Dispute over Reserved Seats Leads to Shooting at NM Cinema

[Bobby Henderson]

This news story reminds me why it's generally a good idea to arrive at a theater early even if you have reserved seats.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/man-fatal...020654123.html

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — An argument over seating at an Albuquerque movie theater escalated into a shooting that left a man dead and sent frightened filmgoers scrambling to flee, police said Monday.

Detectives with the Albuquerque Police Department filed charges Monday in Metropolitan Court against 19-year-old Enrique Padilla in connection with the Sunday evening shooting at a cinema complex next to an interstate highway.

Padilla was at a hospital under guard Monday evening while being treated for a gunshot wound, police spokesman Gilbert Gallegos said. It was unclear whether Padilla had a legal representative who could speak on his behalf.

Witnesses told police that a man later identified as Padilla arrived at the theater with his girlfriend and found another couple in at least one of their reserved seats.

Theater staff attempted to help resolve the dispute, but it escalated with a hurled bucket of popcorn, shoving and then gunfire, according to police.

Michael Tenorio, 52, was shot and died at the scene. His wife, Trina Tenorio, said he was unarmed.

The shooter fled, and a wounded Padilla was found hiding behind a bush outside an emergency exit, according to police. A gun was also found outside that was compatible with spent casings from the shooting.

Emergency dispatchers received about 20 calls as other people fled the theater.

A criminal complaint and arrest warrant against Padilla listed open counts of homicide, shooting at an occupied building and tampering with evidence.

The complaint said Padilla was wounded in the abdomen but did not give further explanation.

An off-duty police officer who was at the movie administered emergency aid to Tenorio. The officer witnessed the confrontation but did not see a weapon in the darkened theater, reporting a rapid-fire succession of gunshots before one man in the dispute ran out.

[Mike Blakesley]

Maybe the government will provide all public facilities and businesses with metal detectors. What the heck, it's just another couple trillion dollars, nobody would even notice it.

[John Eickhof]

it was only a matter of time...i guess guns have now figured out how to kill in the dark...( of course not the shooter) is a theatre seat worth killing over? maybe it was over the bucket of popcorn...pretty sad state of affairs. . personally i have never agreed with 'reserve seating ' anyway, i was lucky i only had 18 reserved seats out of 1500 in the 13 screen, because they were d-box, even then, customers still couldnt figure out the right seat! at least freeloaders couldnt get a free ride cause d-box would not turn on unpaid seats!

[Jim Cassedy]

What Movie?

[Bobby Henderson]

What Movie?

My guess would be The Flash. Well, at least there was a flash in there.

it was only a matter of time...i guess guns have now figured out how to kill in the dark...( of course not the shooter) is a theatre seat worth killing over?

I think there is a larger cultural problem that has been worsening. Many Americans have been consuming anger and hatred as a form of entertainment. Our 24 hour cable news channels have built their business model around dispensing anger pornography. People tune in to get pissed off. Compound this with the immediacy of social media. Any story, even one that is false, can take root and go viral in a matter of hours. People are choosing what they want to believe rather than actual truth. Then we have the issue of people being more socially isolated. Too many are "connecting" with people via phone and computer screens by way of text. Digital devices have allowed all sorts of tribalism to grow much more intense. People will say rude, inflammatory things to each other on a social media site or in a forum not well moderated. Normally people wouldn't say the same things in person to each others' faces. Normally.

My theory is quite a few people have forgotten their in-person people skills or just willingly discarded them. Behaving like an adult is optional. Behaving like an asshole is acceptable now. Just look at the people our society elevates into fame and/or into elected office. Various politicians can't talk about boring policy stuff and be polite to each other. That's not going to attract the cameras, air time (and campaign donations). They have to say angry, irrational things (usually while inventing some kind of existential "enemy") in order to get and keep attention.

So it's only natural that we're having more mass shootings, more road rage incidents and all sorts of other awful things happening. There are consequences to indulging in all that anger. Unlike apps in a computer there is no "undo button" for doing something violent in real life. I'm ok with sensible gun regulations (I am a gun owner btw). But we're really not going to make progress on these problems until the nation takes a damned chill pill. The TV people, social media people and "law makers" need to be called out for how they've been riling up the public. They won't say anything about the role they play in stoking the flames. I remember back in the 1980's when they were trying to blame heavy metal music or rap for murders and suicides. They're not doing that so much about TV shows or web sites that twist a mass shooter's mind.

Of course that incident in Albuquerque isn't the first fatal shooting in a cinema. There have been a number of them over the years. What's sad is this one will play in the outrage cycle pretty quickly and then be forgotten as the cycle moves on to the next story. No one is going to adjust their damned behavior or at least learn some manners.

