Obit watch: September 29, 2023.

Dianne Feinstein. NYT. LAT. WP.

NYT obit for Michael Gambon.

This doesn’t quite qualify as an obit, but I don’t have any place else to put it (other than a separate entry, which I’d rather not do) and I feel like it is close enough for government work. The Las Vegas Police department has made an arrest in a 27-year old cold case.

Las Vegas police have arrested a man in the deadly 1996 drive-by shooting of Tupac Shakur, a long-awaited break in a case that has frustrated investigators and fascinated the public ever since the hip-hop icon was gunned down on the Las Vegas Strip 27 years ago.

But:

…the exact charge or charges were not immediately clear, according to two officials with first-hand knowledge of the arrest. They were not authorized to speak publicly ahead of an expected indictment later Friday.

The other point that I think should be made: an arrest is one thing. A conviction is another. More from the tabloid of record.

Edited to add: A two-pack (see what I did there?) of additional coverage from the NYT and the LAT.

“Dwight, shouldn’t you be linking to the actual Las Vegas newspapers?” Well, yes, except: the Las Vegas newspapers are generally not great. Though they have had some good columnists working for them in the past…but for the record, here’s the Review-Journal coverage.

Also not quite an obit, but within this blog’s area of coverage:

The husband of Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola was ferrying more than 500 pounds of moose and antlers from a remote hunting camp in Alaska when his small plane crashed shortly after takeoff earlier this month, officials said.

This is just a very preliminary report from the NTSB: we probably won’t get the full report for two years or more. And no, I’m not noting it because moose. RoadRich can argue with me in the comments if he knows more, but I believe this is one of the biggest killers of pilots out there, especially pilots of small aircraft: trying to take off with an overloaded aircraft, or an aircraft out of balance.

“The meat was strapped into the rear passenger seat area with both the seatbelt and rope and was loaded into the airplane’s belly pod, which did not have tie-down provisions,” the NTSB said.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 29th, 2023 at 12:14 pm and is filed under Law, Movies, Obits, Planes, Politics, TV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

One Response to “Obit watch: September 29, 2023.”

  1. RoadRich says:
    September 30, 2023 at 8:56 am

    No argument here, pilots exceeding what their weight and balance numbers are is a leading killer of pilots and their passengers. Although speculation is as abundant as rapidly printed money and drops in value the more of it that you have, it does appear that cargo is very likely the cause here. The Piper Cub is not what folks consider a heavy lift aircraft but the Super Cub is pretty capable, many with the same class of engine in the 172 that I learned to fly in.

    The brilliance of using your wing strut as your solution for carrying moose antlers aside (!), the description of the takeoff, ascent and crash looks like one of two scenarios both having to do with the extra weight being carried.
    First is a simple overweight situation exacerbated by the gusty winds reported at the end of the runway, putting a plane that is at or past the edge of controllability into a climb angle that was not recoverable in time. Second is a cargo shift causing that steep pitch up, putting the aircraft in that unrecoverable condition.