Guess it wasn't her day to die

Due to my interest in the great Waco Biker Ambush & Coverup, I've become a regular reader of the Waco Trib website. While the coverup continues, at least for now, one of the lead characters in that scandal, Sergeant Patrick "Pinocchio" Swanton, makes regular appearances in the Trib in his capacity as spokesman for the Waco PD.

That's how I happened upon the story of Brittney Garrett, who was driving her Toyota Tundra while simultaneously texting on her phone, and whoopsie!...

 Waco police Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton said officers were called about 11:55 p.m. Wednesday to a single-vehicle crash in the westbound lanes of State Highway 6 at the Twin Bridges, where they found a heavily damaged 2015 Toyota Tundra straddling the inside guardrail.

Officers could not find the driver or any other occupants and presumed the driver, later identified as Brittney Ann Garrett, may have fallen into the water.

“The report says that she was distracted by her cellphone, looked down at her cellphone and ran into the sidewall, on the driver’s side . . . hit the guardrail, rode up that guardrail and it apparently caused the driver’s side door to be torn off and cause a hole through the floorboard,” Swanton said. “She was ejected from the vehicle, through the hole created in the floorboard, and into the lake below.”

Officers began to call for a water rescue and helicopter assistance to light the lake before they found Garrett on the shore at Speegleville Park. She swam about 150 to 200 yards to reach land, Swanton said.

There are a few lessons to take away from Brittney's adventure. First off, don't text and drive.

Two, if you do text and drive, don't do it in a Toyota. A Ford, Dodge, or GMC pickup can mess with guardrails and survive. A Toyota gets ripped wide open and poops its passengers into the raging waters sixty feet below.

Finally, Brittney's fabulous adventure is proof yet again that if your number ain't up in this great lottery 'o life, not even the most brazen act of stupidity is gonna send you to a premature reward.

Congratulations Brittney!

Government agencies collude to stall justice in Twin Peaks biker ambush

The Waco Tribune informed us today that one of the interminable side-shows that has prevented timely justice in this shit-show is finally over. Yup, the 151 firearms found at the scene have now been positively ID'd.

What does that mean, you ask?

Senior Special Agent Nicole Strong, an ATF spokeswoman, said Thursday that the ATF was asked to perform firearms traces but is leaving any investigative decisions up to the Waco Police Department and the McLennan County District Attorney’s Office.

“We have completed the firearms traces,” Strong said. “It is essentially tracking the life of the firearms, from the point it was manufactured, to who the first purchaser was — which is normally a licensed firearms dealer — to who the next purchaser was all the way down to the final purchase. How many times did it get bought and sold? We are complete with our end of it and, obviously, the investigation is a question for Waco PD. They just asked us to trace the guns.”

Strong said the guns were shipped to a lab in California for the ATF’s role in the investigation.

“The main goal was to see who the legal purchaser was,” she said. “We wanted to know if a gun went from a manufacturer to John Smith and that is the last known purchase, and then that gun ends up in the hands of one of the people in the Twin Peaks shooting who was in prohibited possession. We want to know how it went from a legal possession to an illegal possessor.”

So they want to know how a gun went from "a legal possession to an illegal possessor?" What does that have to do with solving the crimes, if any, committed by the owners of these firearms?

And why are we to believe that any of these guns were in the hands of illegal possessors? There is nothing in Texas law that makes it illegal for a member of a motorcycle club to own a gun.

And note also that after a great deal of unwarranted publicity about the weaponry seized at the crime scene, which we were at one point led to believe numbered in the thousands, the actual number of guns turned over to the ATF was 151. That includes a great many seized from vehicles after the fact which were never a factor in the actual shoot-out.

That might sound like a lot of guns, but a random search of vehicles in any Walmart parking lot in Texas would pass 151 in short order.

The think tank here at Falling Downs caught the unmistakable whiff of bullshit from the moment that first breaking news bulletin from Waco spilled onto the TV screen last May 17.

Ten months later, it's become an unbearable stench.