Ocala Mall Killer Arrested
 

"Albert Shell Jr., 39, was arrested by Ocala police officers with the help of the United States Marshals Service, specifically the Florida Caribbean Regional Fugitive Task Force, and the Marion County Sheriff's Office."

Ocala mall shooting suspect arrested, police say

That is good news.

Whew! They finally caught the thug!

Now, if they'd only lock him up, so that he can't hurt more people....

They probably will. You never know though. Mentally ill? Mess up with processing? Etc.

From the article:

"Balken said Shell had a lengthy criminal history and should have been behind bars.

"His criminal history alone tells me he should have never been on the streets to be able to commit this crime, and we are going to see to it that he spends the rest of his life behind bars," Balken said."

Catch and release. This happens far too often.

My sister-in-law is the manager at yankee candle. She heroically guided her staff, her customers and customers of other stores out a back hallway during the incident. She is also a villager.

Imagine the economic terror the killer brought on all the small retailers at Paddock Mall which was shut down on the busiest shopping day of the year.

Arrested
 

We were there a few days before the crime. Glad he was caught. Nice to live in a state that is not a "catch and release" one.

I see the US Marshall’s Caribbean Fugitive task force was involved. Maybe he was on the lam from one of the island nations down there

I recall an AZ case when I was a law student at Brigham Young University in 1982 where a case was thrown out because the charging documents on a person involved with hiring a man to kill their spouse had the wrong county designated. Pinal County, Arizona - Wikipedia Pinal not Pima. Or, maybe the other way around. Pima County, Arizona - Wikipedia

I decided law school was not for me plus I was in a dorm in which my roommate was a recent Mormon convert and seemed to have made me his next mission. I was there partially on a Scholarship that allowed me to pay the same rate as the Mormons. But I was very intrigued by the law library even if it was very hard to find anything.

The roommate was from Puerto Rico and studying dance.

And I had two single undergraduate women from a different dorm who seemed to already be planning a wedding. BYU had male and female dorms or wings. Do not remember. But a common dining area.

That's just what the Regional Task Force is named (Florida Caribbean Regional Fugitive Task Force). It doesn't necessarily mean that this case has anything to do with the Caribbean. The Task Force apparently covers Florida and the Caribbean.

It seems the crime rate was down across the US except in some major cities where it was up by quite a bit.

One of the major stations did a report on crime stats for the year 2023. I do think San Francisco was one where it was way up.

The data is rather incomplete though. The FBI released its annual national crime stats. The data is horribly incomplete | US news | The Guardian

What! You do realize that a part of the outrage over this crime is that the shooter has a very long criminal record. And all of his crimes were committed AFAIK in the state of Florida, with 145 contacts with police in Ocala over many years. How do you reconcile your statement with the truth? He was caught and released or sometimes charges were dropped or warrants never executed in Florida over and over.

But once again, the perception of a person has nothing to do with reality.

Why is it that every one of these major arrests it seems like the suspect has outstanding warrants from previous crimes? Shouldn't the police finish following up on every single one of these warrants as a priority before they go back to setting up speed traps on tourists?