One person was stabbed to death and at least seven others injured in a stabbing spree at a shopping mall in Tsuchiura, Ibaraki Prefecture, eastern Japan, local media reported Sunday, March 23, 2008.
The 24-year-old man suspected of attacking the eight people with a knife was arrested, reported the Kyodo news agency. One of the victims was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he died.
The suspect was wanted for the earlier slaying of a 72-year-old man, police said.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
SoCal Shooting
Four men were shot to death in a junk yard on March 18, 2008, at Santa Maria, near California's central coast in what police called "a case of workplace violence."
In a wild scene that sent workers and customers fleeing for their lives, police said, the shooter killed the men with a semiautomatic handgun, pausing at one point between rounds to reload. A suspect was later taken into custody.
The shooting at Black Road Auto was reported about 4 p.m., and all four victims were dead by the time police and medics arrived, Police Chief Danny Macagni told the Santa Maria Times.
The victims, whose names were not immediately released, were shot at close range, Macagni said. One victim was found outside the junk yard, and three were found inside.
The gun used in the shooting was found at the scene.
"This is a case of workplace violence," the chief said. "We have a lot of work to do here. We have a very large crime scene."
Police aided by California Highway Patrol helicopters searched the area to see whether there were more victims. Macagni said police believed there was "a sole suspect that entered the premises and fired the shots."
Officers chased the man over a fence, tackled him and took him into custody. Police said witnesses have identified the man who did the shooting.
The junkyard, Black Road Auto, is on the outskirts of Santa Maria, near Black and West Stowell roads. Santa Maria is a city of 92,000 people 150 miles northwest of Los Angeles, in northwestern Santa Barbara County.
Homicides are rare in Santa Maria, which is in a largely agricultural area. In 2006, there were two homicides in the city; in 2005, there were three.
+++update+++
Lee Isaac Bedwell Leeds of Santa Maria was booked for investigation of murder and was held without bail. Police issued a news release saying witnesses at the scene identified the 31-year-old as the gunman.
At least one of those killed at Black Road Auto was related to Leeds, two were employees and the fourth victim appears to have been a customer of the business, investigators said. The wrecking yard is in the outskirts of Santa Maria, about 150 miles northwest of Los Angeles.
In a wild scene that sent workers and customers fleeing for their lives, police said, the shooter killed the men with a semiautomatic handgun, pausing at one point between rounds to reload. A suspect was later taken into custody.
The shooting at Black Road Auto was reported about 4 p.m., and all four victims were dead by the time police and medics arrived, Police Chief Danny Macagni told the Santa Maria Times.
The victims, whose names were not immediately released, were shot at close range, Macagni said. One victim was found outside the junk yard, and three were found inside.
The gun used in the shooting was found at the scene.
"This is a case of workplace violence," the chief said. "We have a lot of work to do here. We have a very large crime scene."
Police aided by California Highway Patrol helicopters searched the area to see whether there were more victims. Macagni said police believed there was "a sole suspect that entered the premises and fired the shots."
Officers chased the man over a fence, tackled him and took him into custody. Police said witnesses have identified the man who did the shooting.
The junkyard, Black Road Auto, is on the outskirts of Santa Maria, near Black and West Stowell roads. Santa Maria is a city of 92,000 people 150 miles northwest of Los Angeles, in northwestern Santa Barbara County.
Homicides are rare in Santa Maria, which is in a largely agricultural area. In 2006, there were two homicides in the city; in 2005, there were three.
+++update+++
Lee Isaac Bedwell Leeds of Santa Maria was booked for investigation of murder and was held without bail. Police issued a news release saying witnesses at the scene identified the 31-year-old as the gunman.
At least one of those killed at Black Road Auto was related to Leeds, two were employees and the fourth victim appears to have been a customer of the business, investigators said. The wrecking yard is in the outskirts of Santa Maria, about 150 miles northwest of Los Angeles.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Cafeteria Carnage
Death at the Wendy's in Florida is cause for a pause. Before the terribly high death toll at Virginia Tech, the largest number of recent "rampage deaths" took place in an eating establishment in 1991, with a direct link to an earlier fast food rage killing in 1984.
"The McDonald's Massacre" incident resulted in 21 deaths and 19 injuries at a McDonald's in the San Ysidro section of San Diego, California, on July 18, 1984.
That massacre was carried out by James Oliver Huberty, a 41-year-old former welder from Canton, Ohio, who had moved to the area with his wife and children in January 1984. He worked as a security guard until his dismissal one week prior to the rampage.
The McDonald's Massacre began at 4 p.m. and lasted for 77 minutes. Huberty used 2156 rounds of ammunition from a 9mm Uzi semi-automatic (the primary weapon fired in the massacre), a Winchester pump-action twelve-gauge shotgun, and a 9mm Browning HP in the restaurant before he was fatally shot by a SWAT team sniper perched on the roof of a nearby post office. It was a classic "suicide by cop."
