A6 WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 7, 2019 LATIMES.COM
DAYTON, Ohio — Facing
pressure to take action after
the latest mass shooting in
the U.S., Ohio’s Republican
governor urged the GOP-led
state Legislature on Tues-
day to pass laws requiring
background checks for
nearly all gun sales and al-
lowing courts to restrict fire-
arms access for people per-
ceived as threats.
Gov. Mike DeWine said
during a news conference
Tuesday that Ohio needed
to do more while balancing
people’s rights to own fire-
arms and have due process.
He outlined a series of legis-
lative actions he wants the
Legislature to take up to ad-
dress mental health and gun
violence.
“We can come together to
do these things to save lives,”
DeWine said.
His calls for action could
be an uphill battle for the
Legislature, which has given
little consideration this ses-
sion to those and other gun
safety measures already in-
troduced by Democrats.
DeWine’s Republican prede-
cessor, John Kasich, also un-
successfully pushed for a so-
called red-flag law on re-
stricting firearms for people
considered threats.
Police say there was
nothing in the Dayton shoot-
er’s background to prevent
him from buying the firearm
he used.
The shooting outside a
strip of nightclubs early
Sunday and another mass
shooting in El Paso over the
weekend left a combined to-
tal of 31 people dead and
more than 50 others injured
in less than 24 hours.
Police have said 24-year-
old Connor Betts was wear-
ing a mask and body armor
when he opened fire with an
AR-15-style gun. If all the
magazines he had with him
were full, which hasn’t been
confirmed, he would have
had a maximum of 250
rounds, said Police Chief
Richard Biehl.
“To have that level of
weaponry in a civilian envi-
ronment is problematic,”
Biehl added.
Betts had no apparent
criminal record as an adult
and police said there was
nothing that would have
prevented him from buying a
gun. Ohio law bars anyone
convicted of a felony as an
adult, or convicted of a ju-
venile charge that would
have been a felony if they
were 18 or older, from buying
firearms.
Two former classmates
told the Associated Press
that Betts was suspended
during their junior year at
Bellbrook High School after
a “hit list” was found
scrawled in a school bath-
room.
That followed an earlier
suspension after Betts came
to school with a list of female
students he wanted to sexu-
ally assault, according to the
two classmates, a man and a
woman who are both now 24
and spoke on condition of
anonymity out of concern
they might face harassment.
Others remembered how
he tried to intimidate class-
mates.
“It’s baffling and horrible
that somebody who’s been
talking for 10 years about
wanting to shoot people
could easily, so easily, get ac-
cess to a military-grade
weapon and that much
ammo,” said Hannah
Shows, a former high school
classmate who remembered
seeing Betts look at people
and imitate shooting atthem. “He was someone who
enjoyed making people
afraid.”
Former Bellbrook High
classmate Addison Brickler
rode the bus with Betts and
said he taunted her regu-
larly.
“He was the bully,” Brick-
ler told the AP. “He used to
make fun of me on the bus,
talk about my weight, make
me feel bad about myself. He
would laugh and think it was
funny, joke about it. We
thought it was a normal
thing.”
But the seemingly nor-
mal heckling turned scary
one day when she said two
police officers pulled Betts
off the bus during her first
few weeks of high school.
When she arrived home that
day, her mom sat her and her
brother down to tell her the
school principal had called
— they had been named on
Betts’ hit list.
Betts disappeared from
the halls of Bellbrook High.
Students were offered coun-
seling, teachers checked on
kids, and extra police offi-
cers were on hand. Brickler
said Betts later returned to
the school.Others that had encoun-
ters with Betts painted a dif-
ferent picture.
Brad Howard told re-
porters in Bellbrook on Sun-
day that he knew Betts from
preschool through their high
school graduation.
“Connor Betts that I
knew was a nice kid. The
Connor Betts that I talked
to, I always got along with
well,” Howard said.
