Columbine Fallout
 

I hope to compile a database of all school shootings since Columbine occurred.

Psychological operations to instill fear in our students and parents.

WE AREN'T SAFE ANYWHERE.

Terrorists are out to get us and our children are targets while they're in school.

Talk about creating a society full of anxiety and fear.

From JFK to the present.

For now, the most recent was at the University of Delaware.

2 students shot at Delaware State Univ. By RANDALL CHASE, Associated Press Writer
11 minutes ago

DOVER, Del. - Two students were shot and wounded, one seriously, at Delaware State University early Friday, and the campus was locked down as police searched for a gunman, officials said.

Classes were canceled for the day and students were being kept inside.

"They've been directed to stay in their dorms," university spokesman Carlos Holmes said. "We don't know where the shooter's at."

Gates at the university's main entrance prevented people from driving onto campus.

The two students were shot before 1 a.m. on the Campus Mall, between the Memorial Hall gymnasium and Richard S. Grossley Hall, an administrative building.

Holmes said the female student appeared to have suffered serious wounds. "They could be potentially life-threatening," he said. The male student's wounds were not as serious and he was hospitalized in stable condition, Holmes said.

The woman was taken to Christiana Hospital in Newark, N.J., with a traumatic wound to the abdomen, said John Wilson, the deputy chief of Kent County Emergency Services. The man was taken to Kent General Hospital in Dover. Officials at both hospitals referred questions to the university.

Authorities, with the campus police in charge of the investigation, hoped to get more information once the victims were able to talk. They don't yet know about the possible motive.

"We haven't had a chance to talk to them yet, and that's probably a big reason why the suspect is still at large," Holmes told KYW-TV of Philadelphia.

He said he was not aware of any big parties Thursday night, although there was a rally organized to honor the so-called Jena Six, six black teenagers charged in a high school fight in Louisiana.

"It was a very peaceful, very nice rally, very positive," Holmes said. There was no reason to believe the rally was connected to the shootings, but Holmes contrasted the atmosphere of the event with the attack, saying, "It's kind of shocking that this happened afterwards."

Alex Bishoff, 20, a freshman from Washington, D.C., said he heard five gunshots and looked out his dormitory window to see people scattering. He said he immediately thought of the Virginia Tech shootings last April in which a gunman killed 32 people before killing himself.

"Everybody's very upset," Bishoff said.

Timmara Gooden, 20, of Philadelphia, said in a phone interview late Friday morning from her dorm room that she and her suite mates were keeping each other calm and making sure that their parents understand that they're OK.

"We've been locked in here since 1 o'clock this morning," she said. "Right now, we're pretty hungry and waiting so we can go to the cafe, or something."

Students weren't even going into their dorm hallways. "We don't want to walk out there, because we don't know what's going on," Gooden said.

University officials informed students about the shooting with phone calls, a notice posted on the campus Web site and notifications in each dormitory. Holmes said Delaware State had improved the speed of its notifications after the Virginia Tech shootings.

The Dover campus was surrounded Friday by groups of recreational vehicles belonging to NASCAR fans in town for weekend races at the Dover Downs Speedway.

A commuter student who arrived Friday morning was barred from campus. Eduardo Rivera, 25, of Milford, said he hadn't known about the shootings and was surprised by the media gathered outside the main gate.

"I thought it was about racing, or NASCAR, or something like that," he said. "I'm shocked. I don't expect to hear something like this when I'm trying to go to class — it's weird."

Rivera, a sophomore studying physical education and sports management, said he had felt the campus was safe.

At the start of the semester, the campus community held a memorial service for three students and an incoming student shot execution-style Aug. 4 as they hung out at an elementary school in their hometown of Newark, N.J. Natasha Aeriel, 19; her brother, Terrance Aeriel, 18, and Dashon Harvey, 20, were students. Iofemi Hightower, 20, had planned to attend Delaware State this fall. Natasha Aeriel, the only survivor, helped police identify six suspects who have been arrested.

One student said friends of hers were near the shooting Friday when it started. "They were pretty shook up," said Samantha Williams, from Orange, N.J., who is taking a leave from school.

She said students on campus were excited about an upcoming appearance by rappers during homecoming festivities in mid-October.

Delaware State was established in 1891 as the State College for Colored Students. It had about 3,690 students last year. The 400-acre campus is in the northern section of Dover, across the street from the racetrack.

