4/20: New Florida School Shooting

Forest High School

Friday, August 20, 2018 is the 19th anniversary of the school shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. It is also a day for a national walkout against school violence, suggested by a student impacted by the Parkland high school shooting.

At least one person was injured in a shooting at a Florida high school Friday and a suspect was in custody, police said. Police have asked the public to stay away from the school.

The Marion County Sheriff's Office said the incident occurred at Forest High School in Ocala, Fla. A student shot another student in the ankle Friday morning. 

Forest High School is located at 5000 SE Maricamp Road, Ocala, Florida 34480. The school's colors are green and gold and the school mascot is the Wildcat. As of 2014, it had an enrollment of some 2,058.

(More details will be added, as they are revealed.)

April 20 is well-known as a date of some infamy.

Columbine Copycats Continue: Teacher's Crossbow Death in Barcelona

There has been a fatal death in a school in Spain. We should not be surprised it happened today, April 20, 2015.

Someone has posted the top photo at the Joan Fuster School website. It is a screen capture from a past season of Game of Thrones, in which crossbows become important story elements, involved in various significant deaths.

A 13-year-old Spanish boy armed with a crossbow and a machete killed a substitute teacher and injured four people at his school, the Joan Fuster School in the La Sagrera neighborhood of Barcelona, Spain.

La Sagrera, according to my research associate Red Pill Junkie, is from the word sagrera, which translates as the hallowed space around consecrated chapels, inside which cellars and store rooms were built to keep wine and cereals.

Therefore, I must observe, in terms of the name game, this is a "cereal"/"serial" killing, of sorts.

There is an occult nose-thumbing at the bottom of many of these twilight language cereal murders, such as Jack the Ripper - poking fun at the investigators and the public because so many don't get the black comedy at the heart of it. It's a feeling of superiority magnified exponentially. ~ Michael Hoffman III, Cereal Murder and the Group Mind, 2000.

The Joan Fuster School is named after Joan Fuster i Ortells (November 23, 1922 – June 21, 1992), who was a Spanish writer. He is considered a major writer in Catalan language, and his work contributed to reinvigorate left-wing, pro-Catalan nationalism in Valencia during the Spanish transition to democracy. In his influential political essay Nosaltres, els valencians (1962) he coined the term Països Catalans (Catalan Countries) to refer to the Catalan-speaking territories, for which he claimed independent statehood from Spain. Intriguingly, datewise, on September 11, 1981, two bombs exploded in his house, damaging heavily his library and archive. Nobody was prosecuted, but it is widely believed that it was the anti-Catalan far right's response to Fuster's political and cultural position.

In the school attack today, a substitute teacher shot was dead from the use of a crossbow. Four others were injured, including two female teachers.

The Spanish Teachers' Union says this is the first ever case of a pupil carrying out fatal attack on teacher in Spain.

Due to the legal system in Spain, the student cannot be charged for attack as he is under the criminal age of responsibility in Spain. Police have detained a 13-year-old after a teacher was shot dead with a crossbow and several others injured in a Barcelona secondary school.

"A male teacher was killed shortly after 9am this morning at the Joan Fuster secondary school in Barcelona," a police spokesman told The Local.

The weapon used in the attack was widely reported to be a crossbow, but there was no official confirmation from police.

The male teacher, thought to have been working as a social sciences substitute, was killed after being shot with a crossbow by a 13-year-old pupil, who was also armed with a dagger (or a machete, in some reports).

She confirmed that four others had been injured. "Two female teachers and two pupils suffered injuries and three of them are recovering well in hospital," the spokesman for the Catalan police force told The Local.

A report in the Vanguardia said he was obsessed with the military and had a collection of weapons at home. A fellow pupil told the Catalan newspaper that his classmate had said he wanted to kill all the teachers at the school and was known to draw up blacklists.

According to reports in Spanish media, the male pupil arrived late at school, at around 9:15 a.m.

The teacher who was killed reportedly came running from the next door class room when he heard screams.

Spanish media are reporting that the pupil fired at a female teacher who opened the door to him, as well as her daughter, who was one of his fellow pupils.

Hearing screams, a teacher from a neighboring classroom came running to help and was fatally shot in the chest.

The teacher "left to see what was happening and that was when the young man attacked him," one student, who requested anonymity, told AFP.

Moments later the suspect went into the teacher's own classroom, attacked a girl and went back into the hallway with a knife in his hand.

Terrified students closed the classroom door and barricaded it with furniture.

Apparently, the Spanish media are publishing graphic imagery, such as above.

In 2012, a man was arrested for reportedly planning to plant bombs around a university in Palma de Mallorca. The man had written in an online blog and personal diary of his admiration for the 1999 Columbine killers in Colorado.

The Joan Fuster attack was carried out on the 16th anniversary of the massacre at Columbine High School in the US, when two students murdered 12 students and one teacher.

The attack on Monday morning also immediately sparked comparisons to the fictional story, We Need to Talk about Kevin, in which dysfunctional teenager Kevin carried out a crossbow massacre at his high school gym.

The 2003 novel by Lionel Shriver was turned into a movie in 2011 starring Tilda Swinton.

Spain has had three previous well-known cases of crossbow attacks, according to El Pais.

