Missed the warning signs (again) to prevent a school shooting in Wisconsin
Missed the warning signs (again) to prevent a school shooting in Wisconsin
Student with an air rifle killed at Mount Horeb Middle was obsessed with Columbine and suicidal. He had intent, but luckily he couldn't get a "real" gun to commit the attack.
On May 1, police were called for an active shooter at Mount Horeb Middle in rural Wisconsin. Officers spotted a teen outside of the school with a long black rifle and killed him when he didn’t comply with commands. Four days later, police provided an update that the rifle was a $100 pellet gun available at Walmart and Amazon.
Intent doesn’t always match capability when a teen is planning a school shooting. Based on the information that is available now, the 14-year-old wanted to commit a school shooting, but he couldn’t access a more deadly weapon. He wrote online that AR-15s were his favorite weapon and “beautiful”. He described his family as “anti-gun” and lamented over his lack of access to firearms.
Like most other school shooters, he was actively suicidal and planned to die during the attack. Being killed by police at school while holding a rifle can be symbolic act even if he didn’t have the capability with an air rifle to seriously injure or kill anyone else. Before the attack he wrote online:
“I hate my existence because I fear everything, I AM TIRED OF THIS. My family thinks I actually have a plan after High School, no, I don't, and if my parents ever look back, they might just see they knew NOTHING about me, and I don't blame them.”
“Looks like time is kind of running out for me, no going back for whatever I do.”
“My last morning” was the final message he posted 2 hours before he was killed by police.
Who was he?
There is a movement to avoid notoriety by not naming or showing pictures a school shooter and mass shooter.
I think it’s very important to look at one Instagram photo and realize that this 14-year-old was just another kid. Everyone has some image of a school shooter in their mind, I’m betting this kid doesn’t fit that mold.
In his online posts, he wrote about his insecurities with school, friends, girls, sex, and explored questions about death and god. He described himself as "a natural at Spanish". His biological father is Latino but he was raised by white parents in the predominantly white community of Mount Horeb. In school he got good grades and wasn’t bullied, but felt like he didn’t fit in.
He did become caught-up in the same culture wars that dominate far-right rhetoric as he wrote online about his anger over Black people, Jews, the LGBT community, feminism, and diversity.
This fits with far right and white nationalist rhetoric from other school shooters. The Columbine attack was planned to upstage the far-right, anti-government motivated bombing of the Oklahoma City government building. The roots of the modern era of school shootings traces back to the origins of the American neo-nazi movement. Multiple American school shooters have worn swastikas and referenced Hitler.
From studying 60 years of school shooters, I believe that they share a collection of motivations that are like a variety of gumballs that can fall out of the machine. A school shooter might have one of these traits, or might have all of them.
Missed Warning Signs
Plotting and committing a school shooting is a public cry for help and teens planning an attack almost always make their intentions known. It’s a myth that school shooters are quiet loners, they are often well liked by classmates and socially connected.
An 8th grader in two of his classes said:
“He was funny,” she said. “His stories were entertaining.”
He didn’t know him well, but looking back realizes there may have been warning signs.
“He’d make jokes about school shootings. I just thought he was an off kid, with a dark sense of humor. I never thought he’d be capable of doing something like that.”
Online he wrote:
'Not just Columbine, Sandy Hook, Ecole Polytech, Kerch, All the School Movies. No one gets 'Columbiners', very few even know what it is.
'There's porn addiction helplines, there's helplines for suicidal people, drunks, pedos, rapists, BUT NO ONE CAN HELP ME ON EARTH.'
He wrote about visiting Weston High School in Cazenovia, WI where principal John Klang was fatally shot by a student:
'When I went there the energy was powerful.'
'I went outside and touched the walls of the school, but I didn't want to get arrested or something.'
“Columbine Addition”
Online he wrote about having a Columbine addiction, posted Columbine-themed memes, celebrated the anniversary of the attack (25 years last month), and praised another school shooters.
Columbine was not the first school shooting, it was not the deadliest school shooting, and other students in trench coats fired guns inside classrooms during attacks dating back to 1983.
Unlike more than two hundred other planned attacks at k-12 schools since 1966, Columbine is the most influential school shooting. The “lessons learned” (or not learned) from Columbine have changed how police respond and how school officials try to prevent the next attack. For teens plotting a shooting on the dark corners of the internet, Columbine is the most notorious plot to mimic.
I’ve documented 23 different school shootings (not counting averted plot) that have direct connections to Columbine.
Luck Eventually Runs Out
The systems that have been put in place to prevent school shootings failed to detect and stop this attack. He exhibited at least 7 of the common red flags.
For the weeks and months before bringing an air rifle to school, the 14-year-old student made verbal threats to other students, talked about being suicidal, and wrote extensive online posts about school shootings. This plot was not a secret, all of these warning signs were missed.
No other students died that day because he could only access an air rifle. It was shear luck that this attack was not more deadly but the system failed to prevent it.
A 14-year-old is dead, and a community is traumatized because we continue to fail at educating students, teachers, and parents to recognize the warning signs, setup redundant systems to document red flags, and enabling people to take meaningful actions to prevent these all too obvious attacks.
David Riedman is the creator of the K-12 School Shooting Database and an internationally recognized expert. Listen to my recent interviews on Freakonomics Radio, New England Journal of Medicine, and Iowa Public Radio after the Perry High shooting.