Nearly 10 months since the original 1/4/12 Ogden City shootout, the long awaited Matthew Stewart preliminary hearing kicks off this morning in Ogden's 2nd District Court. Following a 7:45 a.m. Keep the Peace support rally, the three-day hearing is scheduled to begin at 8:30 a.m., in the "largest courtroom in Weber County."
The Standard-Examiner has been all over this story during the past couple of days:
- Stewart supporters to rally before preliminary hearing
- 17 witnesses planned for Matthew Stewart hearing
- Stewart preliminary hearing moves to bigger room
Update 10/31/12 7:52 p.m: Here's today's first post-day 1 preliminary hearing feedback, via the Help Matthew Stewart support site:
Nothing yet from either the Standard or the Trib.
Update 11/1/12 7:30 a.m.: The Standard follows up yesterday's stories with four new post-Day One Tim Gurrister writeups:
- Prosecution paints picture of Stewart blazing away as officers retreated
- Francom was shot 6 times after running out of bullets
- Roy officer next to testify in Stewart prelim
- Only 8 protesters show up for Stewart rally
Added bonus: the S-E and Trib "message boards" are predictably goin' nuts.
Curious new facts emerge from the testimony to the effect that officers believed that Stewart's "house was a “grow house” with no one living there, just visitors tending the marijuana plants growing in the basement," which seems to fly in the face of the earlier-reported and obvious fact that officers knew that Stewart resided at the residence.
The hearing resumes this morning at 8:30 a.m.
1 comment:
Ogden's Carnival Barkers yall...There's irony, tradgedy and a more than a few forgotten stories on the way to proving Stewart a 'cop killer' in the same meme as expected in bringing down what are the real baddies we expect to find on our borders; the gangland invasion Utah openly invites into the state under a forensic pale of 'some one elses humanitarianism' turning out to be just a fancy name for amnsety....First - a year prior - one of the two SWAT sticks videotaped their own version of 'botched murder for hire' in a nighttime raid and execution of a 42 y/o Ogden father - as he crouched behind an entry door, golf club in hand, his wife and 3 y/o daughter watching the botched and misinformed raid while he was drilled in the head with an MP5 round. How irony has now shown its face in the fact that every of the officers in that earlier raid, have now been purportedly shot by the lone Stewart in the second botched raid - all 5? Isn't irony just amazing when it doesn't follow or fall in line with the crooked pen strokes from an over ambitious prosecuting attorney bent on something just short of justice in this case?Then there's the embellishment of making officer Francom the much overplayed 'accidental hero' because the ballistics reports wouldn't support, nor stretch truth in telling it straight and righteous to Ogden residents. How much easier it became to cite the words 'pot smoker' and 'veteran' as the war cry in building that bon fire to cook away all the truth a DA and prosecutor paraded as justice. The rush to make Jared Francom the newest poster-boy of this tradgedy became a literal Brigham Young boulevard parade stretching from Ogden to what should be hell and back in the overflowing, teary eyed adulation and honors deserved of a 30/y/o officer more likely killed under a hail of freindly fire than a lone marajuana crazed gunman having been first 'informed on' by a former ex girlfreind!The tradgedy here is that Ogden's neuvo fathers - and Utah's for that matter - never once for any reason held such a festooned suspension of reality forming the basis for a parade honoring 'fallen heroes' for any of the war wounded and dead coming back from these latest two lost wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ironically, Ogden closed ranks on reality. It rushed with such urgency to create the acciental hero in Francom's tragic death in order to honor the good works of our policemen and women that day while inconveniently disposing of the real tradgedy of misapropriated manpower from a malfeasant management leaving us the recriminations of officer Francoms untimely and tragic death.
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