Peter Selis (1967-2017) was an armed White man shot dead by police in the US after pointing a gun at them – and having shot seven people at a birthday pool party. This was on Sunday April 30th 2017 in San Diego, California at the La Jolla Crossroads Apartments.
Of those he shot, one died, Monique Clark, a 35-year-old mother of three. The rest are expected to live.
Race: Selis was White. Of those he shot:
- five were Black (including Monique Clark),
- one was Hispanic, and
- one was White.
He may have thought the White woman he shot was Black: police thought she was Black at first. Witnesses say Selis did not shoot at two White women who were closer to him, but at Blacks who were farther away. He told Whites not to help Monique Clark. The gut feeling of those who were there is that it was about race.
The police said:
“We have zero information that this was racially motivated.”
The police say he was “distraught” and “despondent” over the break-up with his girlfriend a few days before.
His family said he was really upset over the break-up but did not think he would take it this far. He had taken his two daughters to breakfast that morning and seemed fine.
A woman called “Sue” said:
“He had a problem with depression his whole life and when the alcohol took over, he would just lose it as far as himself. But he would never hurt anyone else.”
Since he is White, his state of mind matters.
He had no known police record. He had a history of drinking and gambling, had filed for bankruptcy twice, in 2009 and 2015. He had a .45 SIG Sauer handgun registered to his name, presumably the gun he used in the shooting. He was an auto mechanic for Mossy Ford in San Diego, making $74,676 a year in 2015.
He did not seem to know the people at the largely Black pool party but was invited to join them.
One witnesses said:
“there’s a view of the pool area where we could see the shooter sitting there with a beer in one hand and the gun in the other. He looked pretty relaxed.”
In fact there is a picture of him sitting by the pool with a gun in one hand and something else in the other hand:
Witnesses say he shot dozens of time and reloaded at least once.
The police say that he:
“even called the girlfriend on his cell phone during the bloodshed because he wanted her to ‘listen in’ and be a part of the senseless violence.”
A police helicopter saw several people down. When the police arrived:
“suspect was reloading and shooting into the party goers for this pool party. The sergeant and two officers went to the pool area, confronted the suspect, who was still armed”
“The suspect pointed the gun at our officers and three of our officers fired on the suspect and the suspect went down and the suspect is deceased.”
Thanks to Solitaire for suggesting this post.
– Abagond, 2017.
Sources: mainly Heavy.com, 7 San Diego (family), 7 San Diego (race). Images from Google Images.
See also:
- swimming pools and race
- White male shooter (not counting police):
- James Holmes – the Batman shooter, also from metro San Diego
- Robert Dear
- Craig Stephen Hicks
- Wade Michael Page
- Dylann Roof
- Basically Good
560
Makes me wonder if his girlfriend broke up with him because she discovered he was a racist. I can imagine her showing sympathy for Black lives matter and him disagreeing.
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that’s crazy, he looks like tony soprano sitting there by the pool
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Nobody noticed that there was a white man with a gun in their midst. In this day and age nobody noticed this? Oh, never mind.
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The Monique Clark that this punk killed was fine too (Not that it really matters)
He went over the edge and started shooting people, most of them black and told all the whites to run or he’ll shoot them too,
This not a coincidence.
But the police said the shooting was not “racially charged”
That’s just the
He was invited in offered food and he shoots them ? We have to be on Alert when an unknown white man wants to hang with black ppl. First Dylan Roof now this.
Black ppl better strap the f*ck up and get ready. There aren’t going to be too many more warnings.
I don’t get mad at a pig for being a pig. It’s just who they are. History books have shown us how they but ppl still want to hold hands and be !”all whites aren’t bad”
No major news talking about it. Let that sink in.
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@Ben Munday
+1000. White privilege at work.
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@Ben Munday
Nobody noticed that there was a white man with a gun in their midst. In this day and age nobody noticed this? Oh, never mind.
its hard to visualize. did he produce the gun after entering the party? is the image from the middle of the shooting spree? they say he was sitting while shooting which is hard to imagine. people would have scattered from where he sat at the first shot.
haven’t determined if its a racial hate crime. couldn’t be anything else
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@TheHipHopRecords
“He was invited in offered food and he shoots them ?”
