Armed, alienated and adolescent
"I am not insane. I am angry. I killed because people like me
are
mistreated every day. I did this to show society, 'Push us
and we will
push back.' " - letter from Luke Woodham, suspect in
Mississippi's
high school shooting spree in October 1997.
It's difficult not to draw quick conclusions from the
shooting rampages at
schools over the past five months that have left nine
children and two
adults dead and 24 others wounded.
In each of the three cases, the melees occurred at rural
schools in the
South.
Most of the victims were targeted randomly.
The suspects were adolescent, alienated and armed.
But experts warn that parallels between the shootings are
more
complicated. The suspected shooters may be linked not so much
by
circumstances as a common mentality.
"It would be one thing if these kids had happened to be
carrying weapons
to school and opened fire during a fight," says criminologist
Gary
Goldman, author of the book Books and Bullets: Violence in
the Public
Schools.
"But these attacks were planned. This wasn't a
spur-of-the-moment thing.
These boys had a chance to think things over. And calmly,
coolly, they
decided to take care of matters with pistols and rifles."
None of the suspects has been found guilty.
Two students and one adult died in Pearl, Miss.; three
children were killed
in Paducah, Ky.; and four students and one teacher died in
Tuesday's
rampage in Jonesboro, Ark.
In each case, the suspected shooters apparently had trouble
adjusting
socially.
In the Pearl and Jonesboro slayings, police say, two of the
three suspects
were distraught after being jilted by girls.
They and the suspected Paducah shooter also were associated
with fringe
groups at school. Luke Woodham, 16, the Pearl High School
senior
accused of stabbing his mother to death and fatally shooting
two students
in October, had formed a morose circle called "The Group,"
which based
itself on violent and anti-Christian writings of German
philosopher
Friedrich Nietzsche.
Michael Corneal, 14, who was charged in December with firing
on fellow
students in a prayer circle at Heath High School in Paducah,
hung out with
a small band of students who were fascinated with the occult,
school
officials and police say.
And one of the two suspects in the Jonesboro slayings,
Mitchell Johnson,
13, had boasted of joining a gang.
More ominously, the suspects in all three cases warned of
violence to
come.
Woodham, police and students say, wrote and passed around a
"manifesto" before the spree. In it, he wrote that "murder is
not weak and
slow-witted. Murder is gutsy and daring."
Corneal, classmates later told authorities, warned several
students three
days before the rampage that "something big is going to
happen."
Students at Jonesboro's Westside Middle School recall Johnson
telling
several of them the day before the slayings that he "had a
lot of killing to
do," and that they would learn the next day "whether you live
or die,"
according to Associated Press reports.
In each case, classmates said they did not report the
incidents because
they did not take them seriously.
"Every kid spouts off now and then," Houston child
psychologist Pamela
Harrison says. "That's always been the case. What's different
now is the
accessibility children have to weapons, to drugs, to the
kinds of things that
can do real harm to themselves or someone else.
"Schools have to start emphasizing to students that when they
hear a
classmate say he wants to kill himself, or kill someone else,
they must take
it very seriously," she says. "And adults have to act
immediately. Because
there is recipe for a troubled kid."
If the suspects are similar in some ways, they are different
in others.
Woodham was distressed over his parents' divorce.
Corneal came from a two-parent home and is the son of a
prominent
defense lawyer.
A second boy charged in the Jonesboro incident, Andrew
Golden, 11, is
the son of postmasters.
Little is known of Johnson's family.
Woodham's high school has more than 1,100 students while
Corneal's has
600.
Johnson and Golden attended a middle school with 250 pupils.
"You could spend the next five years trying to figure out if
big schools or
single parents or a violent movie drove these kids to this,"
Goldman says.
"But the only real common thread is that they saw the way to
get rid of
their problem was to get rid of other people. I'm not sure
there is a simple
way to explain a tragedy like that."
And there is no simple way to forget, survivors of the
shootings say.
"We are getting better," says Gwen Hadley, whose 14-year-old
daughter,
Nicole, was among those killed at Heath High School in
Paducah. "But
this is something we, or the parents of the victims in
Jonesboro, will never
get over."
By Scott Bowles, USA TODAY
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