B Shares

This is one of those various "dumb criminals" stories that come our way once and a while. It involves a gunshop and is reportedly true!

On 3 February 1990, David Zaback attempted to hold up H&J Leather & Firearms Ltd., a gun shop located in Renton Highlands near Seattle, Washington. About 4:40 p.m. that day, he entered the crowded shop and announced his intention to rob it by telling everyone to put their hands on the counter and saying if anybody moved, he'd kill them. He then spotted a uniformed policeman having coffee with Wendall Woodall, the shop's owner. What happened next is less than clear in terms of who shot first, but there was an exchange of gunfire between David Zaback, the would-be robber; Timothy Lally, an 18-year veteran of the King County police force; and Danny Morris, one of the shop's clerks.

Zaback, who had fired three times, was shot three times in the chest and once in the arm. He died in the hospital about four hours after the shooting. No one else was injured during the incident, and no charges were subsequently laid against Lally or Morris.

The e-mailed narrative holds up as a news item for the most part, but some of its elements have been altered to make for better storytelling.
Although the Darwinized account presents the encounter in the humorous light of a hapless robber waving a pop gun being felled in a hail of bullets by a mass of heavily-armed gun shop patrons, that wasn't precisely the way of it. Zaback's weapon was a .38-caliber semiautomatic pistol, not the .22 target pistol of the e-mailed account. The clerk, Morris, fired a 10mm semiautomatic pistol, not a .50 Desert Eagle, and the policeman, Lally, fired a 9mm semiautomatic pistol. As for the participation of others, according to Renton police Capt. Don Persson, although several other customers had guns and pulled them, they did not shoot — the only ones involved in the exchange of lead were Zaback, Lally, and Morris.It's unclear how many shots were fired, in part because some of the suspect's shots struck ammunition on a counter, causing the ammunition to explode. "There were slugs all over that place," Persson said. As for Zaback, he died with four wounds in him, one in the arm and three in the chest, not the 23 wounds claimed in the colorized account.

Yet one item of the Darwinized version one would otherwise suspect to have been the product of overwriting does indeed hold up: Renton police Capt. Don Persson said, "The surprising thing is that the man had to walk right past a marked police car to get in the front door."

Barbara "red light district" Mikkelson

Last updated: 25 March 2005

The URL for this page is http://www.snopes.com/crime/dumdum/gunshop.asp
SNOPES

Cloned dog heightens fear of human cloning

Cloning a dog has brought the possibility of human cloning one step closer. Some scientists say it's easier to clone a human

AFP , SEOUL
Sunday, Aug 07, 2005,Page 19

Snuppy, right, the first male dog cloned from adult cells by somatic nuclear cell transfer, and a male Afghan hound from which an adult skin cell was taken to clone Snuppy. PHOTO: AFP

The world's first cloning of a dog has raised concerns that scientists are one step closer to replicating human embryos, despite the breakthrough pointing to treatments for currently incurable human diseases.

A group of scientists from Seoul National University last week unveiled their creation, a black and white Afghan hound named Snuppy that is genetically identical to its three-year-old "father."

But while geneticists hailed the breakthrough as a step towards beating human diseases, others called for a worldwide ban on human cloning, saying that the pup had brought the human eventuality nearer.

The achievement of the team led by Professor Hwang Woo-suk is considered so significant because many canine diseases such as diabetes, cancer, dementia and problems in heart muscles, hips and joints are similar to those in humans.

Professor Kong Il-keun, a cloning expert at Suncheon National University, said cloning dogs had immense clinical value because canines have 203 genes that can be used for studying human diseases while the pig has only 65.

King Chow, assistant professor of biotechnology at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology welcomed the latest advance, but warned that the scientific community needed to be on guard against possible human cloning.

"The development of the technology is a good thing in itself but how we monitor it and who we allow to use it will be of great importance," he said.

"If it has been done to help research and understanding of how humans developed from a single cell -- an area in which there are huge holes in our understanding -- then this is a very important development.

"But if it is to be taken further and applied simply to make multiple clones -- then I have strong objections."

In order to create Snuppy -- short for Seoul National University Puppy -- the team had to create 1,095 canine embryos that were transferred into 123 surrogate bitches resulting in three successful pregnancies.

One foetus miscarried but two others were delivered, including Snuppy on April 24. The other cloned dog died after 22 days from pneumonia.

Gerald Schatten of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Hwang's research planning and technology advisor, said the poor success rate justified a ban on human cloning.

"Because this again shows that reproductive cloning is unsafe and inefficient, we call for a worldwide ban on human reproductive cloning, which is also unethical," said Schatten,

Since scientists first cloned a sheep named Dolly in 1997, researchers have gone on to clone mice, cats, goats, pigs, mules, horses and deer.

But of all mammals, the cloning of dogs is technically the most challenging because of the difficulty of acquiring mature eggs.

Some experts say the cloning of a dog demonstrates that most of key techniques needed to clone humans are now available.

"Bring me human eggs, the necessary social consensus and legal permission and I can get you your replica within a year," said Park Se-pill, a senior researcher of Maria Biotech and a top cloning expert.

"In contrast to widespread public belief, cloning a human is much easier than cloning a cow or a pig," Park said.
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