Bellbrook-Sugarcreek
Schools wouldn’t comment
and refused to release infor-
mation about Betts, citing
legal protections for student
records.
Bellbrook Police Chief
Doug Doherty said he and
his officers had no previous
contact with Betts and wer-
en’t aware of any history of
violence. Sugarcreek Town-
ship police said the only re-
cords they had on Betts were
from a 2015 traffic citation.
They noted without further
explanation that Ohio law
allows sealed juvenile court
records to be expunged after
five years or when the person
involved turns 23.
Still unknown is whether
Betts targeted any of the vic-
tims, including his 22-year-old sister, Megan, the young-
est of the dead.
“It seems to just defy be-
lievability he would shoot his
own sister, but it’s also hard
to believe that he didn’t rec-
ognize it was his sister, so we
just don’t know,” Biehl said.
Authorities identified the
other dead as Monica Brick-
house, 39; Nicholas Cumer,
25; Derrick Fudge, 57; Thom-
as McNichols, 25; Lois
Oglesby, 27; Saeed Saleh, 38;
Logan Turner, 30; and Bea-
trice N. Warren-Curtis, 36.
Of the more than 30 peo-
ple injured, at least 14 had
gunshot wounds; others
were hurt as people fled, city
officials said. Eleven re-
mained hospitalized Mon-
day, Fire Chief Jeffrey Payne
said.
While the gunman was
white and six of the nine
killed were black, police said
the speed of the rampage
made any discrimination in
the shooting seem unlikely.
It all happened within 30
seconds, before police offi-
cers stationed nearby fatally
shot Betts.
Any attempt to suggest a
motive so early in the inves-
tigation would be irresponsi-ble, Biehl said.
The El Paso and Dayton
killings have contributed to
an especially deadly year for
mass killings in the U.S. A
database by the Associated
Press, USA Today and
Northeastern University
shows that there have been
23 mass killings so far this
year, claiming the lives of 131
people. By comparison, 140
people died in mass killings
in all of 2018. The database
tracks every mass killing in
the country dating back to
2006, defined as involving
four or more people killed
(not including the offender)
over 24 hours, regardless of
weapon.
President Trump, who is
scheduled to visit both Day-
ton and El Paso on Wednes-
day, said he wanted Wash-
ington to “come together”
on legislation providing
“strong background checks”
for gun users, but he gave no
details.
The Democratic-led
House has passed a gun
control bill that includes
changes to the nation’s fire-
arm background check sys-
tem, but it has languished in
the Senate.Ohio’s governor urges new gun laws
OHIO GOV. MIKE DeWINE delivers a statement two days after the mass shooting in Dayton carried out with an assault-style rifle that
left nine people dead outside a strip of nightclubs. With DeWine are Lt. Gov. Jon Husted, left, and First Lady Fran DeWine, in Columbus.Joshua A. BickelColumbus DispatchThe Republican tells
the GOP-led state
Legislature to require
background checks.
associated press
WASHINGTON — A vet-
eran FBI agent who wrote
derogatory text messages
about President Trump filed
a lawsuit Tuesday charging
that the bureau caved to
“unrelenting pressure” from
the president when it fired
him.
The lawsuit from Peter
Strzok also alleges that he
was unfairly punished for ex-
pressing his political opin-
ions and that the Justice De-
partment violated his pri-
vacy when it shared hun-
dreds of his text messages
with reporters.
“The campaign to publi-
cly vilify Special Agent Str-
zok contributed to the FBI’s
ultimate decision to unlaw-
fully terminate him,” the
lawsuit says, “as well as to
frequent incidents of public
and online harassment and
threats of violence to Strzok
and his family that began
when the texts were first dis-
closed to the media and con-
tinue to this day.”
The complaint, which
names as defendants Atty.
Gen. William Barr and FBI
Director Christopher A.
Wray, revisits a political
drama that was seized on by
conservative critics of spe-
cial counsel Robert S.
