Alabama shooting suspect killed brother, say police
Amy Bishop had invented a method of incubating cells that improved on the Petri dish
Sunday, 14, Feb 2010 01:02
By Elizabeth Davies
The woman accused of shooting six of her colleagues at the University of Alabama on Friday shot dead her teenage brother over twenty years ago, say police.
Amy Bishop, 41, is suspected of killing three of her fellow biology professors during a faculty meeting on Friday. Those wounded are still recovering in hospital.
The police chief in Braintree, Massachusetts, has revealed that in 1986 Ms Bishop shot her brother Seth, 18, in the chest. Police investigators ruled that he was killed by an "accidental discharge of a firearm" after Dr Bishop, then 19, was trying to unload the gun. The report into the shooting described Dr Bishop as being in a "highly emotional state" following her brother's death, which made it impossible to question her.
The campus police chief said yesterday he was unaware of the incident until reporters asked him about it. The records of the police investigation into the shooting have since gone missing, and a criminal investigation is expected to be launched into their disappearance.
Police have so far refused to discuss a possible motive for the Alabama shooting. However, there has been wide speculation that Dr Bishop was angry about the faculty's refusal to award her tenure, lifelong job security given to some American academics. Without this, Dr Bishop would have been forced to leave the university at the end of the semester.
Students and colleagues have described Dr Bishop as "brilliant" but also "weird", emphasising her inadequacies as a teacher. She holds a doctorate in genetics from Harvard, according to her university biography, and had recently invented a new system for incubating cells that improved on the Petri dish method.
Dr Bishop has been charged with at least one count of murder so far, and further charges are expected. If convicted, she faces death by lethal injection, which remains an option in Alabama.