[John Eickhof]

agreed Bobby, unfortunately today's society doesn't have the common sense to know what common sense is! if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

[Marcel Birgelen]

Maybe the government will provide all public facilities and businesses with metal detectors. What the heck, it's just another couple trillion dollars, nobody would even notice it.

Well, let's say those things would become mandatory... then you already know what the story is: All government buildings will get them, you'll pay them and what it costs to operate those, via your taxes, somehow.

Then, all businesses offering access to the public and all business above a certain size will be obliged to install them. Besides some one-time incentives to reduce prices for metal detectors, you, as the company you're running is going to pay for those metal detectors, as in, it's eventually your customers who are going to pay them and the costs to operate them, via increased ticket prices.

Also, metal detectors and security checkpoints do little to increase real security, they just move the problem towards the security checkpoint.

This isn't a problem in search for a technical solution, it's a problem rooted deep within our current society. I'm not sure how we're going to fix this and I haven't got the feeling we're even trying to do so, unfortunately.

[Bobby Henderson]

agreed Bobby, unfortunately today's society doesn't have the common sense to know what common sense is! if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

Too many people don't think past their own emotional impulses. They're in the moment. They can't resist the urge to do what they feel like doing rather than behaving responsibly. That goes for everything from "minor" incidents like saying something hurtful to another person to actions that are absolutely criminal.

The tragedy in the Albuquerque theater stems from two people acting like disrespectful assholes. It's easy to guess how the situation played out. Asshole-1 didn't feel like following assigned seating rules, "I'll sit where ever the hell I like." Asshole-2 entered the auditorium to find Asshole-1 in his seats and was likely not polite at all telling Asshole-1 to move. Conflict escalates. Asshole-1 ends up dead and Asshole-2 goes to prison, possibly for life -all for a couple of seats in a theater.

I always arrive early to greatly reduce the likelihood of someone taking my reserved seats. I'm very particular about where I sit in a cinema. And I do not trust theater staff to make someone get out of my seats: "Can't you just sit somewhere else?" It's kind of a pain wasting an extra 15-20 minutes in a cinema auditorium before the pre-show starts. But it's an effective way to avoid a possible conflict.

This isn't a problem in search for a technical solution, it's a problem rooted deep within our current society. I'm not sure how we're going to fix this and I haven't got the feeling we're even trying to do so, unfortunately.

Yeah, metal detectors won't solve the problem. The issue is what's inside our heads and how we're choosing to behave. The powers that be in mass media and government have too much success exploiting public fear and anger. So they're not motivated to improve our culture in a positive way. We don't have any real leadership these days, at least such leadership in the right places. There are people who are inspiring in a positive way, but they're not the ones running the show.

I feel like we're on our own. That doesn't mean adopting a bunker mentality. But it does mean thinking several moves ahead when an unpleasant situation happens. Thanks to quite a bit of weight lifting I'm a lot stronger than I used to be. Still, I would do a lot to avoid getting in a fist fight with a stranger. If I got in a fight and managed to beat the living shit out of the guy there's no telling what he would do in response. No amount of bench presses can help you dodge bullets.

[Mike Blakesley]

What boggles my mind is, why do people think that pulling out a gun is going to solve whatever problem they're having? Especially if they are in a non-violent type situation where their life is clearly not being threatened. "He's got my seat? OK fine, I'm pulling out a gun!" How is THAT going to end well?

I suppose part of the problem lies with movies and TV shows depicting people using guns to 'do whatever they want' and getting away with it. It makes people feel empowered. Combine that with the cultural assholery Bobby mentions and you've got a powder-keg.

I wonder same thing about people who do these mass shootings. Do they really think they're going to get away with it? Nobody EVER gets away with it -- they either get caught, or get killed.

Do any of those people ever think beyond that event they're planning? What's going to happen, say, the next day? If they did, they probably wouldn't do it.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I wonder same thing about people who do these mass shootings. Do they really think they're going to get away with it? Nobody EVER gets away with it -- they either get caught, or get killed.

Do any of those people ever think beyond that event they're planning? What's going to happen, say, the next day? If they did, they probably wouldn't do it.

I don't think that the people who decide to commit such atrocious acts think they will get away with it. Many tend to commit suicide while they're at it or they clearly risk being shot by the police. So, they essentially already decided for themselves that their life is over. The act they're committing is, probably, the final straw at getting attention. The pain they're inflicting on all those innocent victims and relatives they probably see as some kind of "payback" for the pain "society" has inflicted upon them. Those people must have turned their back to society and "we" are now, apparently, their enemy.