Re: COLUMBINE FALLOUT
 

Rachael Lampa -- We Will Always Remember

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lSQkBgdABA

On a day like any other,
We never knew how much our world would change.
In one moment of madness,
We knew our lives could never be the same.

Though today our hearts are breaking,
And time is standing still;
Well face this day together
Knowing that our hope is real.

We will always remember
The love that youve shared.
Youve touched our lives.
We will never forget you...
Your memry will always survive.

So today we light a candle
To overcome the darkness and the fear...
Sending light into the shadows,
And breaking through the sadness and the tears.

As the light grows slowly brighter
And is passed from friend to friend,
Well hold onto to treasured moments,
And our love will never end.

We will always remember
The love that youve shared.
Youve touched our lives.
We will never forget you...
Your memory will always survive.

The wind whips through the flowers;
The tender petals fall.
But raging storms cannot erase
The beauty we recall.

Though broken hearts are left behind...
Feel like theyll never mend,
Hold tight to hope, sweet Columbine,
For you shall bloom again!

We will always remember (well always remember)
The love that youve shared.
Youve touched our lives. (Youve touched our lives!)
We will never forget you (never forget you), (never)
Your memry will always survive (oh, yeah oh-oh!).

(You touched our lives.)
We will always remember (always remember)
The love that youve shared.
Youve touched our lives.... (Youve touched our lives!)
We will never forget you (forget you),
Your memry will always survive (survive, always).

Your memry will always survive.
Survive (mmm-hmm) survive (oh, yeah) survive (ooh) survive (ooh-hoo-ooh) Ooh-ooh ooh.... (survive)
Youve touched our lives

:cry:

Re: COLUMBINE FALLOUT
 

Amish school boys struggle with memories By MARK SCOLFORO, Associated Press Writer
Sat Sep 22, 4:36 PM ET

NICKEL MINES, Pa. - A year after 10 of their female classmates were shot, some boys who escaped unharmed from West Nickel Mines Amish School are tormented by guilt, according to the author of a new book about the massacre.

Four of the five surviving girls have long since returned to classes in a new schoolhouse, but the community is also concerned about the lingering effects on the boys, Elizabethtown College professor Donald B. Kraybill said.

"They have survivors' guilt, some of them, saying, 'What should we have done?'" Kraybill said. "It's actually pretty serious in one or two cases."

Gunman Charles C. Roberts IV sent the boys and adults outside Oct. 2 before he tied up the girls and began shooting them inside the heavily barricaded one-room schoolhouse. He shot and killed himself as police closed in.

The Amish were widely praised and admired for their immediate words and gestures of forgiveness, but that has not insulated them from longer-term effects.

Along with the boys' misguided guilt, some have trouble coping with reminders of the shooting, such as helicopters overhead, vehicles that resemble Roberts' pickup and even the presence of strangers, Kraybill said.

The book, "Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy," recounts how the Amish immediately assured Roberts' family they held no grudges, comforted his widow at his burial ceremony and set aside some of the donations they received for Roberts' widow and children.

The story of forgiveness inspired people around the world, but the book describes a process that was not as simple as it may have seemed.

"I talked to some people recently: 'Well, we're still working at it.' It's not a done thing," Kraybill said. "(They said) 'We made the commitment, and we expressed the words and did the deeds.' And they would underscore the deeds are more important than the words."

The Amish deeply believe that people must be forgiving toward one another in order for God to forgive them. As a result, soul-searching introspection is not a prerequisite for forgiveness — not even for a man who shot 10 schoolgirls.

Some of the students and their parents have sought assistance from a counseling center four miles from Nickel Mines, said the center's founder, Jonas Beiler.

"For the Amish people, their ability to forgive keeps them from dragging this into litigation and things of that nature," said Beiler, who was raised Amish. "But that does not mean they don't have to deal with the emotional aftermath or how this upside-down experience has changed their community."

That he was dead and so obviously disturbed simplified matters, said Kraybill's co-author, David L. Weaver-Zercher, a professor of American religious history at Messiah College. But, he cautioned, "Forgiveness is not the end of the story.

There's other details that continue, and to just wrap it up with that and say (there's) a happy ending to a traumatic thing is too simplistic."

No one at the school could really control what Roberts did, state police Commissioner Jeffrey Miller said. His officers have reassured the children there was nothing they should have done differently.

"We let them know that if they feel that way, they shouldn't," Miller said. "They were just put in an unbelievably horrendous position."

