A 27 year-old Ukranian immigrant, Nicholay Soltys has allegedly stabbed his wife, children of his second cousins, and his elderly aunt and uncle to death with a knife. 5 people dead, several injured, and his 3 year-old son is missing. This incident occurred in two residences in the Rancho Cordoba area and the North Highlands area of Sacramento, California. Police are looking for Mr. Soltys and his 3 year-old son. Mr. Soltys is reportedly driving a silver 1990's Nissan Altima. There has been no mention in the media reports of the alleged murder weapon, THE KNIFE, being recovered at either homicide scene.

This is a tragic, sad, senseless crime. All of the stations picked up on the dead child on the porch. This news story just breaks my heart.

I would like to comment today on the media coverage regarding this breaking news story. This breaking news story broke today at around 12:30 pm, give or take a few minutes. All of the stations I checked into had screaming headline banners advising the TV views that there had been a" shooting at a daycare center," "shooting rampage," "shooting incident," etc. In fact, there was no daycare center involved, but the children were being cared for at a private residence.

As the breaking news kept breaking, we found out that there was no gun involved in this senseless crime. It was a knife. All of the stations we were monitoring changed their headline banners from Shooting Headlines to "Family Rampage," "Sacramento Rampage," "Murder Rampage," etc. Out of all the stations we were monitoring, MSNBC was the slowest station to change their "Shooting Rampage" to "Murder Rampage." We noticed their change of banners at 1:08 pm. The last time we had checked MSNBC was at 1:03 pm and the news banner still read "Shooting Rampage" even though the reporter was reporting that this was a stabbing and not a shooting.

Well, getting past that trivia, again, we are heart-broken that anyone would want to kill his family. Truly, this is another one of those unthinkable crimes.

So, the weapon was a KNIFE. People are dead. Where are the outraged reporters wondering why we do not have knife control? How come we are not seeing interviews calling for knife registration? How come people who have knives in their houses are not licensed for possessing knives?

I guess I shouldn't be surprised as no one asked these questions in the OJ Simpson case, either.

If we ask these questions about knives, shouldn't we ask them about bats, also?

Hmmm.....how biased is our media coverage? It sure does make one wonder.

Monday, August 20, 2001 - 11:01 pm:

CINDY'S UPDATE: As this day closes out, no mention of a weapon being recovered has been reported in any of the media services. The weapon has been described as possibly being a knife, a blunt object, a stabbing tool, sharp edged metal, etc. For clarification purposes, all the victims were stabbed, but it is not known at this time if the weapon used in the stabbings was a knife. FYI.