Lessons learned, when the unimaginable happens

The report in The New York Times was only three paragraphs long.

The headline read, “Gunman holding hostages is fatally shot at Duke U.” The report detailed how Ricky Lamont Coffin, a 23-year-old man who was awaiting trial on burglary charges, escaped from jail in High Point, NC, and took four people hostage at gunpoint at Duke University on October 27, 1992. Coffin held the police at bay for two hours before a sharpshooter fatally wounded him.

Coffin fired several shots in the direction of the police, bystanders, and a television camera from a fourth-floor window of Baker House, part of the Duke Medical Center complex.