Florida Man Is Shot to Death for Texting During Movie Previews

Frances Robles, reporting for the NYT:

An argument over texting at the movies ended in a cellphone user’s death, when a retired police officer in the audience shot him at a theater near Tampa, Fla., on Monday afternoon, the authorities said. […]

The killing underscored the increased debate about when to use smartphones in public.

On Twitter, Billmon writes:

When someone is shot in cold blood over texting, and NYT thinks the issue is smart phones, safe to say we’ve gone completely nuts as a country.

Update, 2:20a EST: The “underscored” sentence has been removed from the story. It got a lot of attention while it was there, though.

★ Tuesday, 14 January 2014