Some long overdue justice finally starts coming in the case of two murdered police officers

This story in today's Washington Post made me proclaim "It's about damned time!"

Brian Kennedy of Centreville, Virginia was arrested yesterday on eight charges that revolved around drug possession, illegal weapons possession by a drug user, lying on the federal form 4473 used to purchase guns, and providing drugs and guns to his whack-job 18 year old mental patient son Michael Kennedy, who used some of those guns back in May, 2006 to attack and murder Officer Michael Garbarino and Detective Vicky Armel, two decorated Fairfax County police officers in the Sully Station department parking lot.

According to the indictment unsealed yesterday in federal court, Brian Kennedy smoked marijuana with his son and his son's teenage friends and that Michael Kennedy's mother, Margaret, took the teens to a shooting range to practice firing assault rifles.

The story goes on to say that authorities also found guns, marijuana and drug paraphernalia throughout the family's home, and the indictment quotes Brian Kennedy as telling a friend that the 7.8 grams of marijuana police found in a wooden box in the living room was "chump change."

The shooting:

On the afternoon of May 8, Michael Kennedy donned camouflage-style clothes, kneepads, a ski mask and a vest loaded with more than 300 rounds of ammunition, police said. He walked out of the Centreville townhouse where he lived with his parents, carjacked a white van and drove about a mile to the rear parking lot of the police station.

Garbarino and Armel had just walked outside. Garbarino was getting ready to leave with his family on vacation the next day; Armel was going out to investigate the carjacking that Kennedy had just committed. Kennedy fired 20 shots into Garbarino's car, hitting him five times. He died nine days later.

Officer Richard A. Lehr Jr. then picked up a pistol and exchanged gunfire with Kennedy, hitting him once in the upper body. At some point, Armel began firing at Kennedy, and the teen fired back with both of his rifles. She was struck in the chest and killed. Two officers who heard Garbarino's calls for help, Mark P. Dale and Detective Jeffrey W. Andrea, shot and killed Kennedy.

I remember this well as I worked for another agency nearby. These Fairfax officers were my peers and we'd occasionally provided mutual aid to each other. I did not personally know the two murdered officers but I will never forget their funerals, both of which were attended by thousands of our law enforcement brothers and sisters from all across the country. And it didn't take long for word to get out to those of us left behind about how deeply involved in this both of the killer's parents were. We learned how the day of the killings, Michael Kennedy had run out of the family house with guns and his parents did not call the police. We heard that when he carjacked his first victim, Momma Margaret Kennedy pulled up and unsuccessfully tried to talk the victim out of calling the police. This is the same Margaret Kennedy that took her mental patient son and his friends to gun ranges so that they could shoot AK-47 clone assault rifles. Of course later she tearfully claimed that she and her husband had been trying to get help for their killer spawn, but I have to wonder what kind of "help" she was looking for at the gun range when she took him and his buddies there,knowing that he was a head case but pandering to him and his sick desires all the same.

Less than two weeks after Margaret Kennedy took this little bastard to the gun range and signed a waiver allowing him to shoot because he was a juvenile at that time, his dad Brian went back to that range and reportedly bought the AK-47 clone rifle for his then seventeen year old son and gave it to him. This was one of the guns that the punk used to murder my fellow officers just a year later.

We all knew that things weren't right when we heard how Brian and Margaret Kennedy immediately refused to cooperate with investigating officers, and when we'd learned that they'd refused to allow officers into their home or show officers the guns four months before the murders when they arrived to investigate Michael Kennedy's using one of the guns to shoot the family dog inside the house. These parents were both up to their eyes in this and bear just as much blame for the deaths of my fellows as their dead punk son. They apparently decided long ago that they'd rather be his pal then be his parents, so rather than discipline him and work to keep him on the right track, Brian Kennedy bought drugs and assault weapons for his mentally disturbed spawn and even smoked the dope with him, while Margaret took him to shooting ranges and later did her best to obstruct the police investigations. I hope that she gets charged eventually too, and I hope that both of them spend decades behind bars and lose their home and everything else that they own. It won't bring Mike and Vicky back, but it'll move the karmic scale a bit closer to the balance point again.

I hope that all three Kennedys rot in Hell.






TRUST FUND FOR THE FAMILIES OF OFFICER GARBARINO AND DETECTIVE ARMEL