Tragedies such as the Nickel Mines massacre can make survivors feel less powerful and less self-confident, said Marylene Cloitre, professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at New York University's Child Study Center.

"We try to protect our children's sense of their own invulnerability and encourage a belief that people are essentially good," Cloitre said. "These kids at such an early age had a very powerful experience that those things aren't necessarily true."

She said people who are recovering from a traumatic event need to develop a renewed sense of purpose and meaning for their future life.

"In a way, you can say their survivor guilt is the negative consequence of something really wonderful, a sense of community and a sense of responsibility for one another," she said.

Re: COLUMBINE FALLOUT
 

Va. Tech inspires Delaware St. response By RANDALL CHASE, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 6 minutes ago

DOVER, Del. - Alex Bishoff heard five gunshots from inside his dorm room at Delaware State University and looked out his window to see people scattering. He immediately thought of the Virginia Tech shootings in April.

So did Delaware State officials. Even as two students who were shot were being transported to hospitals, campus police and residence hall advisers were knocking on doors and telling students to stay in their rooms.

Administrators mindful of the Virginia Tech massacre ordered a swift shutdown of the campus Friday, lowering gates to keep anyone from coming onto it, while police searched for the gunman.

"The biggest lesson learned from that whole situation at Virginia Tech is don't wait. Once you have an incident, start notifying the community," said university spokesman Carlos Holmes.

Students were warned within about 15 minutes, said Bishoff, 20, a freshman from Washington, D.C. "I think they handled it pretty well," he said.

The shootings, reported to police at 12:54 a.m. Friday, occurred as a group of students were returning from an on-campus cafe. A 17-year-old male student was in stable condition; a female student, also 17, was shot in the abdomen and in serious condition.

University police said they had identified two persons of interest, both students. Both were located and interviewed, though no arrests had been made by Friday night.

The students were shot on the Campus Mall, between the Memorial Hall gymnasium and Richard S. Grossley Hall, an administrative building. Investigators believed the shootings may have been preceded by an argument at the cafe, and officials said it did not appear to be random.

"This is an internal problem," university President Allen Sessoms said. "There are no externalities ... this is just kids who did very, very stupid things."

The male student, who was wounded in the ankle, refused to answer questions by police about the shootings, raising the likelihood that he knew his attacker, according to a federal law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing.

"This not an act of terrorism," said university police Chief James Overton. "This was not a crazed gunman who found his way onto campus."

Campus officials acted much more swiftly than officials at Virginia Tech did five months ago, when administrators delayed notifying students nearly two hours after gunman Seung-Hui Cho killed his first two victims. By then, he had already started shooting 30 other people in a classroom building across campus.

A report by a panel appointed by Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine concluded that lives could have been saved if alerts had been sent out earlier and classes canceled after Cho killed his first two victims.

At Delaware State, officials didn't wait. By 2:11 a.m., Overton was meeting with another university official to discuss the school's response. Notices were posted in dormitories and the school Web site by about 2:40 a.m., and the decision to cancel classes was made shortly after 5 a.m., well before the school day started.

At Virginia Tech, the rampage began at 7 a.m. as students thronged the campus and headed to morning classes; at Delaware State, it happened in the middle of the night, when many students were in their dorm rooms.

The panel that investigated the response to the Virginia Tech shootings noted that it would have been tough to shut down the 2,600-acre Tech campus; Delaware State is only about 400 acres. But it appears Delaware State responded to the crisis well, said Gerald Massengill, who led the group.

"I think just like post-9/11, there's a post-April 16 mentality," he said.

Officials said access to the campus would remain limited Saturday, and that Saturday classes, a weekend farmers market and an alumni meeting had been canceled.

Delaware State, a historically black, 400-acre school with 3,690 students, began the school year mourning victims of the Aug. 4 shootings that occurred at an elementary school in their hometown of Newark, N.J.

Natasha Aeriel, 19; her brother, Terrance Aeriel, 18, and Dashon Harvey, 20, were students. Iofemi Hightower, 20, had planned to attend Delaware State this fall. Natasha Aeriel, the only survivor, helped police identify six suspects who have been arrested.

Holmes said there was no indication that Friday's shooting was related in any way to the Newark, N.J., killings. Both of the victims in Friday's shootings were from the Washington, D.C., area, officials said.

