http://www.wcnc.com/news/topstories/stories/wcnc-040309-mrn-massshootings.9df12d41.html
UNDATED -- It began on March 10, 2009 with Michael McLendon, 28, who killed 10 people including family members in Alabama before he killed himself. March 29, Devan Kalathat, 42, shot and killed his two children and three other relatives, then killed himself in an upscale neighborhood of Santa Clara, California. Across the country, Robert Stewart, 45, shot and killed eight people at Pinelake Health and Rehab in Carthage, North Carolina that same day. Now, April 3, a gunman takes 14 lives including his own at a immigrant center in Binghampton, New York. In all, 39 people are dead in less than a month.
Even Governor David Paterson took note at a press conference from Binghamton Friday. “When are we going to be able to curb the kind of violence that is so fraught and so rapid that we can’t even keep track of the incidents,” he said.
UNCC Criminal Justice Professor Vivian Lord said these mass shootings often feed themselves. “It gives a little bit more realm of acceptability as strange as that sounds,” she explained.
She said it is often about a rage that’s built up over time. “This isn’t something, somebody that just exploded out of nowhere. This individual would have been giving some sort of indicators beforehand.” Often the act itself is pre-meditated. In New York, authorities say the gunman barricaded a door with his car and then entered the American Civic Association building with his two handguns.
“I think they’ll probably find that he did identify this building and what it represented to him,” Lord said.
A NY state representative tells the Associated Press that the gunman had recently lost a job at IBM. Lord said the care he received after that layoff could be crucial to understanding this case. “I think its important that we look out for each other. Somewhere this individual feels like he’s been wrongly treated—he’s made some comments to some people and people don’t listen,” she said. Especially in these economic times, she said, “Each loss is a horribly loss for somebody and we need to be looking out for each other.”
Her colleague Paul Friday said mental health care is often a missing ingredient in mass shooters lives.
Their frustrations manifest themselves in a disturbing need to kill more people than just themselves. “He is going to go out in a blaze of glory, that just killing himself, whimpering away is not going to suit any purpose,” Lord explained. “People will remember me. I’ll show them. People will remember my name.”
UNDATED -- It began on March 10, 2009 with Michael McLendon, 28, who killed 10 people including family members in Alabama before he killed himself. March 29, Devan Kalathat, 42, shot and killed his two children and three other relatives, then killed himself in an upscale neighborhood of Santa Clara, California. Across the country, Robert Stewart, 45, shot and killed eight people at Pinelake Health and Rehab in Carthage, North Carolina that same day. Now, April 3, a gunman takes 14 lives including his own at a immigrant center in Binghampton, New York. In all, 39 people are dead in less than a month.
Even Governor David Paterson took note at a press conference from Binghamton Friday. “When are we going to be able to curb the kind of violence that is so fraught and so rapid that we can’t even keep track of the incidents,” he said.
UNCC Criminal Justice Professor Vivian Lord said these mass shootings often feed themselves. “It gives a little bit more realm of acceptability as strange as that sounds,” she explained.
She said it is often about a rage that’s built up over time. “This isn’t something, somebody that just exploded out of nowhere. This individual would have been giving some sort of indicators beforehand.” Often the act itself is pre-meditated. In New York, authorities say the gunman barricaded a door with his car and then entered the American Civic Association building with his two handguns.
“I think they’ll probably find that he did identify this building and what it represented to him,” Lord said.
A NY state representative tells the Associated Press that the gunman had recently lost a job at IBM. Lord said the care he received after that layoff could be crucial to understanding this case. “I think its important that we look out for each other. Somewhere this individual feels like he’s been wrongly treated—he’s made some comments to some people and people don’t listen,” she said. Especially in these economic times, she said, “Each loss is a horribly loss for somebody and we need to be looking out for each other.”
Her colleague Paul Friday said mental health care is often a missing ingredient in mass shooters lives.
Their frustrations manifest themselves in a disturbing need to kill more people than just themselves. “He is going to go out in a blaze of glory, that just killing himself, whimpering away is not going to suit any purpose,” Lord explained. “People will remember me. I’ll show them. People will remember my name.”
