NSOTD 03/06/01: CA Youth Shooting

[Freakapotimus]

Tuesday March 6 1:12 AM ET

Calif. Town Asks How Youth Shooting Could Happen
By Leonard Novarro

SANTEE, Calif. (Reuters) - This town of 58,000 struggled to understand on Tuesday why no one believed a 15-year-old who said he would shoot up the high school where he was mocked for being small and scrawny.

Everyone thought he was joking -- but he wasn't.

The boy, a recent transplant from Maryland, had confided to friends for days what he planned. On Monday, he carried out his threat, shooting at the 1,900-pupil Santana High School, killing two students and wounding 13.

It was the latest act of juvenile violence to shock the United States since two teenage gunmen killed 15 people, including themselves, at Columbine High School in Colorado two years ago.

After killing the two Santana students and wounding the others with a .22 caliber handgun, the boy surrendered without incident to police in a restroom at the school in Santee, about 10 miles northeast of San Diego.

Officials were working to determine where he got the gun and why so many people seemed to know of his plans but failed to believe him. Fellow students told reporters on Monday they thought the youth was joking when he said he was going to shoot up the school.

WJLA-TV, a local ABC affiliate in the Washington, D.C. area, identified the boy as Charles Andrew Williams, and said he had lived in Knoxville, Maryland until last year, when he moved to California with his father.

California Gov. Gray Davis, who ordered the flag over the state capitol lowered, stressed the importance of paying attention to all potential warning signs of an attack.

``We just have to find a way in this society to detect the warning signs more clearly, to keep guns away from children, and to find a way to teach children to resolve personal conflict with words not weapons,'' said Davis, whose wife Sharon attended Santana High School.

``Every adult and every student should not dismiss any potential warning sign as just a joke,'' he told CNN. ``The consequences of being wrong are just too grave.''

Could Happen In Any Town

The shooting was the latest of more than a dozen incidents of gun violence in American schools in recent years, including multiple killings in Oregon, Arkansas and Kentucky, as well as Colorado.

``This could happen in any town in America if it could happen in a town such as Santee,'' a visibly shaken Mayor Randy Voepel told a news conference.

The youth was to be arraigned as an adult and charged with murder on Wednesday, law enforcement officials said.

Santana High School was to be closed on Tuesday so counselors could help students traumatized by the shootings.

One youth who saw the boy shooting students said he was smiling as he fired. ``He had an evil kind of sadistic demeanor to him,'' said John Schardt.

At first students thought a cap pistol was going off. But as students fell bleeding, they started fleeing the school.

The two students killed were identified as Brian Zuckor, 14, and Randy Gordon, 15.

Josh Stevens, 15, who identified himself as the boy's closest friend, told local television the youth joked all weekend that he was going to go to school and shoot people.

``He had it all planned out but at the end of the weekend he said he was just joking. I would never have thought he would have had the nerve to do it,'' he said.

Another friend, Neil O'Grady, said the youth was always picked on because ``he's scrawny.''

Chris Reynolds, an adult, said the boy began talking about the violent plan over the weekend and that he even frisked him before he left for school but found nothing.

``Everybody kind of thought he was joking around,'' Reynolds told local station KGTV.

Scott Bryan, the boy's best friend back in Maryland, told WJLA: ``I want people to know that he's not a bad person, he's not a psycho-killer person. He's nice and I guess some people just can't take it, can't the stress.''

[Freakapotimus]

Tuesday March 06 12:26 PM EST

School Shooting Suspect Showed 'Evil Smile'
By ABCNEWS.com

Witnesses say the 15-year-old accused of killing two people and wounding 13 others wore "an evil smile" during the eight-minute shooting spree at a suburban San Diego high school. The teenager will be charged as an adult.

In one brief, chilling moment, Andrew Kafourey knew he'd made a mistake. He had walked into a bathroom at Santana High School to investigate what he thought was the sound of fire crackers. Instead. he found himself face to face with the barrel of a gun. And a smile that made him turn and run.

"I went in there because it sounded like firecrackers," Kafourey told ABCNEWS' Good Morning America. "He pointed the gun at me, but I didn't get shot. The campus supervisor right behind me got shot five times in the back. He was smiling, like he was to everybody. He was just smiling. I didn't know what to do. I was in shock. So I basically did what my gut instinct was and I ran. It was like an evil smile, like, 'I'm doing this to get even with somebody and I'm happy about it.'"

Charles "Andy" Williams, 15, was arrested Monday morning when police found him kneeling in the bathroom with a .22 caliber pistol. Police say that in an 8-minute shooting spree he killed two people and wounded 13 others. He is scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday on murder, weapons and assault charges. Under California law, he will be charged as an adult.

