THIS IS SICK...I am not one to say ban all guns, far from it, but this is learned behavior that must be stopped. I think the top branches of Government owe the families of these victims and society as a whole the decency of doing something about this. The focus of my enmity is not the gun manufacturers or users though, but Hollywood. And TV and any other broadcast media that doesn't have the self restraint to not make a fast buck from glorifying weapons and their terrible effects.
Take the images out of the young impressionable minds. They will in time forget about this sickness. As for the juvenile that did this in Oregon. Hang him. He's of no further use to society. No sense spreading his gene pool.
1 Dead, 8 Critical in H.S. Shooting
Thu, 21 May 1998 14:30:55 PDT
Story from AP / JEFF BARNARD, Associated Press Writer
Copyright 1998 by The Associated Press (via ClariNet)
SPRINGFIELD, Ore. (AP) -- A student who had been expelled for bringing a gun to class opened fire with a semiautomatic rifle in a crowded high school cafeteria today, killing at least one person and injuring 23 others, eight critically. Two other bodies were later found in the boy's home.
Shots rang out about 8 a.m. in the Thurston High School cafeteria, where up 400 people were gathered before class. Witnesses said the 15-year-old suspect, dressed in a cream-colored trench coat, ran through the cafeteria firing his rifle from the hip. One of the students who was shot, tackled the boy, took his gun away and held him down until police arrived.
About an hour and a half later, police followed up on a suggestion from the boy to check his house and found the bodies of a man and a woman. Lane County Sheriff Jan Clements refused to discuss the relationship of the victims, but several broadcast reports said they were the boy's parents.
Police identified the suspect as Kipland P. Kinkel, who had been arrested, expelled and released to his parents custody a day earlier on a charge of possession of a stolen firearm. They said he had been in trouble before for throwing rocks at cars from a highway overpass.
Several students said they knew him as freckle-faced freshman who played on the football team and had been expelled a day earlier for trying to bring a gun to school. Some said he once gave a talk in speech class about how to build a bomb.
''He always said that it would be fun to kill someone and do stuff like that,'' said student Robbie Johnson, who knew the suspect. ''Yesterday, he told a couple of people he was probably going to do something stupid today and get back at the people who had expelled him.''
Police Capt. Jerry Smith said the boy parked his car outside the school and walked inside carrying the .22-caliber rifle, .22-caliber handgun and a Glock handgun.
Wrestling coach Gary Bowden said there were between 300 and 400 students in the cafeteria when the shots rang out and that a Senior Men's Excellence Breakfast had just broken up nearby. He said one of his best wrestlers, Jake Ryker, despite being shot himself, tackled the shooter, got the gun away from him and held him down.
''You don't make sense out of this. There is no sense to it,'' he said. ''I think we ought to disarm. If this isn't a reason to, what is? I can flunk a kid and he can walk in and blow me away.''
''Any kid who takes a gun to school -- why he isn't put under observation for a few weeks is beyond me.''
''We spoke to him afterward -- he was very calm,'' Smith said. ''His motive, what he was thinking about, his motive, what caused him to do that -- we're a long way from there.''
Lane County District Attorney Doug Harcleroad said the suspect will be charged as an adult with murder, but as a juvenile, he cannot be given the death penalty if convicted.
Several students said they thought the shooting was a gag related to student-body election day.
Stephanie Quimby, 16, was sitting one table away and the shooter apparently focused on one table and drew his rifle from the hip.
''I thought it was fake. I had never heard a gun go off,'' Quimby said. ''It was like a movie and you were there. I felt so calm. I knew it was real when I saw him point the gun at someone and heard a girl yell, ''Tressa!'' I knew she wouldn't joke.''
Stacy Compton, 15, said she was sitting at a table when the guy came in and ''started going bananas'' with the gun. She said she ducked under the table and her best friend got hit in the center of her forehead.
The school of 1,350 students was shut down immediately after the shooting and parents, many of them weeping and screaming, waited outside.
A school official read the name of 23 students who were injured, either in the shooting or its aftermath.
Sacred Heart Medical Center had five patients in critical condition with shots to the head, chest and stomach. Three others were in critical condition at McKenzie Willamette Hospital.
Springfield, a suburb of the college town of Eugene, is a city of 51,000 people about 110 miles south of Portland.
In Washington, President Clinton expressed the nation's sympathy to the victims and their families.
''I know that all Americans are heartbroken,'' Clinton said during a Rose Garden ceremony on NATO expansion. ''Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the people who were killed and wounded, and with that entire fine community.''
It was the latest in a series of school shootings across the country.
On Tuesday, a high school senior shot and killed a student in a school parking lot in Fayetteville, Tenn., three days before they were to graduate, apparently because they had argued about a girl, authorities said.
On April 24, a 14-year-old boy opened fire at an eighth-grade graduation dance in Edinboro, Pa., killing a teacher and slightly wounding two students and another teacher.
On March 24, an 11-year-old boy and his 13-year-old friend opened fire on classmates in Jonesboro, Ark. Four pupils and a teacher were killed and 10 people wounded.
On Oct. 1, a 16-year-old student in Pearl, Miss., killed his mother, then went to school and shot nine students, authorities said. Two of them died.
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