the Division of Community Corrections, Tatman did not return to jail on Saturday after a court-ordered pass.

    In a press release, Lieutenant Richard Frans said Tatman was released at 9 a.m. and was supposed to return at 5 p.m. but failed to do so.

    Frans said Tatman is being held on two counts of theft by unlawful taking and one count of failure to appear for a charge of burglary in the third degree.

    He is also being held on two warrants for probation violations out of Jessamine County.

    Tatman is 47-years-old, 5-foot-7, and weighs 185 pounds, has brown hair and hazel eyes.

Mr Tatman is already a convicted criminal, as the fact he was being held for probation violations attests. But, more incredibly, why would any judge issue a “court-ordered pass” to someone being held on a failure to appear warrant? Isn’t that pretty much the definition of a flight risk?

Any items he steals, any damage he causes, and any expenses he incurs in the police locating and apprehending him should be borne by whichever oh-so-wise judge ordered a day pass for him. Hold the judge accountable!

——————————-

Update: 5:53 PM EDT

As predicted, when the Herald-Leader did finally cover the story, in an article by reporter Jeremy Chisenhall time stamped at 4:45 PM, the fugitive’s mugshot, which was freely available to it, did not appear in the article, as screen captured on the right; you can click on the image to enlarge it.

Mr Tatman is not someone who has simply been charged but not convicted; he has previous criminal convictions. Now he’s a fugitive from justice, and if WLEX-TV, Channel 18, the NBC affiliate in Lexington could show his mugshot, and perhaps have some random citizen spot the fugitive and recognize him as such, why couldn’t what my best friend used to call the Herald-Liberal? Perhaps, just perhaps, a reader of the newspaper’s website might be the one top spot the man and call the cops.

The Herald-Leader is more concerned with protecting the anonymity of convicted criminals and fugitives from justice than with the safety of its readership.

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Murder number 33 in Lexington Just one more to tie the record . . . with eight weeks left in the year!

On October 16th, we noted Lexington’s 30th homicide, which tied the then-record set in 2019. Then, on October 27th, we reported on number 31, followed by number 32 on the 29th.

So, now it’s November 5th, and the city is up to homicide number 33:

LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — Lexington Police responded to a shots fired call after 2:30 a.m. Friday morning at a house on West Main Street.

Police are investigating this incident as a homicide, which they say occurred upstairs in an apartment.

The owner of Trifecta, the location where the shooting happened, told LEX 18 that the victim who died upstairs is not a tenant there. “We appreciate everyone’s concern and know everything will be okay. We’re cooperating with authorities to do whatever we can to solve the case,” the owner said.

That’s four homicides in twenty days, well above the current annual rate of one every 9½ days. The city is on pace for 39 homicides now, which would shatter the current record of 34, set just last year.

But, if you get pissed off at someone in Lexington, you might as well shoot him! Out of 113 active shooting investigations — and, as of this writing, the Lexington Police Department last updated the shootings investigations page on October 28 — only 12 are listed as solved. Of the homicides, only 12 out of the 31 listed — that page is behind on updates, too — have been solved.