Shooting
Without warning, automatic gunfire was discharged into the anti-Gaddafi protesters at 10:18 am. Eleven people were hit, including the unarmed Fletcher who was fatally wounded in the stomach. As she lay on the ground, her fiancé was at her side. Fletcher was taken to Westminster Hospital where she died from her injuries approximately one hour later. Libyan radio reported that the embassy was stormed and that those in the building fired back in self-defence against "a most horrible terrorist action".
Fletcher's hat and four other officers' helmets were left lying in the square during the ensuing siege of the embassy. In the days that followed, the images of them were shown repeatedly in the British media.
The official inquest into Fletcher's death concluded she had been killed by shots from a Sterling submachine gun fired from the first floor of the Libyan embassy.
Read more about this topic: 1984 Libyan Embassy Siege
Famous quotes containing the word shooting:
“After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.”
—William Burroughs (b. 1914)
“Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“... though it is by no means requisite that the American women should emulate the men in the pursuit of the whale, the felling of the forest, or the shooting of wild turkeys, they might, with advantage, be taught in early youth to excel in the race, to hit a mark, to swim, and in short to use every exercise which could impart vigor to their frames and independence to their minds.”
—Frances Wright (1795–1852)