Keepin’ Up With KPFT
August 15th, 2007 at 12:17 pm
In the few hours since the Observer’s post yesterday detailing the shooting at KPFT 90.1, a progressive public radio station in Houston, the station’s blog has posted a number of new details:
– A donation page dedicated to paying for repairs is now up.
– A transcript of an interview that Democracy Now did with station manager Duane Bradley and DJ Mary Thomas, who was almost hit by the bullet, has lots of interesting info I didn’t know. The shell they recovered is for a 39 mm round commonly used in AK-47 assault rifles. The station thought the Plexiglas window the bullet blasted through was bullet-proof. And they’re going through the FCC to ask the FBI to get involved, since tampering with a public broadcast could constitute a federal offense (Ernesto mentioned this yesterday, but I forgot to include it).
The interview also has Thomas’s firsthand account of what must have been a terrifying few minutes:
Well, somebody — I could see somebody from the inside camera knocking on the door. So John, our — the person that was helping me, he went to the door to see who it was. And I told him — I said, “If you don’t know who it is, don’t let him in.” But anyway, when he got to the door, he found out that it was somebody that we knew that comes to the station. And while he was doing this, then a big boom came through the window right where I had just moved my chair from that window. And I fell to the floor, because I turned my head right quick, but then I saw the big hole, and I just fell to the floor and crawled into the next room in the next room and made a phone call to 911.
– A short documentary on the 1970 bombing of the station is now available online.
– For kicks, you can check out the many theories on the shooting from the fine folks at Free Republic, including the one that KPFT staged the shooting, assault rifle and all, as a publicity stunt. (Via KPFT’s Bald Heretic.)