Re: COLUMBINE FALLOUT
 

5 hurt, gunman killed in Ohio school
By JOE MILICIA, Associated Press Writer
5 minutes ago
October 10, 2007

CLEVELAND - A 14-year-old suspended student opened fire in his downtown high school Wednesday, wounding four people as terrified schoolmates hid in closets and bathrooms and huddled under laboratory desks. He then killed himself.

A fellow student at SuccessTech Academy alternative school said Asa H. Coon, who was suspended for fighting two days earlier, had made threats in front of students and teachers last week.

"He's crazy. He threatened to blow up our school. He threatened to stab everybody," Doneisha LeVert said. "We didn't think nothing of it."

Armed with two revolvers, Coon fired eight shots and may have targeted teachers, Police Chief Michael McGrath said. Police found a duffel bag stocked with ammunition and three knives in a bathroom but found no suicide note, he said.

Parents were angry that firearms got into a school equipped with metal detectors that students said were intermittently used.

Coon had a history of mental health problems and threatened to commit suicide last year while in a mental health center, according to juvenile court records obtained by The Plain Dealer. He spent time in two juvenile facilities after a domestic violence episode and was also given home detention, and he was suspended from school last year for trying to injure a student, the paper reported.

Officials said two teachers and two students were shot, and that a 14-year-old girl fell and hurt her knee while running out of the school.

Witnesses said the shooter moved through the converted five-story downtown office building, working his way up through the first two floors of administrative offices to the third floor of classrooms. Officials said he was wearing a Marilyn Manson concert shirt, black jeans and black-painted finger nails.

Police released audio from three 911 calls — two from students who had fled the building after the first two shots and one from a distraught mother, calling on behalf of her son, who was huddled in the back of a fourth floor classroom.

"They just shot somebody in his room!" the crying mother told the dispatcher.

The first person shot, 14-year-old student Michael Peek, had punched Coon in the face right before the shootings began, said student Rasheem Smith, 15.

Coon "came out of the bathroom and bumped Mike and he (Mike) punched him in his face. Mike started walking. He shot Mike in the side," Smith said.

Antonio Deberry, 17, said he and his classmates hid under laboratory tables and watched the shooter move down the hallway. "I saw him walking past. He didn't see us, we saw him." The shooter swore and shot several times, Deberry said.

LeVert said she hid in a closet with two other students after she heard a "Code Blue" alert over the loudspeaker. She said she heard about 10 shots.

Darnell Rodgers, 18, was walking up to another floor when the stairway suddenly became flooded with students.

"It took me a couple of minutes to realize that I was actually shot, when I felt my arm burning in the area, that's when I realized that I had got shot," Rodgers said.

"They were screaming, and they were saying, 'Oh my God, oh my God.' I knew something was wrong, but thought that it was probably just a fight, so I just kept going," Rodgers said.

Rodgers was released from a hospital after treatment for a graze wound to his right elbow.

Coon had been suspended since Monday for fighting near the school that day, said Charles Blackwell, president of SuccessTech's student-parent organization. He did not know how Coon got into the building Wednesday.

Blackwell said that there was a security guard on the first floor, but that the position of another guard on the third floor had been eliminated.

Student Frances Henderson, 14, said she often got into arguments with Coon, who once told her, "I got something for you all." He would often wear a trench coat, black boots and a dog collar, she said.

Students stood outside the building, many in tears, hugging one another and on cell phones. Others shouted at reporters with TV cameras to leave them alone. Family members also stood outside, waiting for their children to be released.

Math teacher David Kachadourian, 57, was treated and released for a minor wound to the back of one shoulder, according to Metro Health Medical Center. Michael Grassie, a 42-year-old history teacher, was in fair condition at the hospital after about two hours of surgery. The hospital would not disclose the nature of the surgery.

The other two injured teens were taken to a children's hospital, which would not release their names, ages or conditions.

People at Coon's home declined to comment Wednesday evening.

Deberry's mother, Lakisha Deberry, said she was upset that metal detectors at the school were not always in use.

"You never know what's going on in someone's mind," said Deberry, adding that she was required to go through a metal detector and present an identification card whenever she wanted to drop off something at school for her children.

The shooting occurred across the street from the FBI office in downtown Cleveland, and students were being sent to the FBI site.

Classes at all schools in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District will be canceled Thursday, said Eugene Sanders, chief executive officer of the district. Counseling will be available Thursday for students at recreation centers throughout the city, Sanders said.