Throughout the shooting, which involved the death of mostly Mexicans and Mexican-Americans from 8 months to 74 years of age, Huberty yelled out he had killed thousands in Vietnam. In reality, Huberty had never served in the military.
Fast forward to 1991.
The so-called "Luby's Massacre" was a mass killing that took place in Texas.
On October 16, 1991, George Jo Hennard drove his 1987 Ford Ranger pickup truck through the front window of a Luby's Cafeteria at 1705 East Central Texas Expressway in Killeen, Texas. He yelled "This is what Bell County has done to me!", then opened fire on the restaurant's patrons and staff with a Glock 17 pistol and later a Ruger P89. About 80 people were in Luby's at the time. He stalked down and killed 23 people and wounded another 20 before dying by suicide. It remained the deadliest shooting rampage in American history until the Virginia Tech Massacre.
As I wrote on page 163 of The Copycat Effect: "Before George Hennard crashed his truck into Luby's cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, on October 16, 1991 and sprayed it with gunfire, he had watched a documentary video at home about a similar mass murderer, James Huberty, who killed 21 people at a California McDonald's on July 18, 1984." (Hennard watched the tape over and over again.)
Hennard had also a used ticket stub in his pocket to the motion picture Fisher King, (1991) directed by Terry Gilliam and starring Jeff Bridges and Robin Williams, in which a fan of a despondent shock rock talk host takes the radio commentator's remarks seriously, goes to a restaurant, and opens fire, murdering numerous diners.
On the 11th of October, 1991, five days before the Luby's Cafeteria massacre, there had been a highly publicized "going postal" situation tied to the US Post Office in Ridgewood, New Jersey, which had left 4 dead. The killer in that case, Joseph M. Harris, was arrested wearing a gas mask and bullet-proof vest, and also dressed in black military fatigues, black combat boots and a black silk Ninja-style hood, with a 9-millimeter Uzi handgun, a .22-caliber machine gun with silencer, a samurai sword, three hand grenades and some homemade bombs.
Now we are at the present and another fast food place has had a "random killing." A shooting at a Wendy's in Florida on Monday, March 3, 2008, brings into focus again that shooting rampages do not merely take place at post offices, schools, colleges, malls, churches, and workplaces. They also occur in large gathering spots where people go to eat, i.e. fast food restaurants and cafeterias.
Brian Skoloff of the Associated Press summarized, in part, what tragically happened at the West Palm Beach Wendy's, around noontime on March 3, resulting in 2 dead (including the shooter by suicide), and 4 injured:
Researcher Richard D. Hendricks has pointed out this additional detail mentioned in Florida's Sun-Sentinel: "Jerry Maynard couldn't believe the irony of the T-shirt he chose to wear that day. The black shirt bears the name of his friend's band: Witness Murder."
Neighbors interviewed by the media described Blake as a quiet man who "kept to himself."
A 1996 story in The Palm Beach Post revealed that Blake accidentally ran over an 18-month-old girl with his van, leaving her seriously injured. The story said he had a young daughter, himself.
Paul Miller, a Palm Beach County sheriff's spokesman, said Blake had no relation to anyone at the restaurant and no suicide note was found. "We don't know why he picked this location to do this horrible deed," Miller said.
It should be mentioned for clarification that the so-called "Wendy's Massacre" on May 24, 2000, was a brutal killing of five employees and the attempted murder of two others at a Wendy's fast-food restaurant at 40-12 Main Street in Flushing, Queens, New York, as an outcome of a robbery of $2,400, by a former employee and his accomplice.
More to the point here, past school shootings have shown that the suicidal-homicidal rampage-styled shooters often focus on in-school cafeterias, for example, at Aarhus University, Denmark (1994), Thurston High School, Oregon (1998), Montreal, Ecole Polytechnique, Montreal (1998), Columbine High School, Colorado (1999), Red Lion Area Junior High School, Pennsylvania (2003), and Dawson College, Montreal (2006).
Even during the so-called "Port Arthur Massacre" by Martin John Bryant on Sunday, April, 28, 1996, in Port Arthur, Tasmania, he killed the most (20 of the 35 dead) at the Broad Arrow Cafe, a tourist cafeteria. Bryant's rampage was theorized to be due to the coverage of the Dunblane massacre (18 dead, including the shooter by suicide), which occurred at the Dunblane Primary School in Scotland on March 13, 1996. The story had received saturation media attention in New Zealand, Tasmania, and Australia, in particular on the perpetrator. It is thought to have provided the trigger for Bryant to act. This causal factor was, according to Dr. Paul Mullen, a forensic psychiatrist, the "copycat effect."