+1000. That pretty much sums up black peoples’ hospitality being taken advantage of since ancient Kemet.
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i guess the four so called gunshot victims who were no identified by race are white? very wierd way of presenting a basic count and identification of people!
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@ v8driver
I’m not sure where you’re getting that from? The article you linked to described all the victims by race (although as Abagond noted, one of the women originally identified as African American (including in your linked article) is actually white).
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@ Nomad
“is the image from the middle of the shooting spree?”
That’s what I’m thinking. From what I’ve seen of eyewitness reports, they say he pulled out the gun and started shooting after he’d been invited to the party. I don’t think he was just sitting there with the gun in open view beforehand, but I’m still somewhat unclear on the timeline.
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“Since he is White, his state of mind matters.”
Ah yes, the “troubled individual” excuse that is used for White mass murderers. “Distraught”, “despondent” and “depressed”, but “he would never hurt anyone”. Lots of tea, sympathy and violins for this cold-blooded killer.
If a Black person had committed such a horrific crime against White victims, every news outlet in the country would have the crime scene on continuous loop. There would be photos of the murderer looking dumb or dangerous with his hair standing all over his head and his skin tone darkened for greater effect.
There would be wholesome photos of the shooting victims and video clips of their tearful family members, expressing shock, outrage and grief.
Local, state and national politicians would go on about “the culture of violence” in the Black community. Trump would again threaten to declare martial law in the Black communities nationwide. Rightwing pundits would yell that the murderer was a member of Black Lives Matter and the shooting was their fault.
In this case, the murderer was White and his targets mostly Black and Latinx, so the “troubled individual” is the primary story here. His victims don’t matter.
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“”There were eight victims that were transported and four of the victims were African-American females who were suffering from gunshot wounds that were taken to area hospitals, two African-American males were taken to an area hospital suffering from gunshot wounds, one Hispanic male suffering from a gunshot wound taken to an area hospital and then one African-American male fleeing the area broke his arm when he was fleeing the gunfire,” Zimmerman said.”
idk i got a lot on my mind right now i am going to sit down
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@ v8driver
ODAAT
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http://m.nydailynews.com/news/crime/king-trump-doesn-care-white-shooter-calif-pool-party-article-1.3124100
“…. If Peter Selis was a Muslim, Trump would’ve already tweeted about this by now.
If Peter Selis was an immigrant or a refugee, Sean Spicer would’ve held an early press conference on this and Trump would’ve gone on a bigoted tweetstorm about needing money to build the wall.
If Peter Selis was black, the conservative trope about black-on-black crime would be yelled from the rooftops from coast to coast.
But none of that is the case. Instead, we have a good old fashioned white man, reportedly with a beer in one hand and a loaded gun in the other, randomly shooting people of color.
So, Trump says nothing. No hotlines are being created to report racist white men. No executive orders are being signed to protect people from the scourge of white supremacy.
And at least one reason Trump is not speaking out on the violence of white supremacy in this country is because they are among his most devoted supporters. Right there on the floor level of Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania this weekend were reportedly members of a hate group. They weren’t in disguise. They had their gear on and were looking as menacing as ever….
And so here we are — with victims of yet another mass shooting in America left to put all the broken pieces back together again, and the elected leader of our nation seeming like he couldn’t care less because the victims and the shooter don’t quite match the racial and religious profile of Trump’s bigoted worldview.”
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@resw
+1000. That pretty much sums up black peoples’ hospitality being taken advantage of since ancient Kemet.
Build a Wall.
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yup
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I read about this over the weekend and when I read they offered him food and they still got shot. I am saddened by the death of the people at the pool. May they Rest In Peace. This is a sick, sad, world.
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Yeah because depression makes you kill. rolls eyes
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It’s no longer safe to mingle and socialize in public. Stay home read a book.
