The Conservative Cave
Current Events => Breaking News => Topic started by: Ralph Wiggum on June 24, 2009, 05:59:37 PM
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Ed Thomas, the longtime coach who helped rebuild the Aplington-Parkersburg High School football program after the Iowa school was wiped out by a tornado last year, was shot and killed in a makeshift weight room near the school on Wednesday.
The lone gunman, identified by the authorities as Mark Becker, 24, who once played for Thomas at the school, has been arrested and is in custody. Thomas was airlifted to Covenant Medical Center in Waterloo, Iowa, where he died, said a hospital spokeswoman, Andrea Barker. He was 58.
Parkersburg, which is about 80 miles north of Des Moines, was devastated by a tornado on May 25, 2008. It killed eight people and leveled scores of homes, including Thomas’s. But the man who had coached Aplington-Parkersburg for 34 years set out to rebuild the football field in time for the season, and when the team went 10-0 and to the semifinals of the state playoffs, it provided a lift in morale for a town laid low.
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Becker is being held at Butler County Jail, charged with first-degree murder. The Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation revealed some details about Becker in a news conference Wednesday. Becker was charged by the police on Sunday after a late-night, high-speed chase after they were called to an incident at a home in which Becker allegedly smashed windows with a baseball bat and rammed a garage door. Becker was charged with eluding the police, speeding, reckless driving and failure to obey a stop sign.
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He played football at the school, which had already named its football stadium after Thomas, whose 37-year coaching record was 292-84. Thomas was named by the N.F.L. as high school coach of the year in 2005 and four of his former players play in the N.F.L.: Green Bay’s Aaron Kampman, Jacksonville’s Brad Meester, Detroit’s Jared DeVries and Denver’s Casey Wiegmann. That alone is remarkable for a small high school with an enrollment around 250.
LINK (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/25/sports/25coach.html?ref=sports)
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RIP, Godspeed :(
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Damn, so sad.