The workplace rampage shooter, nicknamed "The Cafeteria Killer," was, like the Wendy's Alburn Edward Blake, a man in a business suit who walked in and opened fire at lunchtime. The Cafeteria Killer struck on January 27, 1993, killing three people and wounding three others at Tampa, Florida's Island Restaurant. Just days before, the Kentucky's East Carter High School shooting had left two dead and received national media attention in its wake.
Two other instances of recent "rampage-style" fast food murder sprees are worthy of mention. One was on January 20, 2003, at the Burger King, in Pomono, California, with 2 dead, including the shooter through "suicide by cop." The other example was on March 1, 2000, at the Burger King & McDonald's in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, where 3 died and 2 wounded. The day before, February 29, 2000, a school shooting had occurred at the Buell Elementary School, Michigan, with one young student killed by one of her childhood classmates.
All of these types of copycat incidents reinforce each other. Late in 2007 and early in 2008, media attention to group church shootings, mall killings, and school shootings appears to be on the increase again, and thus it should be no surprise that people in cafeterias and fast food locations have become targets anew.
Sigmund Freud conceptualized suicide as the murder of one's self. Karl Menninger in Man Against Himself (1938) extended the concept: "Is it hard for the reader to believe that suicides are sometimes committed to forestall the committing of murder? There is no doubt of it. Nor is there any doubt that murder is sometimes committed to avert suicide."
Suicides underlie each and every one of these "rampages." The copycat effect is the trigger, and suicide ideation is the key to understanding them more clearly, from Columbine to VA Tech and NIU, and from McDonald's and Luby's to yesterday's Wendy's.
"The McDonald's Massacre" incident resulted in 21 deaths and 19 injuries at a McDonald's in the San Ysidro section of San Diego, California, on July 18, 1984.
That massacre was carried out by James Oliver Huberty, a 41-year-old former welder from Canton, Ohio, who had moved to the area with his wife and children in January 1984. He worked as a security guard until his dismissal one week prior to the rampage.
The McDonald's Massacre began at 4 p.m. and lasted for 77 minutes. Huberty used 2156 rounds of ammunition from a 9mm Uzi semi-automatic (the primary weapon fired in the massacre), a Winchester pump-action twelve-gauge shotgun, and a 9mm Browning HP in the restaurant before he was fatally shot by a SWAT team sniper perched on the roof of a nearby post office. It was a classic "suicide by cop."
Throughout the shooting, which involved the death of mostly Mexicans and Mexican-Americans from 8 months to 74 years of age, Huberty yelled out he had killed thousands in Vietnam. In reality, Huberty had never served in the military.
Fast forward to 1991.
The so-called "Luby's Massacre" was a mass killing that took place in Texas.
On October 16, 1991, George Jo Hennard drove his 1987 Ford Ranger pickup truck through the front window of a Luby's Cafeteria at 1705 East Central Texas Expressway in Killeen, Texas. He yelled "This is what Bell County has done to me!", then opened fire on the restaurant's patrons and staff with a Glock 17 pistol and later a Ruger P89. About 80 people were in Luby's at the time. He stalked down and killed 23 people and wounded another 20 before dying by suicide. It remained the deadliest shooting rampage in American history until the Virginia Tech Massacre.
As I wrote on page 163 of The Copycat Effect: "Before George Hennard crashed his truck into Luby's cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, on October 16, 1991 and sprayed it with gunfire, he had watched a documentary video at home about a similar mass murderer, James Huberty, who killed 21 people at a California McDonald's on July 18, 1984." (Hennard watched the tape over and over again.)
Hennard had also a used ticket stub in his pocket to the motion picture Fisher King, (1991) directed by Terry Gilliam and starring Jeff Bridges and Robin Williams, in which a fan of a despondent shock rock talk host takes the radio commentator's remarks seriously, goes to a restaurant, and opens fire, murdering numerous diners.
On the 11th of October, 1991, five days before the Luby's Cafeteria massacre, there had been a highly publicized "going postal" situation tied to the US Post Office in Ridgewood, New Jersey, which had left 4 dead. The killer in that case, Joseph M. Harris, was arrested wearing a gas mask and bullet-proof vest, and also dressed in black military fatigues, black combat boots and a black silk Ninja-style hood, with a 9-millimeter Uzi handgun, a .22-caliber machine gun with silencer, a samurai sword, three hand grenades and some homemade bombs.
Now we are at the present and another fast food place has had a "random killing." A shooting at a Wendy's in Florida on Monday, March 3, 2008, brings into focus again that shooting rampages do not merely take place at post offices, schools, colleges, malls, churches, and workplaces. They also occur in large gathering spots where people go to eat, i.e. fast food restaurants and cafeterias.
Brian Skoloff of the Associated Press summarized, in part, what tragically happened at the West Palm Beach Wendy's, around noontime on March 3, resulting in 2 dead (including the shooter by suicide), and 4 injured:
Paramedic Rafael Vazquez left a training course on how to help when several people are hurt at once, and went to lunch at a nearby Wendy's. He became exactly the kind of victim he was being trained to save.