Police say he fired about 30 shots during the bloody spree, reloading his weapons four times along the way. During a search of the apartment where Williams lives with his father, police found seven other guns and seized a computer.

"There was reloading inside of the school and at the time of his arrest there were unexpended shells in the gun so had the officers not gotten there at the time that they did, there would have been in all likelihood more shooting based upon what we know now," District Attorney Paul Pfingst said.

Even so, Santana High, near San Diego, has become synonymous with Columbine and Paducah .

According to the police who took Williams into custody, the young suspect seemed unmoved by what he had allegedly done, appearing "matter of fact" as he sat handcuffed in a squad car, Pfingst said.

Authorities believe he took the gun allegedly used in the shooting from his family home, and carried the weapon along with as many as 40 rounds of ammunition to school in his backpack. Friends who said they heard him threatening to shoot people checked him for a weapon Monday morning, but didn't look in his bag.

A friend of the family who heard about the threats said he talked to the boy and was convinced it was a joke, but at the last minute decided to call Williams' home to make sure there was no gun there he could use if the talk turned out to be serious.

"I tried calling his house," Chris Reynolds said. "The phone would just ring. The answering machine didn't even come on. I was just going to have a talk with his dad that, you know, if you do have any weapons in the house and stuff, please remove them and take them to a safe place, until Andy could be talked to by somebody or something could be done to make sure nothing like this was really going to happen."

He didn't get through, and it did happen.

A makeshift memorial was set up outside the school Monday night. At first there were just a dozen students, but as the night went on, more and more arrived, bringing flowers, candles, balloons and signs. Several students stood hugging one another, rocking back and forth, trying to find comfort.

A 'Dork,' 'Freak,' 'Nerd'

Though authorities say they have not established a motive for the shootings, they believe that the victims were shot at random, and they say there could have been more. He still had bullets when police found him.

Friends and acquaintances of the 15-year-old alleged gunman say the warning signs were there , but at least one boy was shocked.

"He was the calmest guy I ever met," said Steve Meincke, who said he was a friend of Williams. "He was probably the most trustworthy friend I ever had."

But students say the Santana High School freshman, who had just moved to California from Maryland last summer, was often mocked as a "dork," "freak" and "nerd" by some of the other kids. One girl said he once brought a water pistol filled with urine to school and shot it at people.

[Freakapotimus]

Con't from above post...

Experts say that when children often talk about violence, it is a warning sign, but even with the memory of the Columbine High School shooting, no one took the teenager seriously.

Suspect 'Liked to Joke a Lot'

"If he [the suspect] had said something to a professional - a teacher or a counselor - things would have probably worked out differently," said Howard Snyder, systems research director for the National Center for Juvenile Justice in Pittsburgh, Pa.

"They would have known to contact authorities. But kids say they're going to kill each other, beat each other up all the time ... it's hard to distinguish when they're kidding," he said. "If authorities were asked to investigate every threat, they would be investigating a vast majority of kids."

Reynolds said he did not take the threats seriously because Williams and the kids he hung out with "liked to joke around a lot." He said he regretted not contacting authorities about the threats.

"I feel like I'm to blame for some of this because I could have done something about this," Reynolds said. "I told him [the shooter], 'I don't want a Columbine here in Santana.' And he said, 'No, nothing's happening. I'm just joking.'"

"Everybody thought he was the type of kid that wouldn't do such a thing, but he's exactly the type of kid who's been doing these things," Reynolds continued.

Alex Ripple, a 14-year-old friend of the suspect, said he and his friends were concerned enough to check him for weapons.

"We didn't search his backpack, only searched his body. We patted him down." They found nothing, Ripple said.

Sounding the Alarm

Over the past few months, potential Columbine-style massacres have been prevented by people who noticed red flags, took them seriously and notified authorities immediately.

In January, a photo lab clerk's tip to San Jose police led to the arrest of 19-year-old Al DeGuzman on weapons and explosives charges for allegedly planning an attack on De Anza College in Cupertino, Calif.

In February, high school students in Fort Collins, Colo. and Hoyt, Kan. prevented similar attacks by telling authorities about their classmates' plans.

"The biggest change is that kids around the country have a better appreciation that they have some responsibility for letting people know when they find out dark things about other kids," said James Garbarino, human development professor at Cornell University.

ABCNEWS' Bill Redeker and ABCNEWS.com's Dean Schabner, Oliver Libaw and Bryan Robinson contributed to this report.

[shorbe]

I think it was rather ironic that Bush was talking about this whole thing with regard to people teaching children right from wrong.

Whilst I don't condone shooting classmates, and believe everyone is responsible for themselves, I do find it amusing that the "right from wrong" thing never seems to apply to the bullies.

Apparently, there's nothing wrong with pushing people over the edge.

shorbe