Prepare to be disgusted by this story.
Authorities in Port St. Joe, Florida say a man charged with a hate crime felt inconvenienced by his arrest because he had “only shot a n*gger.”
Walton Henry Butler, 59, was arrested by Gulf County Sheriff’s deputies on Monday night for shooting 32-year-old Everett Gant, who is black, in the head with a .22 caliber rifle.
But there’s more:
The suspect contacted 911 and had finished his dinner before Gulf County Sheriff Joe Nugent arrived.
Nugent recalled that Butler appeared “inconvenienced” by the arrest, saying that “he had only shot a n*gger.”
“He was brought to the investigation unit where he was interviewed and basically admitted to shooting the victim and said he shot a, used a racial slur, and said that is what he shot and acted like it was not like a big deal or anything to him,” Nugent told WJHG.
He apparently called 911 to tell them to come clean up the mess on his patio, not imagining that they might arrest him.
44 comments
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Marcus Ranum
August 6, 2012 at 11:10 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Wow… Just – wow. What a horrible human being.
Aliasalpha
August 6, 2012 at 11:10 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Well blood IS a bugger to shift if you don’t get on it right away but it hardly warrants an emergency call.
Also, what an evil fuck
Zinc Avenger (Sarcasm Tags 3.0 Compliant)
August 6, 2012 at 11:18 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It’s like a perfect storm of stupidity, evil, and guns.
busterggi
August 6, 2012 at 11:26 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Why is it I feel I can guess his political party and religious faith?
democommie
August 6, 2012 at 11:28 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
This is where I usually say, “Maybe some reasonable regulation of teh gunz would be a good idea.”.
Followed, usually in a matter of minutes on other blogs, by:
“You are a commonist who, just like the black-o-perp president, wantz to take alla my gunz away, 1–leventy!!”
or some variation on the same theme.
This guy is:
A.) Obviously a racist asshole.
B.) Dumber than a fucking stump.
C.) Unlikely to be a hero to any but the most egregiously misanthropic.
But his right to have any and all sorts of firearms and ammunition, right up until the moment that he decides to become an OBVIOUS criminal will be defended contra common sense. WTF is up with that?
d cwilson
August 6, 2012 at 11:29 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Well, it is Florida. Maybe he assumed that he would have been protected by the state’s Stand Your Ground law.
Draken
August 6, 2012 at 11:42 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
This is one of these situations where I, despite being against death penalty, silently hope the DA demands it. Just to give the creep some restless nights.
(I’d rather not see him killed, though. Just let him sweat.)
jws1
August 6, 2012 at 11:44 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I love listening to southerners whine about how they’re “misunderstood” and “not who we were 50, 60 years ago.” They are not misunderstood; they are understood perfectly well as being only slightly superior to who they were mid-century. The South deserves to be belittled at every opportunity.
jws1
August 6, 2012 at 11:45 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@7 : I disagree, but respect your judgment. I’d love to see him hanged with a bad rope in the public square. Message: “Bigots- this is your future.”
lofgren
August 6, 2012 at 11:52 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I dunno, the behavior described sounds like there might have been something that went seriously wrong in this guy’s brain, like a stroke or something, that short circuited his moral reasoning and ability to anticipate the consequences of his own actions. I think we might be looking at an unusual medical situation. If he really felt this way about killing, he would have been caught before he made it to 59.
Alverant
August 6, 2012 at 11:56 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
#10
Maybe he did but nothing happened the other times since the victim wasn’t white. This time the victim lived and could give his side of the story.
lofgren
August 6, 2012 at 12:20 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Maybe he shot somebody before, made no effort to hide his acts, called the police to come clean up the mess, confessed without remorse or even awareness that he had done something wrong, and yet the police did nothing at all because the victim was black?
Sure, that sounds plausible in 1965. But even in Florida I find it hard to imagine even the most racist police departments would tolerate a serial killer at work without fear of scrutiny or scandal.
It’s not utterly impossible, but it seems unlikely to me.
Area Man
August 6, 2012 at 12:25 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I wonder how long it will take for the right-wing blogosphere to come to this guy’s defense. I mean, clearly the black guy was trespassing. He may have even smoked pot at some point in the past.
Tony •King of the Hellmouth•
August 6, 2012 at 12:27 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
d wilson:
Stand Your Ground from what though?
****
jws1:
I can’t believe you typed these words. That’s offensive as all get out. I live in the South. In fact, I live in Florida. The broad brush your painting Florida with would include me and many other people who are decent individuals with a tremendous amount of compassion for our fellow homo sapiens. Next time maybe you should qualify statements like this better.
Gretchen
August 6, 2012 at 12:30 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I love listening to men whine about how they’re “misunderstood” and “not who we were 50, 60 years ago.” They are not misunderstood; they are understood perfectly well as being only slightly superior to who they were mid-century. Men deserve to be belittled at every opportunity.
Reginald Selkirk
August 6, 2012 at 12:32 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I certainly do. How much do you charge for that service?