As Vazquez stood at the counter waiting to exchange a promotional toy for his child, he was shot point blank in the back by a gunman wearing a jacket, tie and baseball cap. Four others were wounded by gunfire during the lunch hour rampage Monday, and the 60-year-old gunman - Alburn Edward Blake [a handyman and maintenance worker] of West Palm Beach - committed suicide....Vazquez, the slain off-duty firefighter, "probably didn't even see him," said Palm Beach County Fire-Rescue Deputy Chief Steve Delai. Vazquez's wife and child were outside in the parking lot when the shooting began.
Vazquez, 42, was on a lunch break Monday and had been attending a course called "Strategy and Tactics," after being promoted to lieutenant in January. Delai said the course teaches officers how to "manage large-scale incidents like we had today."
Witnesses said Blake entered the restaurant and went to a restroom. He appeared nervous when he emerged and killed Vazquez. He died at the scene without ever uttering a word....Josh Maynard, 30, said he and his 20-year-old brother Jerry hit the floor when Blake opened fire. Jerry Maynard said the shooter held his gun sideways, repeatedly pulling the trigger, and said nothing.....
Researcher Richard D. Hendricks has pointed out this additional detail mentioned in Florida's Sun-Sentinel: "Jerry Maynard couldn't believe the irony of the T-shirt he chose to wear that day. The black shirt bears the name of his friend's band: Witness Murder."
Neighbors interviewed by the media described Blake as a quiet man who "kept to himself."
A 1996 story in The Palm Beach Post revealed that Blake accidentally ran over an 18-month-old girl with his van, leaving her seriously injured. The story said he had a young daughter, himself.
Paul Miller, a Palm Beach County sheriff's spokesman, said Blake had no relation to anyone at the restaurant and no suicide note was found. "We don't know why he picked this location to do this horrible deed," Miller said.
It should be mentioned for clarification that the so-called "Wendy's Massacre" on May 24, 2000, was a brutal killing of five employees and the attempted murder of two others at a Wendy's fast-food restaurant at 40-12 Main Street in Flushing, Queens, New York, as an outcome of a robbery of $2,400, by a former employee and his accomplice.
More to the point here, past school shootings have shown that the suicidal-homicidal rampage-styled shooters often focus on in-school cafeterias, for example, at Aarhus University, Denmark (1994), Thurston High School, Oregon (1998), Montreal, Ecole Polytechnique, Montreal (1998), Columbine High School, Colorado (1999), Red Lion Area Junior High School, Pennsylvania (2003), and Dawson College, Montreal (2006).
Even during the so-called "Port Arthur Massacre" by Martin John Bryant on Sunday, April, 28, 1996, in Port Arthur, Tasmania, he killed the most (20 of the 35 dead) at the Broad Arrow Cafe, a tourist cafeteria. Bryant's rampage was theorized to be due to the coverage of the Dunblane massacre (18 dead, including the shooter by suicide), which occurred at the Dunblane Primary School in Scotland on March 13, 1996. The story had received saturation media attention in New Zealand, Tasmania, and Australia, in particular on the perpetrator. It is thought to have provided the trigger for Bryant to act. This causal factor was, according to Dr. Paul Mullen, a forensic psychiatrist, the "copycat effect."
The workplace rampage shooter, nicknamed "The Cafeteria Killer," was, like the Wendy's Alburn Edward Blake, a man in a business suit who walked in and opened fire at lunchtime. The Cafeteria Killer struck on January 27, 1993, killing three people and wounding three others at Tampa, Florida's Island Restaurant. Just days before, the Kentucky's East Carter High School shooting had left two dead and received national media attention in its wake.
Two other instances of recent "rampage-style" fast food murder sprees are worthy of mention. One was on January 20, 2003, at the Burger King, in Pomono, California, with 2 dead, including the shooter through "suicide by cop." The other example was on March 1, 2000, at the Burger King & McDonald's in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, where 3 died and 2 wounded. The day before, February 29, 2000, a school shooting had occurred at the Buell Elementary School, Michigan, with one young student killed by one of her childhood classmates.
All of these types of copycat incidents reinforce each other. Late in 2007 and early in 2008, media attention to group church shootings, mall killings, and school shootings appears to be on the increase again, and thus it should be no surprise that people in cafeterias and fast food locations have become targets anew.
Sigmund Freud conceptualized suicide as the murder of one's self. Karl Menninger in Man Against Himself (1938) extended the concept: "Is it hard for the reader to believe that suicides are sometimes committed to forestall the committing of murder? There is no doubt of it. Nor is there any doubt that murder is sometimes committed to avert suicide."
