SHOOTINGS: WARNING SIGNS IGNORED--THREE

On May 23, 2014, 22-year-old Elliot Roger killed six people and wounded 14 in Isle of Vista, California. Roger’s motive was revenge for sexual and social rejection. Roger sent an autobiographical manuscript to family and friends detailing his frustrations over not having a girlfriend and his hatred for women.

Roger, who had well documented mental health problems, having seen multiple therapists since he was eight years old, may have been a misogynist.

In 2011, he splashed his latte on two girls waiting at a bus stop for not paying attention to him. At one point he told people that at a party he tried to push some girls over a ledge after being mocked.

In his manifesto, written on April 30, 2014 some three weeks before his rampage, he described his plan to kill people. He complained that at age 22 he was still a virgin and had never even kissed a girl.

To say that the three men listed above were mentally ill is painfully obvious, but the common thread in their illness is their problems with women. This thread may be a clue to identifying potential mass killers. This thread certainly underscores the need for a new, massive commitment to mental health care.

* * *

The problem in analyzing the causes of school shootings is that it often reveals a generous helping of incompetence and ignorance on the part of senior law enforcement, school, and mental health officials. That is certainly the case in the Appalachian School of Law murders and the Virginia Tech rampage.

To quote Douglas Kellner in his book, Guys and Guns Run Amock, “Complex events always have a multiplicity of causes and to attempt to produce a single-factor explanation or solution is simplistic and reductive.”

So yes, part of the solution begins with enforcing the laws and rules we have in place. But that is no excuse for failing to tackle the plethora of causes behind the growing number of school shootings. (To be continued)

SHOOTINGS: WARNING SIGNS IGNORED--TWO

VIRGINIA TECH

In my last posting I pointed to the warning signs ignored in the shooting at the Appalachian School of Law, now let’s look at the case of Virginia Tech.

Seung Hui Cho, who murdered 32 and wounded another 17 at Virginia Tech, harassed female students in person, over the phone, and via the Internet. He may have been frustrated because his advances toward females were rejected. Just days before his rampage, he went to Roanoke and hired a prostitute.

Just as in the case of the Appalachian School of Law, the killer’s repeated warning signs were ignored.

Cho could have done little more to warn of his pending massacre than to put a neon sign announcing his intentions. Here are Cho’s warning signs:

1)   October 15, 2005 Virginia Tech English Professor Nikki Giovanni wrote the head of the English department to report Cho’s threatening classroom behavior. Giovanni wanted Cho removed from her class because she was concerned for her safety and the safety of her students. If the school did not remove him, she threatened to resign.

2)   In April 2006, Cho’s technical writing professor, Carl Bean, suggested Cho drop his class. A heated argument ensued. During the spring of 2006, Cho’s creative writing professor, Bob Hicok, expressed concern because Cho’s writing was remarkable for violence.

3)   In the fall of 2006, Cho enrolled in a playwriting workshop taught by Professor Ed Falco. Cho wrote a play about a young man who hates the students at his school and planned to kill them and himself. The play was a blueprint for what happened.

4)   In September 2006, Professor Lisa Norris, another of Cho’s writing professors, alerted Associate Dean Mary Ann Lewis to Cho’s aberrant behavior.  Professor Norris urged Cho to seek counseling.

5)   Cho’s harassment of women was well documented. On November 27, 2005, a female student complained about “annoying” Internet, phone, and in person contacts from Seung Hui Cho. Later that month, on the 30th, a second female student complained about Internet harassment from Cho.

6)   A few days later, on December 6^th, Cho continued his harassing ways and on the 6^th, a third female student complained about unwanted, harassing messages and “disturbing” contacts from Seung Hui Cho. She filed a complaint and the school’s police took action.

7)   The Virginia Tech police notified Cho that he was to have no further contact with the female student. A despondent Cho sent his suitemates an email saying, “I might as well kill myself now.”

8)   On December 13, 2005, after being interviewed by the police regarding the complaints against him, Seung Hui Cho sent emails to his dorm suitemates talking of suicide. They were alarmed and called the police. A screener at the police station evaluated him as “an imminent danger to himself and others.” A magistrate issued a temporary detaining order and he was sent to Carilion St. Albans Psychiatric Hospital for mental evaluation.

9)   Less than 24 hours after being ordered to the mental health facility, Seung Hui Cho, on December 14, 2005, was released from the Psychiatric Hospital after the staff psychiatrist, without extensive testing or gathering collateral information, ruled he was not a danger to himself or others. The hospital recommended Cho receive outpatient counseling.

Cho returned to Virginia Tech where he slipped under the radar until April 16, 2007, when he slaughtered 32 students and faculty and wounded another 17. (To be continued)

SHOOTINGS: WARNING SIGNS IGNORED

Patterns of behavior are beginning to emerge. For example, I cannot find one instance of a female carrying out a mass school shooting in the United States. Mother Jones did find four instances where women were plotting mass shootings, but the police thwarted all four.

