Jun 27, 2007

Gun-toting smoker vindicated

Baltimore prosecutors drop charges against Frank Keegan. Keegan allegedly pulled a gun on neighbor David P. Ayers when Ayers knocked on the door to Keegan's house to complain about smoking.
Police said that Keegan's neighbor, David P. Ayers, claimed to be engaged in an "ongoing dispute" with Keegan over cigarette smoke that Ayers said was emanating from the editor's rowhouse. The two live next to one another in the first block of E. Montgomery St., an area of expensive red-brick rowhouses in Federal Hill.

About 11:30 p.m. May 24, police said, Ayers, 38, complained that smoke from Keegan's house was causing his 3-year-old daughter, Sophie, to have trouble breathing. Ayers called for a paramedic, then, carrying his child and accompanied by his wife, Christine, went next door to "confront" Keegan, according to the police report.

Ayers told police that he "pounded" on Keegan's front door and heard someone say, "You [expletive] lunatics, get away from my door."

Ayers shouted back through a first-floor window, "Look at what you're doing to my daughter," according to the report.

Next, Ayers said, he saw Keegan holding "what appeared" to be a long gun. Keegan "racked the gun in a manner consistent with a shotgun and shouldered the weapon, pointing it at the entire Ayers family from inside the house and behind the glass of the first-floor window," the report said.

It's my belief that if everyone reacted to the unreasonable demands of holier-than-thou neighbors in such a manner the world would be a better place.

Congratulations, Mr. Keegan.

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