Suicides underlie each and every one of these "rampages." The copycat effect is the trigger, and suicide ideation is the key to understanding them more clearly, from Columbine to VA Tech and NIU, and from McDonald's and Luby's to yesterday's Wendy's.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Rampage Ripples
On the half-month anniversary of the NIU shootings, the volume of rampage-style shootings and school violence stories have been on the increase. Yesterday, February 27, 2008, was no exception, with new incidents in Tennessee, Arkansas, and California, sweeping across the nation, from time zone to time zone.
Here is a summary of yesterday's events:
At Bristol, Tennessee, at 11 a.m., on Wednesday, February 27, Rusty L. Rumley, 26, fatally shot four people at a public housing complex, Edgemont Towers on Ash Street, before dying by suicide. The police initially said Rumley was captured shortly after the shooting when he crashed his car about 20 miles away. A short time later they said he was dead and had apparently shot himself. Bristol, considered to be the "Birthplace of Country Music," is on the Virginia-Tennessee border.
At Little Rock, Arkansas, at 2:10 p.m., on February 27th, shots were fired in a parking lot near University Theatre and Stabler Hall, hitting a young man who was walking about 70 yards from the University Theatre. The two suspects who shot the University of Arkansas student left the scene in a "gold vehicle." The victim was transported to a local hospital with injuries.
In South Los Angeles, at 3:15 p.m., on February 27th, at a bus stop, a gunman fired about ten times into a crowd of children and adults. Eight were wounded, including three 10-12 year old girls and a 49-year-old woman who were critically injured. A 12-year-old girl, a 14-year-old boy and two men, ages 48 and 68, had minor injuries. The gunman ran away and has not been found.
Meanwhile, yesterday, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich asked state lawmakers to spend $40 million to raze Northern Illinois University's Cole Hall where five students were fatally shot on Valentine's Day. He suggested it be replaced with a new classroom and memorial building.
"Cole Hall will be torn down, but what happened there will never be forgotten," Blagojevich said at a news conference at the university in DeKalb, Illinois.
NIU President John Peters said he talked to Blagojevich the day after the shooting about what should be done with the building. In subsequent days, Peters said, students and others urged him to push for the building's removal to "consecrate" the site.
Further news yesterday came from MacNeil Environmental. The company is named in lawsuits by Red Lake school shooting survivors, and it denies allegations it failed to provide an adequate crisis plan for the Red Lake School District. Jeffrey James Weise, a 16-year-old Ojibwa who lived on the Red Lake Reservation and attended the school, opened fire at Red Lake High School, killing seven people before shooting himself on March 21, 2005. He had previously killed his grandfather (a tribal police officer) and his grandfather's girlfriend (also a tribal police officer) before going to the school. Fifteen people were wounded during and survived the Red Lake shooting.
Thanks to Todd and Richard for news items and links.
Here is a summary of yesterday's events:
At Bristol, Tennessee, at 11 a.m., on Wednesday, February 27, Rusty L. Rumley, 26, fatally shot four people at a public housing complex, Edgemont Towers on Ash Street, before dying by suicide. The police initially said Rumley was captured shortly after the shooting when he crashed his car about 20 miles away. A short time later they said he was dead and had apparently shot himself. Bristol, considered to be the "Birthplace of Country Music," is on the Virginia-Tennessee border.
At Little Rock, Arkansas, at 2:10 p.m., on February 27th, shots were fired in a parking lot near University Theatre and Stabler Hall, hitting a young man who was walking about 70 yards from the University Theatre. The two suspects who shot the University of Arkansas student left the scene in a "gold vehicle." The victim was transported to a local hospital with injuries.
In South Los Angeles, at 3:15 p.m., on February 27th, at a bus stop, a gunman fired about ten times into a crowd of children and adults. Eight were wounded, including three 10-12 year old girls and a 49-year-old woman who were critically injured. A 12-year-old girl, a 14-year-old boy and two men, ages 48 and 68, had minor injuries. The gunman ran away and has not been found.
Meanwhile, yesterday, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich asked state lawmakers to spend $40 million to raze Northern Illinois University's Cole Hall where five students were fatally shot on Valentine's Day. He suggested it be replaced with a new classroom and memorial building.
"Cole Hall will be torn down, but what happened there will never be forgotten," Blagojevich said at a news conference at the university in DeKalb, Illinois.
NIU President John Peters said he talked to Blagojevich the day after the shooting about what should be done with the building. In subsequent days, Peters said, students and others urged him to push for the building's removal to "consecrate" the site.
Further news yesterday came from MacNeil Environmental. The company is named in lawsuits by Red Lake school shooting survivors, and it denies allegations it failed to provide an adequate crisis plan for the Red Lake School District. Jeffrey James Weise, a 16-year-old Ojibwa who lived on the Red Lake Reservation and attended the school, opened fire at Red Lake High School, killing seven people before shooting himself on March 21, 2005. He had previously killed his grandfather (a tribal police officer) and his grandfather's girlfriend (also a tribal police officer) before going to the school. Fifteen people were wounded during and survived the Red Lake shooting.
