Amtrak train shooting in Tucson, AZ

 

[VIDEO] If I have the time to do so I do like to watch Amtrak's Sunset Limited arrive in Tucson, Arizona. Usually like to catch the eastbound train stop in Tucson and it appears to be a very long layover ( about an hour). It appears that there is not only a stop to stretch your legs it's a servicing stop for the train.

Well, I didn't see the stream this morning and I'm glad I didn't. There was a shooting on the train and Virtual Railfan who operates the live webcam has since shuttered the feed for the time being. A DEA agent and a suspect were killed in the shooting about the train. What you see above is what you would've seen on the live webcam via Virtual Railfan.

I saw a condensed AP video that said this the shooting was as a result of a random search for contraband on board the train. The suspect was later found dead in an onboard lavatory on the train. [VIDEO]

I'm curious if they canceled the train so that the police can secure the crime scene and for Amtrak to later clean up the car for future service. I'm also curious if the train will remain in the Tucson area until the police is through with their work.

Looking forward to the Tucson feed being available again on YouTube especially. It was amazing last winter to see snowfall there in a desert city like Tucson, Arizona.

As always happy travels and be careful out there! 

Boyz N the Hood

Another movie I haven't seen in a while. This is one of those message movies we hear about. This movie is about a group of friends two are fairly decent and the other had spent time in the pen. We start with them very young and then we see them later as a group of teenagers.

There are a number of issues present in this film. Teenage sex, gentrification, gang violence, father & son relationships, to name those that I can easily identify. But there is one issue that I'd like to talk about.

Doughboy (Ice Cube) and Ricky (Morris Chestnutt) are brothers. However, their mother had them by two different fathers. Because Doughboy's father wasn't liked much by his mother she doesn't like Doughboy much. She tells how he won't amount to nothing and he isn't going to be "shit". She talks him down good. When Ricky gets killed near the end she blames Doughboy. It may be as much about his criminal lifestyle but it may just be a symptom of how differently she treats her boys.

The best part of this movie was the relationship between Furious (Laurence Fishburne) and his son Tre (Cuba Gooding, Jr.). At the beginning he was living with his mother but as per a "contractual agreement" he acts up in class and gets sent to live with his father. The idea here is that only a man (preferably his father) can teach a young boy to be a man. The difference between Tre and say Doughboy was that he had a father to teach him some responsibility. And what this kid got from his father showed. Apparently he's the only man raising a child on his block in South Central Los Angeles.

I was astonished to find out on Wikipedia that Boyz N The Hood was deemed culturally significant by the Library of Congress and was selected for preservation in National Film Registry back in 2002. The director John Singleton did an excellent job in this film.