GUILTY PA - Marie Zienkewicz, 89, killed by stray bullet in Bucks Co. standoff, 19 Feb 2013

[Filly]

Andrew G Cairns of Warminster decided to take his common law wife hostage and had a shootout with local police. The woman was released unharmeded, but the neighbor downstairs was shot and killed in the crosssifre. The poor lady was all of 90 years old.

At this time it is not known if police shot her or Cairns.


http://www.phillyburbs.com/my_town/...cle_02885b47-01a5-5e05-98cc-9d85ffb7a7a7.html

 

[Herding Cats]

Oh my word...bless her heart. She was 90, and was shot in crossfire? Bless her and her whole family and friends. Why was the building not evacuated? No time?

Best-
Herding Cats

 

[wfgodot]

Reading stories like this makes me remember Melville's despairing line about an inhumane world: "What are our creeds, and how do we hope to be saved?" At times it seems there are no centuries that mark us - no 19th, no 21st; just one long line of unbroken sorrow.

 

[athy]

my heart breaks for her family. she lived this long to be killed in such a manner...i don't have the words.

 

[OkieGranny]

From January 2014:

http://triblive.com/state/pennsylvania/5442134-74/police-apartment-cairns#axzz3soariG1c

A man will spend 14 to 30 years in prison after pleading guilty to third-degree murder in the death of his 89-year-old neighbor who was accidentally shot by police responding to a drunken standoff...

Andrew Cairns of Warminster pleaded guilty and was sentenced Friday before a county judge in Doylestown.

From June 2015:

http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/20...50000-to-family-of-woman-89-killed-by-police/

The town of Warminster in Bucks County is paying a $650,000 settlement to the family of an 89-year-old woman accidentally shot and killed by its police department during a standoff...

The agreement calls for the township to provide officers with critical incident training and to donate books in Zienkewicz’s memory to the local library.