Mueller III’s Russia investi-
gation as proof that the bu-
reau was biased against
Trump. Multiple investiga-
tions are underway examin-
ing whether the FBI acted
properly during the Russia
investigation, and Strzok re-
mains a target of Trump’s
scornful tweets.
The lawsuit seeks re-
instatement to the FBI,
back pay and a declaration
that the government vio-
lated his rights.
A Justice Department
spokeswoman declined to
comment, and representa-
tives of the FBI did not im-
mediately respond to a re-
quest seeking comment.
The lawsuit provides new
details about the circum-
stances of Strzok’s firing and
amounts to the latest de-
fense of his reputation, com-
ing months after a fiery con-
gressional hearing in which
he insisted that his personalviews never influenced his
work.
Strzok, a veteran coun-
terintelligence agent who
helped lead FBI investiga-
tions into former Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton’s use
of a private email server and
ties between the Trump
campaign and Russia, was
removed from Mueller’s
team after the texts with FBI
lawyer Lisa Page came to
light. He was fired from the
FBI last August.
Many of the texts, on FBI
cellphones, were bitingly
critical of Trump during his
2016 run for office. They were
found by the Justice Depart-
ment’s inspector generalduring its investigation of
the FBI’s Clinton email in-
quiry.
The watchdog office criti-
cized Strzok and Page, with
whom he was having an af-
fair, for their judgment in
sending the messages, but
did not find that the Clinton
email investigation was
compromised by political bi-
as.
In the lawsuit, Strzok at-
torney Aitan Goelman says
the FBI deputy director who
fired him was responding to
“unrelenting pressure from
President Trump and his
political allies in Congress
and the media.”
That deputy, DavidBowdich, overruled the rec-
ommendation of a disci-
plinary official that Strzok
be merely demoted and sus-
pended without pay, and de-
nied him the chance to ap-
peal.
Bowdich said at the time
that Strzok’s “sustained
pattern of bad judgment in
the use of an FBI device” for
texting called into question
decisions made during the
Clinton email investigation
and the early stages of the
Russia inquiry.
The complaint says the
campaign to fire Strzok in-
cluded “constant tweets and
other disparaging state-
ments” from Trump, as wellas the president’s direct ap-
peals to Wray and Barr’s
predecessor as attorney
general, Jeff Sessions, to fire
Strzok.
The lawsuit says the ad-
ministration discriminated
against his viewpoint by fir-
ing him even though other
government officials who
have supported Trump in
the workplace have kept
their jobs. It notes that the
White House has not fired
counselor Kellyanne Con-
way despite the determina-
tion that she violated the
Hatch Act — a law that lim-
its political activity by gov-
ernment workers — by criti-
cizing Democratic presi-
dential candidates while
speaking in her official ca-
pacity.
“The Trump administra-
tion has consistently toler-
ated and even encouraged
partisan political speech by
federal employees, as long as
this speech praises Presi-
dent Trump and attacks his
political adversaries,” the
complaint contends.
The lawsuit also says the
Justice Department set out
to smear Strzok’s reputa-
tion and humiliate him when
it disclosed nearly 400 text
messages he had sent or re-
ceived.
In the complaint, Strzok
also aims to explain some of
the texts that have attracted
the most negative attention,
including one in which he
told Page “we’ll stop” a
Trump presidency.
Conservatives inter-
preted the text as Strzok
saying that he would work to
prevent Trump from being
elected, but the lawsuit says
the message was actually
meant to reassure Page that
the American people would
not support a Trump candi-
dacy.FBI agent who criticized Trump sues over firing
FORMER FBI AGENT Peter Strzok’s lawsuit says the official who fired him was responding to “unrelenting
pressure from President Trump and his political allies in Congress and the media.” Strzok wants his job back.Evan VucciAssociated PressPeter Strzok, who
aided Mueller, alleges
unfair treatment and
invasion of privacy.
associated press