Ugh.
Another school shooting.
Had nothing to add but my own sadness the past 24 hours, but a couple things struck me reading the latest AP story on the supposed 'Angel of Death' in Minnesota.
First: ". . . fellow students at Red Lake High said they saw what looked, in retrospect, like warning signs." Not much laid out in the story, but I'll lay money that far bigger signs will turn up eventually.
The FBI calls it leakage. Kids give away their secrets. The school shooters nearly always give themselves away. Not just hints, explicitly. The Columbine killers seem to be an exception: lots and lots of clues, but never coming right out giving it away.
We might not learn about it tomorrow, but odds are heavy that right now some really scared person in Minnesota is holding onto the information that the killer warned him. He or she probably didn't take him seriously at the time, and now they feel an unfathomable mixture of guilt, dread and fear.
After Columbine, the FBI did an exhaustive and excellent report on identifying school shooters before they kill, called "The School Shooter: A Threat Assessment Perspective."
Download it right now. It's a PDF file and a really interesting read. Amazing how little the media has bothered to publicize it.
I'm also struck by all the similarities to Columbine, both real and imagined. By that I mean that the kid sure seemed to be trying to copy Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, right down to the myths. He consumed the same media as the rest of us, so he copycatted the stuff that never happened as well as what did.
So sad. Of all the awful ways to scream out for attention. Kind of boggles the mind. At least mine.
And on a professional note, it made my heart sink to see the AP still perpetuating some of the biggest Columbine myths in today's dispatch. They're still calling the Columbine killers Goths, and making them members of the Trench Coat Mafia. Good lord. When is our industry going to figure out how to clean up our mistakes and quit repeating them?
If you're unfamiliar with the Columbine myths, I've set up a site to guide you through them. But make it easy on yourself and start at this subsite.
Meanwhile, I wish I had some wisdom to offer those poor folks in Minn right now. Sadness and empathy, that's all I've got today.
Update:
I'm queasy about linking to my own story at a time like this, but I checked the referrer logs and there's clearly a lot of interest in it, so here's the info:
Last year I published a story on Slate, where the lead FBI agent and other shrinks they brought in from the early days finally went public with their information and laid out what Columbine was really about.
I'm fleshing it out much more in a book for Dutton, but that won't be out for a few years. If you want to be notified when it comes out, send me an email (or comment).