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@sharina
Ridiculous. Depressed people aren’t homocidal but they’re willing to suggest that to make this guy look better.
Humanization of white psychopaths and dehumanization of black VICTIMS is always the theme. You never see words like “savage” and “thug” used in reference to to white people who commit these crimes. Right away the violins start to play as they search for sob stories in the killers’ pasts to mitigate their vile actions. Yet black kids who are killed for “minding their own business while black” have their pasts dissected for any minor incidents to try to paint them as criminals.
This is not really surprising though. The universe is formed like a fractal where structures repeat self similarly at different levels of scale. It’s easy to notice, for example, that atoms seem like smaller scale solar systems and the pattern of veins on a leaf looks like the tree trunk and its branches. On historical and group scales white people, collectively, have demonized the victims of their aggression. On the smaller scale of interpersonal crimes, we see the same pattern of behavior repeated.
African cultures, traditionally, have recognized how pervasive fractals are in natural organization and developed ways of seeing the world based on this. Here’s an example from a university course on some of the parallels. http://csdt.rpi.edu/african/African_Fractals/ It is easier for us to see fractal organization on a smaller scale [eg. our individual cells are living organisms within our larger unified sense of self] than to realize that we are patterns in a larger fractal. Yet this is exactly the territory into which many African spiritual insights delve. Applying it to the collective behavior of white people towards others I see a constant personality at work. As resw said, since ancient Egypt. There is no changing it, just recognizing who it is and acting strategically for our own good.
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Origin pointed out fractals.
“Applying it to the collective behavior of white people towards others I see a constant personality at work.”
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10103061037233643&id=200034
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@ resw
I think it’s been made crystal clear by this point that a peaceful coexistence with whites is tenuous, at best, and practically suicidal at worst. And yet we persist, partly due to an all-too-forgiving nature forged through our past relationships with whites out of sheer self-preservation, a program that continues to run well after support for the software ended eons ago.
It’s time for black Americans to start building protective barriers between themselves and their white counterparts in recognition of the dangers befalling them. For instance, don’t invite strange, random white people whose mental state you’re not aware of and can’t ascertain into your private functions. The whole point of a private function is to keep people you don’t want out of them.
Black ppl better strap the f*ck up and get ready. There aren’t going to be too many more warnings.
Sadly, a lot of people are going to ignore them until it’s a quarter past too late. Then they’ll care, but it won’t help them one bit.
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@Origin
Couldn’t agree more. Although it is common place for white people to claim mental illness, I have had the pleasure of seeing it on smaller, everyday scales. There is this white female in my clinical psych program who is constantly using her schizo, bipolar, anxiety etc. as an excuse to be a liar, racist, and verbally abusive. All while claiming to be a victim of racism. I openly call her crazy, yes, but I don’t like the idea of her hiding behind her “crazy” to excuse the real issues. There are other black students who allow her to hide behind it without addressing her. I did and she was verbally abusive, then had the nerve to believe we were going to “be friends” after that because I later contacted her. My means of contacting her were to read her for filth. Not to apologize for my honesty.
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@ Sharina
Is this a client or a student?
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@sharina
Yeah it’s typical. White people are good so there must be some special reason behind their bad behavior. For example, now that white people are hooked on opioids at a staggering rate we’re hearing how addiction is an illness that needs to be treated. When black people became addicts it was just because something was wrong with black people and they needed to be imprisoned as part of a war on drugs. Karma has this one.
@Mack
I rediscovered a book I had packed away called “Two Thousand Seasons” by Ayi Kweh Arma. I was flipping through it and came upon this passage which I thought was strong. The context is that it is the utterance of a seer named Anoa:
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@Solitaire
She is a student. Which is the scary part. This woman could go on to treat other mentally ill people and I use treat lightly because she will likely make them worse.
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@ Sharina
Ugh. That’s exactly what I was afraid of and why I asked.
Does your program have any sort of diversity requirement (or even optional)? What I mean is a course that would cover things like cross-cultural awareness with clients of different ethnic/racial/immigrant backgrounds, LGBTQ issues, physical disabilities, etc.?
