London’s US terror victims run a music studio back home
mainKurt and Melissa Cochran from Utah were visiting London to celebrate their silver wedding anniversary.
Kurt, 54, was hurled off Westminster Bridge during the terror attack and died soon after of head injuries.
Melissa suffered a broken leg and is expected to recover. Her parents live in London, serving as LDS church missionaries. A church spokesman said: ‘We express our gratitude to the emergency and medical personnel who have cared for them and ask for your prayers on behalf of Melissa and our family. Kurt will be greatly missed, and we ask for privacy as our family mourns and as Melissa recovers from her injuries.’
The Cochrans run Onion Street Studio in West Bountiful, Utah, a music and rehearsal studio.
Report here.
LDS! Not that it matters …
The man is dead. It seems an odd time to be making opaque comments about his religion.
The LDS Church is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints a.k.a. the Mormon Church.
Exactly. So what is the meaning of the comment, “LDS! Not that it matters …”? The implication seems to be that there is something remarkable about his having been a Mormon (or at any rate married to the daughter of Mormons – a photo of him drinking beer suggests that he was not a practising member of the Church) and that is *does* matter. (When somebody says, “Not that it matters ….”, the implication is usually that, in fact, it does matter, but that one doesn’t feel comfortable saying so.)
Alexander, I agree with you that “Suzanne”‘s comment was inapropriate. My remark was about what is the LDS Church, I suppose most people don’t know that term.
I’m certainly not a native English speaker, nor have I reason to assume that Suzanne is necessarily one. My spontaneous understanding of her post was that she wanted to correct a faulty abbreviation of the Church’s name the couple is affiliated with, while acknowledging at the same time that in the context of such a terrible assault this is a point of very minor importance. Perhaps my understanding is naive or wrong, but in any case I’m rather dismayed at the readiness of quite a few contributors here to get at other people’s throats immediately whenever they see a pretext to do so.
LDS is what Norman wrote, though, so there is no fault to correct.
Ignoring the grossly insensitive comment above, they look like lovely couple. I’m terribly sorry for their families. Thanks for the British courage and dignity in the face of this attack.
West seems to be totally defenseless against Islamic terrorism!
Innocent and decent people parish in Europe and the US on a regular basis now – victims of the Islamic terror.
This involved a single individual with a motor vehicle and two knives making a suicidal attack on one of the most heavily-policed places in the country.
Yes, there is no defence.
If only their police were armed…
Although British police are not normally armed, the officers protecting sites such as the Palace of Westminster are armed. Most of the public do not want our police to be armed, and nor do most police officers want to be armed. Britain has a tradition of policing by consent. A constable is neither a soldier nor a representative of the state. A constable is a civilian who is drawn from the community and polices on behalf of the community. He or she has a power of arrest (as does every British citizen, albeit under necessarily limited circumstances) and may use reasonable force (again, as may any citizen), but does not ordinarily have recourse to potentially lethal force.
Not all traditions, no matter how old and good, are worth preserving indefinitely when the reality of life in this world has changed so clearly and dramatically.
England & Wales (population 56.9 million)
55 fatal police shootings in the last 24 years
US (population 316 million)
59 fatalpolice shootings in the first 24 days of 2015
[Guardian 09 June 2015]
I think we might like to keep things the way they are, thanks.