An Alabama university professor accused of fatally shooting three colleagues at a faculty meeting this week shot her younger brother dead at their home in the Boston suburbs more than 20 years ago, but records of it are missing, police said Saturday.
Amy Bishop shot her brother in the chest in 1986, Braintree police Chief Paul Frazier said at a news conference. She fired at least three shots, hitting her brother once and hitting her bedroom wall, before police took her into custody at gunpoint, he said.
Before Bishop could be booked, however, the police chief back then called officers and told them to release her to her mother, Frazier said. The shooting of the brother, Seth Bishop, was logged as an accident, but detailed records of the shooting have disappeared, he said.
\\"The report's gone, removed from the files,\\" he said.
The Harvard-educated neurobiologist who became an assistant professor at the Alabama school in 2003 has been charged with capital murder, and other charges are pending.
Police said a 9 mm gun was found in a restroom in the science building on the University of Alabama's Huntsville campus, where the shootings occurred Friday afternoon.
She was taken Friday night in handcuffs to the county jail, and said as she got into a police car: \\"It didn't happen. There's no way. ... They are still alive.\\"
District Attorney Ron Broussard said he did not think Bishop has a lawyer. Her husband, James Anderson, was detained and questioned Friday, though he has not been charged.
Ray Garner, a spokesman at the Huntsville campus, said Bishop had been denied tenure — a type of job protection afforded academics — months ago, and this was to be her last semester.
Some have said the professor, who students said was bright but had difficulty explaining difficult concepts, opened fire because of a dispute over the issue.
Students' assessments of Bishop varied. Some recalled an attentive, friendly teacher, while others said she was an odd woman who couldn't simplify difficult subjects for students. Sammie Lee Davis, the husband of a tenured researcher who was killed, said his wife had described Bishop as \\"not being able to deal with reality\\" and \\"not as good as she thought she was.\\"
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Davis said his wife was a tenured researcher at the university. In a brief phone interview, Davis said he was told his wife was at a meeting to discuss the tenure status of another faculty member who got angry and started shooting.
Davis' wife, Maria Ragland Davis, was among those killed, along with Gopi K. Podila, chairman of the biological sciences department, and another faculty member, Adriel Johnson.
Bishop had created a portable cell incubator, known as InQ, that was less expensive than its larger counterparts. She and her husband had won $25,000 in 2007 to market the device.
Andrea Bennett, a sophomore majoring in nursing and an athlete at UAH, said a coach told her team that Bishop had been denied tenure, which the coach said may have led to the shooting.
Bennett described Bishop as being \\"very weird\\" and \\"a really big nerd.\\"
\\"She's well-known on campus, but I wouldn't say she's a good teacher. I've heard a lot of complaints,\\" Bennett said. \\"She's a genius, but she really just can't explain things.\\"
It was not clear if anyone at the campus of Bishop's bother's shooting.
Frazier said people who worked for the police department then remember the shooting of Bishop's brother and he planned to meet with the district attorney over the possibility of launching a criminal investigation into the report's disappearance.
The former police chief, John Polio, said Saturday in an interview at his home that he was astonished at any allegation of a coverup. He said he didn't call officers to tell them to release Bishop.
\\"There's no coverup, no missing records,\\" he proclaimed.
Attempts by The Associated Press to track down addresses and phone numbers for Bishop's family in the Braintree area weren't immediately successful Saturday. The current police chief said he believed her family had moved away.
most civilian base shot gun you actually have to cock it after each fire. So if she accidentally shot her brother on the 2nd shot, it has to be "intentional" (I put into quotes since it was deemed accidental)