Given the overwhelming preponderance of male mass killers, we have to begin with the idea that these killings are related to some sort of male crisis. Many of the killers had problems with women. Indeed, it is in many of these killers’ relationships with or attitude toward women that we see the genesis of the problem.

While the killers may not tell us when, where, and how the attack will take place, they do alert us.

APPALACHIAN SCHOOL OF LAW

In the case of Peter Odighizuwa, the killer at the Appalachian School of Law, he was a wife beater and in one classroom outburst pushed a professor from the podium and launched into an anti-female diatribe. He was banned from going into some school offices without an escort, and a student had to intervene to stop him from hitting the librarian because she was running the vacuum cleaner.

The warning signs were there. Some of the students had nicknamed him “the shooter.” Three female faculty members were so concerned for their safety and the wellbeing of their students that they asked for campus security. The law school had none. The school president brushed them aside saying, “You women and your hormones and your intuition … there is nothing to be afraid of, it will be ok.”

Within a few weeks Peter Odighizuwa went on a rampage and killed three people and wounded three others.

Neither the president of the Appalachian School of Law, nor any member of the administration was ever asked to explain the school’s inaction when confronted with blatant acts of violence. And the school president was never called to task for ignoring faculty members’ calls for school security. 

I will be posting the warning signs form other shootings in the next few posts. (To be continued)

SHOOTINGS: SOME SUCCESS--FOILED ATTACK

The fact that a number of school shootings have be interrupted and stopped is overlooked. Here is an example of where an an alert citizen saw unusual activity and alerted police.

A mass school shooting in Wascea, Minnesota was foiled on April 24, 2014 when a woman called 911 to report a young man apparently breaking into a storage unit. The young man was John LaDue, an 11^th grader who was planning to carry out one of the worst, if not the worst, school shootings in this nation’s history. Authorities found bomb-making equipment in the storage unit and in his school locker. The police also discovered LaDue’s bedroom was an arsenal, two guns near his bed and five in a safe in his closet.

LaDue planned to start by killing his parents and his sister and then carry out a school shooting patterned on Columbine. Indeed, in the year before his arrest, he had become fascinated with the suburban Colorado school shooting, going so far as to buy a black duster jacket so he could dress like Eric Harris. LaDue also studied the Boston Marathon bombing and the Newtown, Connecticut massacre.

LaDue considered Adam Lanza a coward for killing first graders, but Dylon Klebold and Eric Harris were his heroes. 

In September 2015, John LaDue pled guilty to a single felony count of illegal possession of an explosive. The press reported that five felony counts of possessing incendiary devices were dropped in a plea deal to avoid prison. The young man will have to undergo up to 10 years of court-ordered treatment at a secure treatment facility for autism spectrum disorder in Atlanta, Georgia. (To be continued)

ADDICTED TO HATE

The organizers of Saturday’s rally of bigots in Charlottesville are domestic terrorists plain and simple.

The terrible events in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 12, 2017 laid bare a dark, paranoid segment of American society that is seething with white supremacists, racists, and neo-Nazis.

These neo-Nazi, slaveholder wannabes, claim to be patriots; nothing could be further from the truth. Their very existence is a threat to the rights of all of us as granted in the Constitution. They will stop at nothing to silence anyone who does not agree with their perverted sense of what they think this country should be. They exploit freedom of speech to agitate and instigate violence. The roots of the ideology of these morally despicable people lie in slavery and Nazi theories of Aryan superiority—roots that have cost the lives of millions of innocent people in the United States and Europe.

The Alt-right demonstrators and survivalists in Charlottesville and elsewhere are addicted to hate; they are motivated by hatred.

They claim to want to make America Great Again, but how is killing a 32-year old paralegal crossing the street making this country great? Two Virginia State Highway Patrolmen lost their lives monitoring the demonstrations. Two fine men, who were dedicated to preserving our freedoms and keeping us safe, lost their lives because of the nincompoops who brandish Hitler’s swastika flag and Confederate symbols. How are these heavily armed demonstrators consistent with the values of America’s founding fathers? They are diametrically opposed to all that is good and valued in this country.

Last November we elected a President who wanted to drain the swamp in Washington. But the exact opposite has happened. No swamp has been drained. Instead, the White House is contaminated with slime.

In part, the sludge pouring out of Washington is because of President Trump. He is a President who cannot distinguish between neo-Nazis, and people who protest them.

Why aren’t more public officials, especially Republican members of Congress, standing up to Trump? If they are scared, they should do it anyway. It is called “courageous vulnerability.” As it now stands, those who won’t stand up to Trump are lemmings following him over the abyss. This country needs all members of Congress to show courage NOW and stand up to our un-heroic, offensive, and vulgar President.