Thursday, January 27, 2005
Suicidal Man in Jeep Cherokee Causes Train Derailment, then Jeep Workplace Shooting Rampage
In California, on Wednesday, January 27, 2005, at around 6 a.m. Pacific Time, Juan Manuel Alvarez, 25, of Compton, Calif., parked his Jeep Grand Cherokee on the Metrolink tracks at Glenville and got out before a train smashed into it. Alvarez told police that he was going to kill himself. The train crashes resulted in 11 dead, one missing woman, and 180 people injured. News that this was a suicide attempt flooded the media by the afternoon of the derailment. Reports that the SUV was a Jeep were widely disseminated.

Later on Wednesday at about 8:45 p.m. Central Time, an employee, Myles Meyers, at a Jeep Liberty production plant in Toledo, Ohio, using a shotgun, went on a shooting rampage with a double-barrel shotgun and then killed himself. Three were identified to be shot, with two reported dead, including the shooter.

Both stories received massive media attention (along with a helicopter crashing in Iraq with 31 military personnel being killed) on January 27-28.

Nah, I think that's just rabies.