SuccessTech Academy is an alternative high school in the public school district that stresses technology and entrepreneurship. It is housed on several floors of the district's downtown Cleveland Lakeside Avenue administration building.

"It's a shining beacon for the Cleveland Metropolitan School system," said John Zitzner, founder and president of E City Cleveland, a nonprofit group aimed at teaching business skills to inner-city teens. "It's orderly, it's disciplined, it's calm, it's focused."

The school has about 240 students, most of them black, with a small number of white and Hispanic students.

Coon was white, and Henderson, the student who said she frequently argued with him, is black, but she said she didn't believe race played a role in the shootings.

The school, opened five years ago, ranks in the middle of the state's ratings for student performance. Its graduation rate is 94 percent, well above the district's rate of 55 percent.

Re: COLUMBINE FALLOUT
 

I don't know how they're doing it, but there are just too many of these to believe they are all "natural events"!

Re: COLUMBINE FALLOUT
 

Here's a link to a lot of information about the Columbine attack, in video form (with documentation):

Evan Long - "The Columbine Cause"

Copy for the video:
Evan Long - "The Columbine Cause: An Examination of the April 20, 1999 Attack on Columbine High School" 88 minutes, color.

How many shots? How many shooters? Was it really a surprise?

Many witnesses to the attack reported other Columbine High School students in the trench coat group with Harris and Klebold as shooters. They even named them: Chris Morris, Robert Perry and others. Several named an adult as a shooter in the science halls while police mysteriously waited for hours to enter the school.

Based on the now-public domain government files related to the official "investigation" of the crime.

Re: COLUMBINE FALLOUT
 

Could these school shootings be the pre-requisite that is needed in order to arm our teachers?

THEY know there are copy cats out there; so all they had to do was orchestrate one school shooting and THEY knew there would be more to follow.

Monkey see, monkey do.

If this is an operation to arm our teachers, what is it that they ultimately hope to achieve?

With 911, it was the Patriot Act and other restrictions on our freedoms, so, what is it that would negatively affect the citizens of this country if there is a law passed to arm our teachers?

I'm not sure about you, but I wouldn't want my child in a school with teachers who are in possession of loaded guns.

Re: COLUMBINE FALLOUT
 

It seems to me like the tendency is more to use the shooting as a justification to disarm, not arm, "the public", and then fortify the state against us. You might see more armed guards on campus (the "security" officer at CHS last worked at a prison before manning those school grounds) but I'm not sure about the teachers. Check out the Port Arthur and Dunblane shootings for more on the anti-gun thread as well here and here.


I'd say it's valid to guess that the shooting was intended to be a trigger, given the way the media rubbed it in our faces. Was the nonverbal message here, "Hey kids, feeling bullied? Shoot someone!" More specifically, it might also have been a trigger for hypnotically or otherwise programmed shooters, if, indeed, there is such a thing, to "activate". The shooter in Georgia a few weeks after Columbine, for example, was talked out of shooting himself at the end of his rampage and when asked why he attacked the school, reportedly replied, "I did this because, well, I'm not sure. Ever since the shooting at Columbine in Colorado all I've been able to think about is doing this".

Re: COLUMBINE FALLOUT
 

There was a thread posted a few days ago by a member which talked about arming teachers.

I can't recall the specific reasons that were outlined, but it referred to a situation wherein if there was civil unrest; police would lock down the schools and perhaps teachers who were armed would be used to aid the police in some fashion.

I'll look for the thread.

This thread was the reason I posed the question as to what would be the benefit if teachers were armed?

I don't necessarily agree with what was presented in the thread and that this is the reason for the school shootings (i.e., to arm teachers).

As I said in my initial post, it is definitely to instill fear and anxiety in our youngsters (traumatization) and parents and, as you say, possibly a call to disarm.

Disarming the people, of course, assures them of less civil disobedience in the case of civil unrest/police state/martial law, etc.

As I said, it doesn't take much to "trigger" copy cats.

And, as you say, it sends a message to those who are being bullied that they can seek revenge.

Interesting point about witnesses seeing other kids/people as shooters and not just the two who were supposedly the masterminds behind the Columbine massacre and the amount of time elapsed before a response by the police.

Sounds similar to 911 inasmuch as there was never any INTERFERENCE by our military or NORAD when four jumbo jets strayed off course with lost communication until, supposedly, one jet was shot down or crashed in Pennsylvania and the other three hit their targets.