Amy Bishop

First we had the horrible UAH shootings. Then we had reports accused murderer Amy Bishop having shot and killed her brother Seth in 1986. Then there were reports of an attempted bombing of a Harvard faculty member back in the nineties. And now there is this:

Tom Pettigrew, 45, told The Herald he was working in the auto repair shop of a dealership near the former Bishop home when he saw a woman running into the business with what he thought was a BB gun.

Pettigrew said Bishop, now accused of killing three colleagues and injuring three more on Friday, told him that she needed a car because she had gotten into a fight with her husband and he was going to kill her. It's unclear if Bishop was actually married at the time.

Bishop was walking through the dealership looking at cars when police arrived and arrested her, Pettigrew said.

From the Boston Herald:

Pettigrew, of Quincy, who was 22 at the time, recalled telling his co-oworkers: “I’m like, ‘Did I just see what I just saw?’ ”


Pettigrew said he heard noise coming from where car keys are stored, so he went to investigate.

“I go over to the door and I can sense that she’s right near the door,” Pettigrew said. “I’m thinking it’s a BB gun. I open the door and she’s right there and we basically bumped into each other and I got a shotgun right in my chest!”

“And she’s like, ‘Hands up!’ and I’m like, ‘Yes ma’am’ ”

Bishop appeared agitated and nervous, Pettigrew said. The University of Alabama professor now accused of killing three colleagues Friday said she needed a car because, “I got into a fight with my husband and he’s going to kill me,” the worker recalled.

Bishops's husband, Jim Anderson, gave an interview:

Mr. Anderson said that months ago, the university administration overruled a successful appeal of the decision to deny Dr. Bishop tenure in spring 2009.

“She won her appeal,” he said, “and the provost canned it.”

The university has declined to elaborate on the details of Dr. Bishop’s tenure application, saying only that she was denied last spring and that she could stay at the university only until the end of this academic year. Even if a faculty member successfully appeals a tenure denial, the final decision rests with the administration.

But Dr. Bishop had continued to fight, appealing to two members of the University of Alabama System’s Board of Trustees for help and hiring a lawyer, who was “finding one problem after another with the process,” Mr. Anderson said. One issue was a dispute over whether two of her papers had been published in time to count toward tenure, he said.

“She exceeded the qualifications for tenure,” Mr. Anderson said. “The review board said, ‘Grant it or go through the process again.’ ”

Mr. Anderson said that his wife’s research was generating millions of dollars for the university, that she had published numerous papers and that she was a good teacher.