Area Man
August 6, 2012 at 12:37 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
So one guy’s actions are taken to speak for an entire region of the country containing tens of millions of inhabitants? Gee, let’s not under-generalize here, maybe we can find a way to blame the entire white race.
Bronze Dog
August 6, 2012 at 1:06 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
My first instinct from reading the post is that this is so blatant over-the-top racism that we’re missing part of the picture, that the shooter had some other radical/insane motive, that he’s trolling us by feigning racism and revealing himself by overdoing it, or something like that.
However, my first instinct is often crap when it comes to evaluating this kind of stuff, especially since it only takes a moment to reflect on the over-the-top racism being thrown about by wingnuts these days. So I’m not going to dismiss the possibility that he meant exactly what he said, and that he actually is that amazingly racist and callous.
d cwilson
August 6, 2012 at 1:09 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I don’t know. Were any Skittles found at the scene?
lofgren
August 6, 2012 at 1:13 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Pretty much true for everybody everywhere always, really.
Michael Heath
August 6, 2012 at 1:13 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
jwsi writes:
Gretchen responds:
Because the South is predominately governed in a way to deserves contemptuous criticism, they’ve earned our stated contempt. That in no way insinuates all southerners think like those who contribute to the attributes of the modern-day South. However it does argue those who aren’t like that have some responsibility for what’s going on and a higher responsibility to work towards reform than those outside the South.
I find the idea that just because one is different than the population within which one exists criticisms directed towards attributes of the population are unfair. As a Republican from 1978 to 2008 I took criticisms directed towards conservatives taking over the Republican party to heart and worked towards reform. That was until 2008 when it became obvious reform wouldn’t be happening.
I think such criticisms are both fair and obligatory; the latter in revealing the attribute and motivating those not like their cohorts to work harder for reform, or leave; which in this case is predominately impractical given it requires geographical dislocation. That limitation amplifies the obligation by Southerners with integrity to strive even harder than the average citizen for reform. We do after all live in a liberal democracy. So personal responsibility is an attribute of how we govern; a feature we should embrace.
jws1
August 6, 2012 at 1:17 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Whenever it’s good stuff, broad-brush painting is demanded; everybody wants credit. When it’s bad stuff, then, magically, a scalpel is demanded. Interesting.
thisisaturingtest
August 6, 2012 at 1:22 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’ll be honest here and say, as someone who grew up in Mississippi in the 1960s (though born in Germany to a German mother and Air Force father from Ohio, which gave me a little perspective that other kids my age didn’t have) that this sort of thing is probably more likely in the South. But, let’s all be honest here- with the “us vs them” attitude propagated in America today as normal political discourse, is there anyplace in America today that this couldn’t have happened, with the same basic sort of “justification”?
busterggi
August 6, 2012 at 1:25 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“Men deserve to be belittled at every opportunity.”
Gretchen, is that anything like shrinkage?
jws1
August 6, 2012 at 1:26 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@23: Agreed. I once overheard a young high-school girl talking about “going gay-bashing.” That was in Seattle, not Fayetteville, Arkansas. But ask yourself this: when, not if, something like this murder happens, and you initially don’t know the location of the crime, do you assume it’s in Bangor, Maine, or Tallahassee, Florida?
kermit.
August 6, 2012 at 1:58 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
lofgren@10 @ others:
We might want to consider the possibility that this is explicable in the light of sheer stupidity (and meanness, of course). I think there are many people who think the “stand your ground” laws mean that you can shoot anyone with impunity if you aren’t chasing them. Or something. It’s not like these folks normally show good reading comprehension skills or have their thoughts tidy and arranged when speaking their views on various subjects.
Stand your ground was meant to modify statutes in many states that required people to make a best attempt to escape an assault before fighting back. Many people had been convicted of assault of manslaughter because they didn’t or couldn’t outrun their attacker, and often protecting another innocent was not considered an excuse (I suspect ethnicity and wealth have much to do with how persuasive those arguments were).
Stand your ground does not, of course, allow for shooting folks in your neighborhood, on your driveway, or even knocking at your door. Even if they do so while black. It means you don’t have to try to climb that chain link fence before fighting back against a mugger.
Combine guns, stupidity, and bigotry and you have a winning combination. Without one side of this triangle it doesn’t stand up very well.
Gretchen
August 6, 2012 at 2:02 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Yeah, and a serial shooting is more likely to happen in America than Denmark. Does that makes it okay for Danes to say that Americans deserve to be belittled at every opportunity?
If your answer is “yes”…you’re still a bigot; just a self-hating one.
thisisaturingtest
August 6, 2012 at 2:07 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
#25, jws1: Oh, absolutely, Florida would be my assumption- as I said, this sort of thing is going to be more likely in the South than anywhere else; the stereotype is not unjustified. But I think the stereotype can be read as a cautionary tale for the future of a whole set, as well as just a story about the past, or the present, of a subset of it.
While I’m kind of on that subject- to satisfy just my own curiosity- maybe one of our overseas friends can tell me- is this sort of thing seen elsewhere around the world as “Christ! Those Americans!” or “Christ! Those Southern Americans!”?
shockna
August 6, 2012 at 4:18 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The phrase “southerner” is the cause of the problem here.