The primary culprit is obviously the persom committing such deeds, but I think we as a society might also have some shared responsibility to avoid people degenerating to such a state in the first place. While there may always be the odd loon that happens to fall through the cracks of society, the fact that those "incidents" are on the rise, may be an indication of the fabric of our society becoming pretty loose.

I feel like we're on our own. That doesn't mean adopting a bunker mentality. But it does mean thinking several moves ahead when an unpleasant situation happens. Thanks to quite a bit of weight lifting I'm a lot stronger than I used to be. Still, I would do a lot to avoid getting in a fist fight with a stranger. If I got in a fight and managed to beat the living shit out of the guy there's no telling what he would do in response. No amount of bench presses can help you dodge bullets.

Like I mentioned in my answer to Mike, to me it looks like a lot of people are so on the edge or rather over-the-edge, they don't really think about the consequences of their actions anymore. Otherwise, it would be quite clear to them that pulling a gun or violently attacking some random stranger almost never ends well and will do little good to solve the initial argument.

I'm also afraid we're on or own, we can't rely on the government to fix this for us. I'm not a deeply religious person, but I was always convinced that religion is not so much about your belief in some super-natural all-mighty being, but much more about community and keeping things together. It's about respecting each other. Religion, for many people, has been replaced by TV and/or social media. Two years of COVID-19 isolationism also haven't helped much. While you can argue if religion has our best interests at heart, it's clear that commercial TV stations and social media companies clearly don't. They both thrive on inducing a constant state of fear into their "followers". While this obviously a gross simplification, I'm pretty sure that those companies play a big factor in the demise of the functioning of our society.

[Bobby Henderson]

I think more kids and adults need to learn how to play chess. Make them learn how to think several moves ahead. Learn that one action can cause a cascade of consequences. So many people seem very deficient or even deviant in their thinking regarding social interactions with other people or just paying attention to details.

One problem is too many of our public schools have this myopic focus on "STEM" classes and round after round of standardized tests. It's bullshit. Meanwhile they're ditching many other courses that actually help a kid grow into a well rounded person who can actually think. Naturally they're doing away with art and music courses because those are too "liberal," "weak" or "gay." Real men don't study art. When I was growing up I had to take all those kinds of courses in middle and high school. Plus I had to take a couple years of foreign language courses (Spanish, French or Latin). We had computer classes, usually tinkering with BASIC programming language. We had to take shop class. I was learning how to wire electrical outlets, light sockets and run power tools in middle school. It was fun. Even though it seemed "girly" boys and girls had to take home economics, learning everything from cooking to filling out a checkbook. Every school day we had an hour of gym class plus a couple of recess breaks. I'm amazed we have schools where kids don't have Physical Education classes at all.

It baffles me how much of our society is financially illiterate. They're taking all these STEM classes but can't understand things like the way credit card interest rapidly accumulates and interest the checking account doesn't. I think that goes back to deficiencies caused by ill-focused school curriculum and bad parenting. We have a lot of genuinely stupid people in our population. Worse yet, so many of us are totally self-absorbed. Egos are over the moon, but fragile as hell. No one wants to back down if challenged somehow. I think that's how we get things happening like the cinema tragedy in Albuquerque.

It's crazy how we still have violent crime happening even though cameras are seemingly everywhere. People are in the moment and not thinking several moves ahead. If they were using their brains rather than acting on impulses they would realize, "I'll get caught and go to prison if I do this." Three police officers in San Antonio were charged with murder earlier this week for shooting a 46 year old woman having a mental health crisis inside her own apartment. The 3 officers were OUTSIDE the apartment. The woman broke a window with the hammer. The officers responded by shooting through the walls and windows to kill the woman. They're big, grown men. They have pepper spray, batons, their bare hands plus brains in their heads to use if the woman had come outside the apartment. They opted for pistols instead. Look where that got them. The whole situation is just so stupid.

[Martin Brooks]

Well, let's say those things would become mandatory... then you already know what the story is: All government buildings will get them, you'll pay them and what it costs to operate those, via your taxes, somehow.

Then, all businesses offering access to the public and all business above a certain size will be obliged to install them. Besides some one-time incentives to reduce prices for metal detectors, you, as the company you're running is going to pay for those metal detectors, as in, it's eventually your customers who are going to pay them and the costs to operate them, via increased ticket prices.

Also, metal detectors and security checkpoints do little to increase real security, they just move the problem towards the security checkpoint.

This isn't a problem in search for a technical solution, it's a problem rooted deep within our current society. I'm not sure how we're going to fix this and I haven't got the feeling we're even trying to do so, unfortunately.