Thanks to Todd and Richard for news items and links.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
NIU Ripples
As the half-month anniversary of the Valentine's Day shootings approaches on February 28th, a potential date for copycats, campus alerts have occurred in the wake of the Northern Illinois University event. Two-week, one-month, first-year, and then on-going annual anniversaries are worthy of extreme caution for educational and law enforcement officials.
Here are examples of a few recent campus scares:
At Jersey City, New Jersey, St. Peter's College locked down its campus for several hours on February 20, 2008, after the discovery of a message threatening violence at the Jesuit school. At 10:40 a.m., campus security became aware of the handwritten note, taped in the stairwell of an administration and classroom building on the 3,000-student campus. The note referenced the Virginia Tech killings. No danger was found in a massive search of the campus, and an all-clear was called shortly before 3:00 pm.
In Louisville, Kentucky, also on February 20th, Fern Creek Traditional High School was locked down for a few hours after a student told officials she thought she saw someone with a gun on campus. No weapon was found after a campus-wide room-by-room police search, but police said they were looking for a former student based on the witness's description.
At Long Island, New York's Stony Brook College, on February 25th, officials sent out a text message alert at 1:58 p.m., 21 minutes after university police reported to the scene of a sighting. The message said: "There is a report of an armed perpetrator on the academic mall. Remain alert and follow directions of emergency personnel. Go to the Stony Brook Web site for updates." But the first Web site update providing more details was not posted until 2:51 p.m. No one was found.
Confusion occurred, however. Some of Stony Brook College's 23,000 students were told to stay in buildings; others were not told what to do. Campus police responded to complaints about the lack of a lockdown by saying: "It's almost impossible to lock down a city of 40,000 people."
At Decatur, Mississippi, a student was found shot to death in his Neshoba Hall dormitory room at East Central Community College on February 26th, an apparent suicide. The shooting led to a brief lockdown before authorities determined there was not a security concern. Mark McEachern, 23, of Ridgeland, was enrolled at the Decatur campus as a cosmetology student, ECCC President Phil Sutphin said. (Condolences to his family and friends.)
In Fargo, North Dakota, classes were canceled in a downtown building used by North Dakota State University after a man with a gun was reported there on February 26th. Fargo and university police said a 28-year-old suspect was later arrested a few blocks away on suspicion of carrying a concealed weapon. Minnesota officials said the man had recently been released from prison, where he served time for robbery and burglary.
At Ferrum, Virginia, a campus lockdown took place on February 26th, and classes have been cancelled for the rest of the week at Ferrum College after a young man with a gun was seen by the housekeeping staff in a residence hall. A search by police was not able to locate the individual. More than 800 of the school's 1,000 students live on campus, but most left for an early spring break.
Ferrum College, affiliated with the United Methodist Church, is less than 50 miles from Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, where a student gunman killed 32 people and died by suicide on April 16, 2007.
Here are examples of a few recent campus scares:
At Jersey City, New Jersey, St. Peter's College locked down its campus for several hours on February 20, 2008, after the discovery of a message threatening violence at the Jesuit school. At 10:40 a.m., campus security became aware of the handwritten note, taped in the stairwell of an administration and classroom building on the 3,000-student campus. The note referenced the Virginia Tech killings. No danger was found in a massive search of the campus, and an all-clear was called shortly before 3:00 pm.
In Louisville, Kentucky, also on February 20th, Fern Creek Traditional High School was locked down for a few hours after a student told officials she thought she saw someone with a gun on campus. No weapon was found after a campus-wide room-by-room police search, but police said they were looking for a former student based on the witness's description.
At Long Island, New York's Stony Brook College, on February 25th, officials sent out a text message alert at 1:58 p.m., 21 minutes after university police reported to the scene of a sighting. The message said: "There is a report of an armed perpetrator on the academic mall. Remain alert and follow directions of emergency personnel. Go to the Stony Brook Web site for updates." But the first Web site update providing more details was not posted until 2:51 p.m. No one was found.
Confusion occurred, however. Some of Stony Brook College's 23,000 students were told to stay in buildings; others were not told what to do. Campus police responded to complaints about the lack of a lockdown by saying: "It's almost impossible to lock down a city of 40,000 people."
At Decatur, Mississippi, a student was found shot to death in his Neshoba Hall dormitory room at East Central Community College on February 26th, an apparent suicide. The shooting led to a brief lockdown before authorities determined there was not a security concern. Mark McEachern, 23, of Ridgeland, was enrolled at the Decatur campus as a cosmetology student, ECCC President Phil Sutphin said. (Condolences to his family and friends.)
In Fargo, North Dakota, classes were canceled in a downtown building used by North Dakota State University after a man with a gun was reported there on February 26th. Fargo and university police said a 28-year-old suspect was later arrested a few blocks away on suspicion of carrying a concealed weapon. Minnesota officials said the man had recently been released from prison, where he served time for robbery and burglary.
