A Month of Madness

The following is a summary of the multiple death "rampages" that have attracted wide media dissemination so far in 2005. Several of these are murder-suicide situations. The fingerprints of the copycat effect are all over these events - courthouses, judges, and then spillovers to other mass shootings.

March 12, 2005 - Total of eight dead, shooter kills self
Seven were shoot and killed, before the 45-year-old turned the gun on himself, at the Sheraton Hotel in Brookfield, Wisconsin, west of Milwaukee, during a regular service of the Living Church of God. The church is an offshoot of the Worldwide Church of God which was founded by American evangelist Herbert W. Armstrong in 1933.

March 11, 2005 - Total of four dead, shooter gives up to police.
A judge presiding over a rape trial, his court reporter and a sheriff's deputy are shot to death at the Fulton County Courthouse in Atlanta. The next morning, a US Customs agent is killed. Authorities say the suspect overpowered a sheriff's deputy and grabbed her gun. After a 26 hour manhunt, Brian Nichols surrenders on March 12.

February 28, 2005 - Total of three dead, shooter kills self
U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow finds her husband and mother shot to death in her Chicago home. Bart Ross, 57, who argued a case before Lefkow involving medical claims later shoots himself in a suicide in West Allis, Wisconsin, on March 9. Police identify Ross as the killer, and, in an unusual aside at their news conference, mention that West Allis is also known as the hometown of Jeffrey Dahmer.

February 25, 2005 - Total of three dead, shooter killed by police
David Hernandez Arroyo Sr., 43, angry about being sued for unpaid child support opened fire with an AK-47 assault rifle outside a Tyler, Texas, courthouse, killing his ex-wife and a man trying to help the couple's adult son. Arroyo was killed a few miles away in a shootout with police, in what may have been a "suicide by cop" event. Some officers received critical wounds.

February 23, 2005 - Total of three dead, attacker kills self
Clarence L. Moore, 24, an ex-soldier, who had a history of domestic violence, fatally stabbed his young son and his wife’s son with a hunting knife and wounded her three other children before taking his own life, in Columbus, Georgia. Clarence S. Moore, a 1-year-old who was Moore’s only birthchild with his wife, died from a cut to the throat. Stephan Moore, 2, died two hours later from stab wounds to his head, neck and back. Moore, who had slashed his own throat, died in surgery.

February 20, 2005 - Total of five dead, shooter kills self
Alicia Renae Smith, 27, her boyfriend, Robert Carmickle, 38, and her two children, Mathew Scott Smith, 5, and Angelia Reanne Smith, 4, were killed by her estrangled husband, Lee Smith, 36, in Loogootee, Indiana. He was walking a few blocks away when he fatally shot himself as an officer approached a short time later, police said.

February 13, 2005 - None killed, shooter arrested
Robert Bonelli Jr., 24, of Glasco, New York, fires 60 rounds with an AK-47 assault rifle at the Hudson Valley Mall, in Ulster, New York. Two people were badly wounded; one man, a U.S. National Guard recruiter, reportedly may lose his leg. Authorities searched the suspect's room and turned up a cache of "Columbine memorabilia." The shrine included media accounts and other information about the Colorado shooting spree by two students, 17 and 18, on April 20, 1999, that left 15 people dead. Bonelli would have been 19 in 1999.

That was just in the last month. Of course, right before the mall shooting, all was not quiet, as we have noted in this blog.

January 27, 2005 - Total of 11 dead, suicidal man arrested
On this Wednesday, January 27, 2005, at around 6 a.m. Pacific Time, Juan Manuel Alvarez, 25, of Compton, California, parked his Jeep Grand Cherokee on the Metrolink tracks at Glenville and got out before a train smashed into it. Alvarez told police that he was going to kill himself. The train crashed and resulted in 11 dead and 180 people injured. News that this was a suicide attempt flooded the media by the afternoon of the derailment. Reports that the SUV was a Jeep were widely disseminated.

January 27, 2005 - Total of 2 dead, shooter kills self
Later on that same Wednesday, January 27, at about 8:45 p.m. Central Time, an employee, Myles Meyers, at a Jeep Liberty production plant in Toledo, Ohio, using a shotgun, went on a shooting rampage with a double-barrel shotgun and then killed himself. Three were targeted, with two reported dead, including the shooter.

January 11, 2005 - Total of five killed, shooter arrested
On Tuesday, January 11, 2005, David Lynn Jordan reportedly killed five and injured two people at the Tennessee Department of Transportation maintenance garage. The victims included his estrangled wife, Donna Renee Jordan, 31, of Jackson, Tennessee Department of Transportation clerk; David Gordon, 41, of Medina, HCI Supply warehouse manager; Jerry Hopper, 61, of Enville, Tennessee Department of Agriculture Forestry Division employee, who were all killed. Larry Taylor, 54, and James Goff, 53, both TDOT garage employees, were injured.