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@Solitaire
Yes. We have a mandatory class dedicated to it and many of our assignments center around it just to pass. Yet she is so blinded that even those classes would amount to nothing for her.
She talks about being a victim of racism, but when you ask her on details of incidents she claims she doesn’t want to talk about it. This is the same female who told all her family business about her daughter being a crack head and abusive to her.
My last straw with her was when she kept saying she witnessed BLM being racist to whites by telling all whites to.move to the back. I asked her where this was and when and she kept saying she didn’t remember. Until I looked it up and presented the information to her. I kindly asked why she lied because I was concerned. She flat out said she did not lie because she did see it on tv. Yet she had so much trouble saying that is where she saw it because she wanted people to believe she was there and a victim of racism. She is manipulative.
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@ Sharina
I’m glad to hear about the mandatory course but yes: nothing is going to get through to someone like her. I was asking more on general principle. It tells me there’s at least some effort and awareness within the academic department as opposed to none whatsoever.
She definitely sounds like someone who should not be pursuing a career in mental health. Maybe she’ll flunk out?
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@ Origin
Thank you for sharing those passages.
2000 seasons is approximately 500 years in temperate zones. Ayi Kweh Arma’s words about the importance of reciprocity are quite thought provoking.
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@Afrofem
No problem.
It spoke to me in that moment. As he said, the destroyer’s holes will, to paraphrase, ‘be taking many of you up to the last day we reach the lip and leave them behind’. This is the sad truth that we see up to this day but there is an underlying optimism as well.
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@ Origin
I agree, there is optimism in the long view.
Just remembering how long Africans, Indigenous Australians, Native Americans and Southeast Asians managed their own affairs, cultures and development (40,000 years plus on average) makes you realize how brief this period of European/Global North dominance is in the scheme of things.
There was a barbarous beginning, a brutal middle and (someday soon) a blessed end. Then the cycle will begin again….
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@Afrofem
“There was a barbarous beginning, a brutal middle and (someday soon) a blessed end. Then the cycle will begin again….”
Yes. I suppose there will always be a flowering and decline but here’s to higher peaks and less precipitous valleys. Becoming “property” is a situation to which we must never return.
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@sharinalr Depression doesn’t usually make you kill, but, unfortunately, some antidepressants can have such effect…
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George,
Depression alone doesn’t make you kill period. People with depression become withdrawn and suicidal, but not homicidal. Anytime a depressed person kills, then they have more than depression and were already homicidal prior. Depression is the easy mental issue that people push because it is relatable and garners sympathy. 6.7 or 15 millions Americans have it.
Some anti-depressants have that as a possible side effect, but with 15 million people suffering from it you would expect more homicidal people. Yet you don’t. What you see is a bunch of whites using mental illness as an excuse to kill people while taking the least amount of responsibility possible. Prime example, we all take medications with side effects (some that actually can cause violent tendencies) but we don’t experience all that are possible. We aren’t killing. Studies found medications increase the tendency to act out which would indicate that individual had already laid the groundwork.
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@ Origin
“Becoming “property” is a situation to which we must never return.”
Yes.
People of African descent may not be the subject group in the next cycle.
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(I’m commenting late here because Abagond’s posts went missing from my inbox for about 6 months & I just discovered those & another blog were accidentally blocked on WordPress).
It’s astonishing that this was not widely reported. I’m just reading it now here.
It does bring to mind the horror in South Carolina (during which my childhood friend’s young daughter’s friend was the little girl hiding in the Church office whilst her father was murdered w/ the other parishioners) & the matter of hospitality repaid w/ evil.
Given the depth of this tragedy I don’t want to make my comment here about my own experiences: I will only say that I concur w/ what many of you have written here about hospitality & getting burned & that after years & years I’ve noticed that many Euro-Americans expect one to earn their trust & affection — whereas we give hospitality straight away & it sometimes is then taken away later only after getting burned. It’s basically the opposite. Styles of trust are learned so early it’s difficult to change.
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