There’s a distinction between “people who live in the American South” “southerners” . Namely, the former is a statement of geographic identification, the latter one of cultural identification.
There are many, a minority, but many, in the south who do not subscribe to the racist, sexist, vile culture embodied in the phrase “the south”. They aren’t “southerners” in the traditional sense of the word (If anyone doesn’t know what I mean, go ask one who identifies as a southerner what he thinks of blacks in general [listen for dog whistles], and whites of non-traditional beliefs, especially religious beliefs).
So while it would be entirely wrong to tar all people who live geographically in the south as bad, it’s beyond justified to be relentlessly critical of “southerners” and their cultural stagnation.
Michael Heath
August 6, 2012 at 5:49 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Gretchen writes:
Well, no, we don’t deserve to, “be belittled at every opportunity”; that’s a strawman of at least what I’m arguing, I think the others with similar arguments as well, e.g., jws1.
The U.S. does deserve to be criticized when we encounter disproportionately high rates of mass slaughters of people which can be predicted based on our distinguishing attributes, e.g.,
a) easy access to equipment which makes such mass slaughters far easier like large gun magazines,
b) a culture which marginalizes ‘the other’ as unworthy of rights equal to one’s in-group.
c) a culture which celebrates violence as an effective method to resolve disputes.
As a society we deserve such criticism – especially in areas more prone to such travesties. In fact entities which energetically and proactively seek out harsh criticism generally do far better than those looking at each case individually rather than systemically as jws1 did. Reflections which evaluate our culture and then seek to reduce our defect rate after such catastrophes, , even when done by our political opponents or an outlier person, doesn’t make one “a self-hating bigot”; it instead makes us realists demonstrating some commitment to improving our condition.
Gretchen
August 6, 2012 at 6:13 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Actually it’s a direct quote from jws1, Michael. Before you take up his/her position, it would be better to go back and read what he/she actually said closely and see if you agree with it.
Michael Heath
August 6, 2012 at 7:28 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Gretchen,
“Uncle!” on the ‘belittled’ point.
bobmunck
August 6, 2012 at 7:48 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Could anyone read that article and not think of the Slim Pickens role in Blazing Saddles?
dave
August 6, 2012 at 9:45 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Youre still shooting too small. If we are going to generalize, lets go whole hog: Eukaryotes suck.
Pen
August 6, 2012 at 9:49 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Astonishingly, it seems Mr Gant is expected to survive, who knows in what condition.
jws1
August 6, 2012 at 11:05 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Thank you for the convo. I’m rethinking my position, and swimming upstream against negative experiences in the South. Heath is right about my statements here (straw-man) and Gretchen’s passionate defense of avoiding irresponsible broad-brush stroking of all folks, even those about whom she might well find a lot not to like. All matters, more or less, discussed here are complex matters and require a more mature and responsible thought process and response. I’m trying to learn that shootin’ from the hip, while sexy, ain’t as good as deliberation. Sorry.
dingojack
August 6, 2012 at 11:18 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Getchen – Gun-related homicides per 100000
USA: 4.14 (CDC 2000-6) [ca. 12500 per year]
Denmark: 0.23 (Krug 1998) [ca. 13 per year]
Nope, nothing to criticise there. Move along please.
Dingo
Azkyroth, Former Growing Toaster Oven
August 7, 2012 at 1:57 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Then what the fuck is up with your state in the headlines and in the voting booths?
Ichthyic
August 7, 2012 at 7:15 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I bet he was wearing a hoodie.
*rolleyes*
Ichthyic
August 7, 2012 at 7:16 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Then what the fuck is up with your state in the headlines and in the voting booths?
+1
Pierce R. Butler
August 7, 2012 at 11:54 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Then what the fuck is up with your state in the headlines and in the voting booths?
If we told you what we do the rest of the time when nobody’s looking, you wouldn’t believe it even when you stopped screaming.
democommie
August 7, 2012 at 7:02 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ah, Serge and Coleman! (I’m not sure if Serge’s character is based on “Dexter”, whether it’s vice/versa or just a cosmically funny coninkydink. I did not know that I had missed a novel, “When Elves Attack”, I will have to catch up.
I have a signed copy of “Hurricane Punch” that was given to me by a bookseller friend who said that when Dorsey came to read and sign books that he wanted to do a whirlwind tour of their neck of the woods and took a shitton of photos.
I think like Hiaason (and others, notably Sinclair Lewis) a lot of Dorsey’s horrific story lines are based on actual events. Both Dorsey and Hiaason were reporters/columnists for Florida papers, in Tampa and Miami, respectively.
Mr. Butler, thanks for the gaudy, blood drenched memories!
Pierce R. Butler
August 7, 2012 at 8:39 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
democommie @ # 42 – Florida Road Kill was published in 2000; “Dexter” was first aired in 2006.
Obviously, Dorsey ideajacked the concept from the tv series, using Barack Obama’s time machine.
democommie
August 8, 2012 at 3:14 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Pierce R. Butler:
Thanks for clearing that up. I was worried that there might not be a logical explanation.