Two people were wounded at the “420 Day” marijuana “smoke-in” at Denver’s civic plaza when shots rang out, scattering the sky-high participants and causing mass confusion.
The unintentional hilarity of this UPI story is one for the books:
Denver police spokesman Sonny Jackson said a man and woman in their 20s were both shot in the leg, The Denver Post reported. They were expected to survive, said the newspaper, which initially reported three people had been shot.
Police said they were looking for two suspects and were asking witnesses from the big crowd that scattered when the shots were fired about 5 p.m. to come forward.
OK — so it’s still illegal to smoke pot in public in Colorado and the cops want people to come forward who were engaged in illegal activity? And what kind of descriptions of the suspects are they going to get from people who had been smoking grass all afternoon?
Johnny Lee, who was at the civic center when the shooting erupted, said he didn’t hear any disturbance beforehand.
“Everybody started to run,” Lee said. “They were running over people.”
Damontay Wimberly told the Post he heard about seven shots.
“Pow-pow-pow-pow-pow, about seven times,” he said.
Laura Forduno said the event was peaceful right up until the gunfire.
This is your brain on pot. Thanks for the illustration Ms. Forduno.
You feel sorry for the couple that was shot, and anyone injured in the melee that followed. But the vision of thousands of stoners trying to leave someplace all at the same time while higher than a kite is a scene reminiscent of the Keystone Kops. Hilarity is tempered with concern, but if anyone knows where there’s a video of the event, I’d love to see it.
In addition to making marijuana legal, Colorado recently passed some stiff gun control laws. It is obvious that guns and grass don’t mix very well. In fact, anyone stupid enough to take a gun to such an event should have their license revoked and their head examined, not necessarily in that order.
No one knows whether the couple was targeted or some toked-up rally-goer accidentally fired off several rounds. Regardless, it’s a sure bet that at next year’s 420 Day rally, cops are going to be out in full force and may even set up metal detectors to prevent this from happening again.
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