Circuit Rejects Appeal Of Shooting Victim’s Parents

DENVER (CN) - The 10th Circuit has turned down an appeal from the parents of one of the victims of the February 2007 Trolley Square shooting that killed five people and wounded four others in a shopping center in Salt Lake City.

Ken and Sue Atrobus, the parents of victim Vanessa Quinn, wanted the court to declare them crime victims in the government's case against MacKenzie Hunter, who was convicted of selling one of the guns used in the shooting rampage to gunman Sulejman Talovic when Talovic was only 17.

The court said that to declare the Atrobuses crime victims under the Crime Victim Rights Act would establish a "per se rule that any harm inflicted by an adult using a gun he or she illegally obtained as a minor is directly and proximately caused by the seller of the gun."

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