Police: Kazemi bought pistol

A pistol was found beneath the body of Saleh Kazemi, found dead in an apartment next to the corpse of Steve McNair on Saturday. Today, Nashville police announced that the pistol had been purchased by Kazemi.

Kazemi, 20, died Saturday of a single gunshot to the head alongside former Titans quarterback McNair, who had two gunshots to the head and two to the chest. The gun was found under Kazemi’s body.

“We believe the pistol recovered from the apartment was purchased by Kazemi,” Metro spokesman Don Aaron said.

Police said the possibility of a murder-suicide is still on the table, but there are several other theories of the crime still possible.

I explained yesterday what other theories are possible. Police also questioned Kazemi's former boyfriend, Keith Norfleet, yesterday for several hours but have not named him or anyone else as a suspect.

Kazemi was only 20 when she died, so she could not have legally bought the gun, 21 being the minimum age in Tennesse for handgun purchases. Whether a legal adult can "co-buy" (as opposed to shadow purchase) a handgun, I don't know. It was well known for years that McNair had a carry permit. A carry permit enables a gun buyer to skip the instant-criminal-records check for gun purchase, since the background check for a permit is much more thorough. Update: but apparently not in Tennessee, see first comment.

Update: Police say now (5 p.m.) that she bought the gun from a private seller, name unreleased, and that the transaction took place in Nashville.

Police also said that testing for gunfire residue on Kazemi's hands is not finished. This is another reason that her manner of death has not yet been determined. Semiauto pistols expel unburned propellant gases not only from the muzzle, but from the breech when the recoil kicks the slide back. This ejecta winds up on the hand holding the pistol.

There are chemical tests to detect even minute amounts of residue. The larger the caliber and heavier the load, the more residue there will be. If there is no residue on Kazemi's hands, it argues strongly that she did not fire a gun, therefore did not commit suicide.

The Tennessean reported yesterday that Saleh's family said that Saleh had gone to a firing range in Florida with McNair, who took her to Disney World awhile back.

Meanwhile, police have been interviewing staff and patrons of Nashville's Blue Moon Lagoon bar because of this report of an event there Friday evening:

According to several NashvillePost.com sources, it is at Blue Moon Lagoon where McNair's evening took an ominous turn.

While sitting with friends at the restaurant (sources say that Kazemi was not in the party), a white woman in her early 20s, about 5-foot-4, approached McNair and accused him of slipping her a “roofie” a year ago.

The woman then told McNair, according to sources, that her boyfriend was going to kill him.

Roofie is a slang term for Rohypnol, a sedative dating back to the early 1970s that is used in hospitals for deep sedation, but is now a fairly infamous date-rape drug.

Seems spurious to me.