Guessing game
Hey, editors! See any relevant details that might be missing from this story?
If John Bomar stabbed his live-in girlfriend in the back last fall, it must have slipped his mind, he told authorities in an hour-long statement after his arrest.
"She had the knife first," he told Clinton Township Police Detective William Furno. "We got to tussling in the hallway ... She gets stuck, and we kept wrestling."
Go on ...
Bomar's statement was played Monday for Macomb County Circuit Judge Mary Chrzanowski, who ruled that it could be used as evidence against him in his trial, which is scheduled to begin May 28.
And?
Bomar, 58, is accused of chasing Grace Bommarito, 43, down the hallway in their apartment complex, the Peri Manor Apartments in Clinton Township, and stabbing her 10 times in October. A neighbor told police that she opened her door and saw Bomar's last stab to Bommarito's back.
And?
The butcher knife pierced Bommarito's lung, Furno said during Bomar's interrogation.
Bomar said he didn't remember it that way.
"If I stabbed her in the back, it slipped my mind," he said.
And then ...?
Furno said that despite Bomar's testimony that he and his girlfriend tussled in the hallway, the only blood police found was outside of a neighbor's door about 120 feet from the couple's apartment.
It's not our job to rewrite everything that comes down the old editorial turnpike. But it is our job to stand in for the poor beleaguered reader by asking the occasional obvious question. Post your guesses here, and if you're still stumped, you can find the remaining two grafs here.
If John Bomar stabbed his live-in girlfriend in the back last fall, it must have slipped his mind, he told authorities in an hour-long statement after his arrest.
"She had the knife first," he told Clinton Township Police Detective William Furno. "We got to tussling in the hallway ... She gets stuck, and we kept wrestling."
Go on ...
Bomar's statement was played Monday for Macomb County Circuit Judge Mary Chrzanowski, who ruled that it could be used as evidence against him in his trial, which is scheduled to begin May 28.
And?
Bomar, 58, is accused of chasing Grace Bommarito, 43, down the hallway in their apartment complex, the Peri Manor Apartments in Clinton Township, and stabbing her 10 times in October. A neighbor told police that she opened her door and saw Bomar's last stab to Bommarito's back.
And?
The butcher knife pierced Bommarito's lung, Furno said during Bomar's interrogation.
Bomar said he didn't remember it that way.
"If I stabbed her in the back, it slipped my mind," he said.
And then ...?
Furno said that despite Bomar's testimony that he and his girlfriend tussled in the hallway, the only blood police found was outside of a neighbor's door about 120 feet from the couple's apartment.
It's not our job to rewrite everything that comes down the old editorial turnpike. But it is our job to stand in for the poor beleaguered reader by asking the occasional obvious question. Post your guesses here, and if you're still stumped, you can find the remaining two grafs here.
posted by fev at 9:21 AM
6 Comments:
Well, I'd like to know if she died - sounds like she might have.
Yeah ... she's not quoted. Is she dead? They don't tell us! Is the charge "chasing and stabbing"?
What state did this occur in?
Macomb County is in Michigan.
Writing with the five W's is soooo last year.
1st graf: After his arrest, which was when exactly?
2nd graf: His trial on what charges? Yes, we read in the next graf he chased her (not necessarily a crime) and stabbed her (definitely a no-no) – but what were the charges?
Whole story: is there a reason why the crime slipped his mind?
We had a saying at one of my old papers, back when metro-front story counts were high and featurized obits on 1B were in vogue: Try to make sure they die before the jump, OK?
If you were lucky enough to remember reading the 2nd item in the Macomb briefs two weeks ago, you'd probably recall that this was a murder trial (the 9th graf of the present story mentions "the killing" but doesn't say what kind of killing is alleged). If not, well ...
In counterpoint to a good question from the desk -- like "Did the victim die?" -- let me reprint this entry from last year by gentleman editor John McIntyre. The Doug he's quoting is the esteemed Doug Fisher, whose Common Sense Journalism you can also find in the blogroll.
Doug’s story, which I steal without shame, was of an Associated Press bureau and the barrage of questions it was accustomed to getting in the evening from a newspaper in the area. One night the bureau’s big story was of a peculiar homicide — a man stabbed to death with a pen.
The editor at the newspaper had a long list of questions for the AP bureau chief. What about this detail, and that detail, and the other detail. Finally, at the end of this catechism, came a question in the best get-the-name-of-the-dog tradition of journalism: What color was the pen?
Pausing only for a moment in exasperation, the bureau chief answered, “I don’t know, but it’s red now.”
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