Appeals court denies request by parents of Trolley Square shooting victim

In her mother's mind, Vanessa Quinn must not have counted.

"I don't know if anything's going to be done until an illegal weapon hurts somebody that the justice system thinks counts, then maybe they'll do something about it," Sue Antrobus said. "As Vanessa's mother, Vanessa counted."

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday denied a request by the Trolley Square massacre victim's parents to be legally declared "crime victims" of the man who sold the gun to Quinn's killer.

At least one 10th Circuit judge blames federal prosecutors in Utah for failing to provide Quinn's parents with evidence they needed to prove a connection between the gun sale and their daughter's murder.

On Feb. 12, Sulejman Talovic went on a shooting rampage at the Trolley Square mall. He killed five people and wounded four others before dying in a shootout with police.

Eight months earlier, Talovic bought a .38 Special from Hunter for $800. Federal authorities have said that Hunter thought the gun was going to be used in a robbery. Hunter's lawyer has argued that there is no way the young man could have known what crime Talovic was going to commit.

In an interview with the Deseret Morning News from her home in Cincinnati just after the ruling was handed down, Antrobus said Hunter may not have pulled the trigger — but when he sold Talovic the weapon, he became a part of the crime.

"When somebody knows it's going to be used in a crime and sells it anyway ... I don't know how he sleeps at night," she said.

In its ruling, the 10th Circuit judges were sympathetic to the Antrobus' request, but said they had failed to show themselves as a direct victim to the shooting through the actual sale of the gun. Under the Crime Victims' Rights Act, a crime victim is defined as "a person directly and proximately harmed as a result of the commission of a federal offense."

"This is a difficult case, but we cannot say that the district court was clearly wrong in its conclusion," the ruling states. The 10th Circuit panel stated, however, that case law on victims' rights in the proximate death resulting from the unlawful sale of a firearm does not exist in the circuit.

The judges said they found only one other similar case, which declared the person was not a crime victim under the statute.