At Ferrum, Virginia, a campus lockdown took place on February 26th, and classes have been cancelled for the rest of the week at Ferrum College after a young man with a gun was seen by the housekeeping staff in a residence hall. A search by police was not able to locate the individual. More than 800 of the school's 1,000 students live on campus, but most left for an early spring break.
Ferrum College, affiliated with the United Methodist Church, is less than 50 miles from Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, where a student gunman killed 32 people and died by suicide on April 16, 2007.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Signal Stabbings
Hours before school stabbings left two students dead in China, coincidentally in California, two people were stabbed at a Fullerton theater during a film about brainwashed killers.
The stabbings took place approximately 45 minutes into the showing of the R-rated suspense/horror motion picture, The Signal. The suspect, who was described as a white male, fled out of one of the back doors. The assailant was noted to be a heavy set white man in his late to mid 20s, 5 feet 10 inches tall, with black hair.
"The suspect is still outstanding," Fullerton police Sgt. Jason Schoen said early Tuesday.
Orange County Register reporter Denisse Salazar wrote:
What I find remarkable is that people remained to watch the rest of the movie after the attacks!
The Signal's three perspectives were written and directed by first-timers David Bruckner, Dan Bush, and Jacob Gentry. The film opened in limited theaters starting around Halloween on October 26, 2007.
Considering the underlying behavior contagion theme occurring in the suicidal-homicidal mayhem being triggered by the media, The Signal's plot that citizens are besieged with radio, television, and other broadcast signals that distort reality and turn them into hyper-violent killers is downright chilling.
Thanks to Richard Hendricks for alerting me to this event.
The stabbings took place approximately 45 minutes into the showing of the R-rated suspense/horror motion picture, The Signal. The suspect, who was described as a white male, fled out of one of the back doors. The assailant was noted to be a heavy set white man in his late to mid 20s, 5 feet 10 inches tall, with black hair.
"The suspect is still outstanding," Fullerton police Sgt. Jason Schoen said early Tuesday.
Orange County Register reporter Denisse Salazar wrote:
Two men were stabbed and injured Sunday night while watching a horror film at the AMC Theater in Fullerton during what appears to be a random attack, police say. Shortly before 7:30 p.m., officers were sent to the theater at 1000 S. Lemon St. after someone reported finding a bag with what appeared to be illegal substances, said Fullerton police Lt. Tom Basham.
While the officers were at the theater, people started running out of the theater showing "The Signal," including two men with blood on them, Basham said.
Just before people started running out in a panic, two men sitting in separate areas of the theater were randomly stabbed by an unknown man, Basham said.
"He started stabbing at the theater seat and then he stabbed the victim," Basham said. "As he fled, he stabbed another victim sitting near the exit."
Basham said the victims did not know each other or the attacker.
One man suffered a stab wound to the arm, which also punctured his chest, and was taken to UCI Medical Center in Orange. The other man was also stabbed in the arm and was taken to St. Jude Medical Center. Both are expected to survive.
The attacker, who is believed to have been kicked out of the theater earlier, escaped.
No arrest has been made, but police are following some leads.
"The Signal," a horror-comedy, is told in three parts from three perspectives, in which a mysterious transmission invades every cell phone, radio and TV, turning people into killers. One character estimates that "one out of every two people" are impulsively murdering the other one, according to reviews of the film.
Basham said the film was paused while police conducted their investigation. When it was resumed, the first scene was a stabbing, he said.
What I find remarkable is that people remained to watch the rest of the movie after the attacks!
The Signal's three perspectives were written and directed by first-timers David Bruckner, Dan Bush, and Jacob Gentry. The film opened in limited theaters starting around Halloween on October 26, 2007.
Considering the underlying behavior contagion theme occurring in the suicidal-homicidal mayhem being triggered by the media, The Signal's plot that citizens are besieged with radio, television, and other broadcast signals that distort reality and turn them into hyper-violent killers is downright chilling.
Thanks to Richard Hendricks for alerting me to this event.
Web Sleuths & NIU
"I call it the death cult of Columbine," Loren Coleman, author of The Copycat Effect, said to The Chicago Tribune. "It lives on in YouTube, in MySpace, in special sites and in all kinds of ways we might otherwise call inappropriate."
This is the era of a new kind of suicide note, pushed along in cyberspace by keyboards and by texting.
Steve Johnson, the Internet critic of the Chicago Tribune, interviewed me extensively last week about Steven Kazmierczak's presence on the web. We discussed how I discovered more about the NIU killer than was being released in the mainstream press, including his identity, his reviews, his work background, his possible teenage abuses, and other items mentioned here at this blog or others. I talked about how this has created another dimension to the copycat effect phenomenon among school shooters.