While I agree that this is a problem in our very violent society, which is exacerbated by the number of guns - it's estimated there are 436 million guns in the U.S. and that 46% of households own a gun (although I don't know anyone who owns a gun) and 32% personally own a gun (about 81 million people out of about 337 million total population).
If our politicians absolutely refuse to enact sensible gun controls and licensing (which they won't, at least not until Democrats have a clear majority in the House and Senate, which will probably be never), then maybe metal detectors in public places is worth the cost, even if paid by taxpayers and in higher prices. While it wouldn't stop a shooting outside a theater or in a shopping mall parking lot, at least people would feel safe in theaters and inside the mall. And the reality is that many public (government) buildings already have metal detectors because the politicians themselves want to feel safe.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Talking about gun control in the U.S. is a slippery slope. Let's try to avoid that here, as it will get political very fast, if it isn't already. . While I may agree with you that the large number of guns in circulation probably isn't helping the cause, there are other countries with high weapon proliferation that see a lower amount of mass-shootings per capita than the U.S.

Whether or not gun control will have a net-positive impact on the pure number of gun-related incidents, the true cause of this "social pandemic" clearly lies somewhere else and probably mostly that more and more people simply get left behind. They don't form a part anymore of any social framework, all forms of social control on them gets lost. We need stronger communities. Something that glues us together again, if it isn't religion, we need something else... what we definitely don't need is more big tech or wealthy corporations trying to control and exploit all aspects of our life, at whatever cost.

While not the solution to all ends, but certainly a part of the solution are local cinemas. Nice, community-powered places where we all go to enjoy the latest movies, where we can escape the harsh real world for a few hours at a time and share this experience together with the other members of our communities. Now, if we only had some good movies to watch.

[Bobby Henderson]

What the US really needs is some therapy. A good couch trip. It really is a disgrace how little we do regarding mental health. Most health insurance policies don't offer shit for mental health coverage. Roughly two thirds of gun-related deaths in the US are suicides. But the mass media doesn't say that. They want everyone thinking every "gun death" was a murder.

Most of the long-term homeless people in this country have serious mental health issues. The public looks at these people as if they're nothing more than trash. They sure don't want tax dollars "wasted" on treating and/or housing those people. If we can just get them out of sight that's a good enough solution.

We have tens of millions of Americans living with untreated clinical depression. That's not a good thing when combined with the messaging coming from our popular culture. Loneliness is at epidemic proportions. Americans have fewer in-person close friends than in the past. Without a good "support network" it increases the chances for all sorts of terrible things to happen. Most of those terrible things go unnoticed, be it alcohol and substance abuse, forms of self-harm and suicide. It only draws the media's attention when a "nut case" takes it out on other people as part of the exit plan.

The culture of the United States champions individuality more than just about any other nation. The US has done this throughout its history. It's easy to guess the pros and cons that come with it. Violent crime is selfishness taken to a negative extreme.

Like I said earlier, I'm in favor of sensible gun control laws. Not bans. I think it's crazy as hell my state allows so-called "constitutional carry." Previously in order to get a conceal carry permit here the person would have to take a day-long safety class, which included going over the basics of the Oklahoma Self Defense Act. They also had to fill out and file some other paperwork. It wasn't a difficult or costly process. Now you can conceal carry a gun or haul one in your vehicle without any classes or training. I think the policy is stupid because so many people have flat out dangerous misconceptions on what justifies the use of deadly force. Even worse, too many people buy firearms but spend little if any time at a gun range, much less take advanced self defense classes. When confronted with a lethal situation they run an excellent chance of an intruder taking their weapon and using it on them.

I also think open carry is idiotic. I call it bullet-catcher carry. If you're in a convenience store that's about to be robbed and have a gun openly visible in a holster you're probably going to get shot first before the actual robbery happens. I've heard the argument the visible weapon would make a would-be robber think twice. In today's self-obsessed society where egos and pride know no limits, chances are good the robber will follow through with his plan. If I'm going to carry a gun I don't want anyone knowing I'm packing.

[Lyle Romer]

I think Bobby has been pretty spot on with all of his posts in this thread. There is a major societal issue in the USA. People are, mainly due to the reasons Bobby posted, constantly angry and on edge and primed for disproportional responses to situations.

I 100% agree that concealed carry should require some kind of permit. It shouldn't be able to be denied (except for things like being a felon) but a person should not be able to carry a firearm in public or easily accessible in a vehicle if they haven't at least been taught the laws regarding justified use of deadly force. Somebody cutting you off on the highway or flipping the bird at you obviously (to those with half a brain) doesn't qualify.

I also think that some fault can be placed on realistic first person shooter video games because they desensitize people to the consequences of a shooting. I still remember interviews with some of the Parkland school shooting survivors and how casually they talked about walking over dead bodies with bullet wounds. I don't think playing video games necessarily will turn somebody into a violent killer but I think that it might remove a mental "stop sign" for impulse control in these situations.