More About Our Hero, Jeanne Assam
Here’s why she left the Minneapolis PD. Doesn’t seem like the worst thing a cop could do. Even Presidents do it, right, Bill?
Rapid City Journal
Assam is a former police officer who worked in Minneapolis during the 1990s. She grew up in Sioux Falls, went to Hamline University in St. Paul, Minn., and graduated with a criminal justice degree, her twin sister, Jennifer, of Sioux Falls told the Rocky Mountain News.
Assam works full time for Messenger International, a local Christian ministry.
Minneapolis police officials said Tuesday that Assam was fired from her job as a Minneapolis police officer in the 1990s for lying.
Sgt. Jesse Garcia, a Minneapolis police spokesman, said Assam worked at the department from March 1993 to November 1997, when she was fired for lying during an internal investigation.
Sgt. John Delmonico, president of the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis, said police were investigating a complaint that Assam swore at a bus driver while she was handling an incident on a city bus.
Delmonico said Assam was dealing with an incident on the bus and for some reason she swore at the bus driver as she exited the bus. The bus driver became angry and filed a complaint.
“In giving a statement about the incident, she was untruthful and she was fired,” Delmonico said. The swearing was caught on tape, he said. “The union arbitrated the case, and the arbitrator upheld the termination.”
Assam’s home phone number is unlisted and she couldn’t be reached for comment.
Rocky Mountain News
The gunshots echoed like thunder in the hallway filling with smoke and the panic of those who sensed death at their shoulder.
The black-clad gunman coming through the church door was bringing hell to the believers.
The only thing in his way was Jeanne Assam.
“People were running away from where the shots were fired. I saw him through the chaos,” Assam said Monday as she searched for some of the calm that carried her through the nightmare that played out inside New Life Church the day before.
“It seemed like it was me, the gunman and God,” said Assam, whose hands trembled slightly as she spoke during the afternoon news conference.
Assam took cover and waited for the gunman to get close.
“God was with me. I was very focused. My hands weren’t even shaking,” said Assam, a volunteer security guard at New Life.
“I identified myself and engaged him then took him down,” Assam said, giving a clinical account of the moment when she fired the shot ending the gunman’s rampage.
“I didn’t think for a minute to run away,” she said.
A witness close enough to be hit by a bullet fragment is one of those who credits Assam with saving lives that day.
“She kept yelling, ‘Surrender.’ She was not flinching. It was unbelievable,” said Larry Bourbonnais, 59, a New Life parishioner who was slightly injured on his left arm.
The gunman had fatally wounded two teenage girls in the parking lot before entering the building. But, New Life Pastor Brady Boyd said, if the attacker had made it another 60 feet down the hall, he could have shot hundreds of parishioners still inside.
Bourbonnais said the gunman was dressed in black with an assault rifle slung over his shoulder. Bourbonnais said he took cover behind a pillar as gunshots were exchanged.
Through the smoke that came from devices police had shot into the facility, Bourbonnais said he saw the gunman’s head tilt forward, and then he fell to the ground.
Larry King Interview 12/10/2007
Table of contents for Jeanne Assam
- Jeanne Assam, Hero for Our Time
- More About Our Hero, Jeanne Assam
- Breaking News From Colorado
- Why A Hero For Our Time?
- Jeanne Assam’s story
- More About Jeanne Assam
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