Hastily and sometimes harshly written goodbye paper notes by someone dying by suicide, research has shown, have been found to exist only 20% of the time. However, Internet tracks of the suicidal school shooters nowadays seem to be evident in almost 90% of the cases.
The Tribune's Johnson interviewed other web detectives, of course, about this topic, and his thoughtful column appears in today's paper:
This is the era of a new kind of suicide note, pushed along in cyberspace by keyboards and by texting.
Steve Johnson, the Internet critic of the Chicago Tribune, interviewed me extensively last week about Steven Kazmierczak's presence on the web. We discussed how I discovered more about the NIU killer than was being released in the mainstream press, including his identity, his reviews, his work background, his possible teenage abuses, and other items mentioned here at this blog or others. I talked about how this has created another dimension to the copycat effect phenomenon among school shooters.
Hastily and sometimes harshly written goodbye paper notes by someone dying by suicide, research has shown, have been found to exist only 20% of the time. However, Internet tracks of the suicidal school shooters nowadays seem to be evident in almost 90% of the cases.
The Tribune's Johnson interviewed other web detectives, of course, about this topic, and his thoughtful column appears in today's paper:
Within hours of the shootings at Northern Illinois University, Web searchers, working from a couple of details in a media account, had correctly identified the gunman as Steven Kazmierczak.
The assailant, who had not been officially identified at that time, was a former vice president of an NIU student organization, according to an article published on the Tribune's Web site after the Valentine's Day murders, and he had co-authored a scholarly paper on self-injury in prison.
It didn't take much work on the Internet to pin those two details to only one person: Kazmierczak, a 27-year-old from the Chicago suburbs who killed five and then himself in an NIU classroom in DeKalb.
Loren Coleman, a Maine author who has written books about suicide clusters and the "copycat effect" in mass killings, thinks the Web may play a bigger role than many people realize. He may have been the first to name Kazmierczak, at 2:59 a.m. Feb. 15, according to the time-stamp on his blog, well before authorities officially released the name.
But what he wrote next was, in a way, more telling.
"I expect an in-depth examination of Kazmierczak's visible Internet life within hours," Coleman wrote in the post on The Copycat Effect (copycateffect.blogspot.com).
And indeed, it happened just like that, because the search for Internet traces has become such a predictable part of the mass-killer story line. They may get rid of their computer's hard drive, as Kazmierczak appears to have done, but most people, especially people of the Internet generation, leave bits and pieces of themselves around the Web.
"Once you're out there, you're out there," said Gary Price, director of online information resources for the search engine Ask.com, "and even the smallest amount of information that you might not even know is out there" can linger forever. In the wake of an incident, anyone with an Internet connection can go looking for the information, and judging by the traffic spikes reported on sites that bear any connection to killings, tens of thousands do.
Seeing such traces for themselves "gives people more of a feeling of immediacy than four or five paragraphs in an AP article. It's a fast way to get some depth in the story," said Steve Huff, an Atlanta-area writer who turned his Internet hobby of researching crime into a writing gig with Radar magazine and a popular blog, True Crime Weblog (truecrimeweblog.com).
A blog, such as Coleman's or Huff's, will publish information about an incident early on; the blog gets cataloged by the search engines and then the "comments" area in the blog becomes an important arena for additional information, ranging from wild speculation and slander to other, reliable links.
The rise of semi-public social networks MySpace and Facebook, where people can chronicle their actions, tastes and desires, has only deepened the trend.
Although much of the Web sleuthing that goes on is very good, Huff raises an important point.
"For a magazine like I write for now, we've got fact checkers," he said. "As annoying as the fact checking is, it's saving your butt. Bloggers don't have fact checkers."
And another characteristic of the Web is that once bad information is out there, it, too, tends to stay out there, believed by at least some proportion of the people who miss subsequent attempts to correct it.
In the Kazmierczak case, for instance, one Web site, People You'll See in Hell, misidentified a MySpace page as belonging to the killer.
"Bad information can get spread very, very quickly," said Ask.com's Price, a leading Internet librarian who also runs the resourceshelf.com site. "You get excited that you found something and then you start spreading it."
While tracking a killer's traces can seem voyeuristic or ghoulish, it is important to pay attention to the Web, Coleman said, because it is also being used to enshrine killers and, he believes, perpetuate their deeds, especially the high school shootings in Columbine, Colo.
"I call it the death cult of Columbine," Coleman said. "It lives on in YouTube, in MySpace, in special sites and in all kinds of ways we might otherwise call inappropriate."
In some cases, he said, the Web becomes part of the homicide-suicide plan.
"The Internet has become really the new way for these people to get the attention they're seeking, the romanticized, really irrational attention," said Coleman. "As opposed to nice, cool suicide notes, they're leaving Internet footprints deliberately as their suicide notes, as their way to be immortal."
~ by Steve Johnson, Hypertext, "Web sleuths track killer's cyber-prints" Chicago Tribune, February 26, 2008.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)