Gunman kills three at a Target store in Austin, Texas
(NYT) — A gunman killed three people outside a Target store in Austin, Texas, on Monday afternoon, then stole a succession of cars before he was apprehended, police officials said.
Two of the victims were pronounced dead at the scene, shortly after emergency responders arrived around 2:20 p.m. Central time. A third person was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital, and a fourth was injured.
Police said the 32-year-old gunman then hijacked a car from the parking lot, crashed it, and stole another car. Austin police officers found him in South Austin and took him into custody after shocking him with a stun gun. Among the individuals shot was the driver of the car the gunman stole first, police said.
The man, whose name has not been released, had a history of mental health problems and has previously been placed on emergency holds, according to Lisa Davis, chief of the Austin Police Department. Such holds typically occur when individuals face a mental health crisis and pose a risk to themselves or others.
“This is a very sad day for Austin, a very sad day for us all,” Davis said.
Marco Torres, 20, a store associate who handles online orders, said he was working inside the store when he heard two gunshots from outside.
“I heard the gunshots loud and clear,” he said. “At first, I thought it was a huge prank.
Torres then ran toward the front of the store “to see what was going on,” he said. As employees and shoppers realized the gravity of the situation, he said, those inside began “running for their lives” toward the rear exits.
Space rock that punched through roof almost struck resident
(NYT) — More than 50,000 meteorites have been found on Earth, scientists say, but only one has been documented to have hit a person.
On June 26, when people across several states in the South reported seeing a fireball in daylight, there nearly was a second instance.
Multiple fragments of that meteorite punched through the roof of a home in McDonough, Georgia, just south of Atlanta, dented laminate flooring and missed the man living there by 14 feet. Those pieces have now been determined to be older than Earth itself.
Scott Harris, a planetary geologist at the University of Georgia, examined 23 grams — less than 1 ounce — of meteorite fragments recovered from a piece the size of a cherry tomato. A fragment left a dent in the floor about twice the size of a quarter.
The meteorite formed 4.56 billion years ago, about 20 million years before Earth did, according to Harris’ findings.
“It belongs to a group of asteroids in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter that we now think we can tie to a breakup of a much larger asteroid about 470 million years ago,” he said in a news release Friday.
Most space rocks break apart in Earth’s atmosphere. They disintegrate while traveling at tens of thousands of miles per hour. The bright flare that people saw on June 26 was a result of the pressure on the meteorite exceeding its strength.
A meteoroid that survives a trip through the atmosphere and hits the ground is called a meteorite. Less than 5% of the original object — between the size of a pebble and a fist — usually hits the ground, NASA scientists say.