Situational Awareness

[Cwi555]

Infowars has the incident from the shooters cell phone that killed the reporter this morning.
Anyone wants to see it can find it there.

One thing it makes graphically clear is the need for situational awareness.
It shows the gunman walking up on them, drawing down on her within 6 feet. He then backs off down a walk 90 degrees out from his original approach. He then walks up on them again raising the weapon when he was inside 8 or so feet. He pauses for a couple of seconds to get a better camera angle on the reporter then opens fire. She's hit immediately and tries to run away, the next rounds go into the camera man. Then a pause, then more shots.

All the time spent up until he opened fire they didn't see it. Oblivious right up to the time they were shot.

Situational awareness may have saved their lives.

[unseenone]

You can find it (you don't want to) on liveleak, no need to visit that loons web site.. I've watched it, it really is not something you need to watch. Very sad..

The problem in this case, is they were all totally focused on the job which is the nature of it. Reporters are always having to ignore distractions around them. I would think (hope) people are normally more aware than that, so I don't fault the victims here, and Alex Jones should mind his own business instead of sensationalizing it.

[Sacajawea]

The location is troublesome, IMO. This is small town, tourist-y USA. There is a known "training camp" nearby - but so far, the evidence points to just some person going off his nut and feeling entitled to "even the score". There have been too many of these lately, for me to think that's just all coincidence -- but trying to work out the hows & whys, is still very much speculation & woo-woo.

The "epidemic" of people simply losing it and going on a shooting spree is truly concerning. It is not, however, access to guns that is the problem here. It is all the contributing factors that result in someone committing to the decision that taking someone else's life (whether there is any connection to them, or not) come hell or high water that have me really suspicious about whether there is some coaching, or prompting or validation that feeds a sense of entitlement that moves a person from simple emotional anger - to action.

Be armed; practice; and as cwi said - also practice situational awareness. All times of day, everywhere. It is the world we live in now. Sad as that fact is.

[whydahdvr]

The whole situational awareness things goes way beyond a potential shooter situation. Years ago I worked at the Santa Fe Ski Area in Ski Patrol and other areas. I used to see what I called "low-altitude brain" - people not from the area (Santa Fe is at 7000 ft) doing really stupid stuff not just on the slopes but around the lift chairs and machinery. Most of the injuries with the lift equipment were people not paying attention to where they were.
The same goes for driving on the highway or anywhere.
I can see, though, that as a cameraman your eye is in the camera looking at what it sees, so unaware of what's going on behind you. Reporters are focussed on their subject - maybe before and after you would have situational awareness but when actually engaged in your live production your focus is elsewhere. Hind sight is 20-20 but in this situation the threat was pretty far from the realm of possibility. My only question is how did the shooter know to go to that location at that time? Was the live segment highlighted in advance?