In 2009, a German man who was reportedly mentally ill became obsessed with Spanish actress Sara Casanovas. The man found Casanovas at a Madrid theatre, fired the crossbow aimed at her, but she was able to dodge the shot and stage technicians restrained him until police arrived.

The Barcelona area was the site of a similar crossbow crime in 1994 when 20-year-old Andrés Rabadán, a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, killed his own father before turning himself in.

In 1986, a man and his brother-in-law were charged for killing a man, who was allegedly extorting one of the perpetrators, by beating him with a baseball bat, stabbing him in the arm with a crossbow arrow and shooting him with a shotgun.

This may be one of the most dangerous copycat times of the year.

April 19th is the anniversary of the deaths occurring at the end of the Waco events and the Oklahoma City bombing. It is an older anniversary of the Revolutionary War, of militia deaths, and other violent incidents - Patriots' Day, celebrated in Massachusetts and Maine. 

The Boston Marathon Bombing took place two years ago - in 2013. This race happens on Patriots' Day.

Patriots' Day (sometimes incorrectly punctuated Patriot's Day or Patriots Day) is a civic holiday commemorating the anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the first battles of the American Revolutionary War. It is observed in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and State of Maine (once part of Massachusetts), and is a public school observance day in Wisconsin. Observances and re-enactments of these first battles of the American Revolution occur annually at Lexington Green in Lexington, Massachusetts, (around 6 am) and The Old North Bridge in Concord, Massachusetts (around 9 am). In the morning, a mounted re-enactor with State Police escort retraces Paul Revere's ride, calling out warnings the whole way.

In 2013, the race ended very badly, with the bombing.

Let's also revisit April 19th for 1993 and 1995, for a moment.

The Waco siege began on February 28, 1993, when the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) attempted to execute a search warrant at the Branch Davidian ranch at Mount Carmel, a property located nine miles east-northeast of Waco, Texas. An exchange of gunfire resulted in the deaths of four agents and six followers of David Koresh. A subsequent 51-day siege by the Federal Bureau of Investigation ended on April 19th when fire destroyed the compound. Seventy-six people (24 of them British nationals) died in the fire, including more than 20 children, two pregnant women, and Koresh himself.

The Oklahoma City bombing was the bomb attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, when American militia movement sympathizer Timothy McVeigh allegedly detonated a truck filled with explosives parked in front of the building. McVeigh's co-conspirator, Terry Nichols, had assisted in the bomb preparation. Their motive allegedly was to avenge the government's handling of the Waco siege and Ruby Ridge incidents. (Intriguingly, Rebirth of Pan author Jim Brandon has pointed out to me that "Nichols" and its variations are on his "names of power" list to watch.)

Then Columbine happened on April 20, 1999.

On April 20, 1999, two teenage students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, carried out a deadly shooting rampage at Columbine High School in Jefferson County, Colorado killing 12 students and a teacher, and wounding 24 others before dying by suicide.

This is a danger zone time of year for school violence. Columbine haunts the world of school violence. Just in 1999, over 500 copycat threats and incidents occurred in North America.

Let's not forget that Columbine happened on Hitler's birthday too.

Then on April 26, 2002, on Rudolf Hess's birthday, Robert Steinhäuser, killed 16 people plus himself at his Erfurt, Germany high school. He had files on his computer, which contained information about the Columbine Massacre. Steinhäuser had outdone the Columbine total (which may have been one of his goals).

Adolf Hitler, it will be recalled, died by his own hand, ten days after his birthday, on April 30, 1945, exactly 70 years ago, in 2015.

The Virginia Tech shooting (also known as the Virginia Tech massacre) was a school shooting that took place on April 16, 2007, on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia. Seung-Hui Cho, a senior at Virginia Tech, shot and killed 32 people and wounded 17 others in two separate attacks (another six people were injured escaping from classroom windows), approximately two hours apart, before dying by suicide. Cho noted the Columbine killers in his writings. There is no doubt it was a copycat.

In Cho Seung-Hui's twisted and tortured mind, the Columbine killers were martyrs on a par with Jesus Christ. And the world had forced him to join their ranks. Friendless by choice, he accepted Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold as his brothers, and dreamed that his violent acts would bear "children." ~ "Cho idolized Columbine killers," Denver Post, April 18, 2007.

Virginia Tech killer Cho Seung-Hui plagiarized other school shooting psychos in a twisted show of one-upmanship. He used the Internet to research and learn from infamous school killers, including Columbine's Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold..."Cho was an empty vessel and he poured himself full from images off the Internet...," said Loren Coleman, an expert on school shootings and the author of The Copycat Effect. "There's a psychological process that these shooters appear to be competing for - the high body count." ~ "Sick homages from a student of psychos," N.Y. Post, April 22, 2007.

I have been warning about this "Red Danger Zone" time for years. Now the Grim Reaper has struck in Spain.

Murder and suicide are two sides of the same coin played out in going postal, workplace violence, shooting spree, and school shooting incidents, which are impacted by the copycat effect. Watch for any of those this week too.

Being forewarned and aware is half the battle. Vulnerable, suicidal, homicidal youth need help and attention, long before it gets to the stage where they feel there's no turning back. Keep talking, take care, get people help, and remain alert, with your guard up.

A few bloggers may wish to demean the predictive insights of known patterns, but ridicule does not overwhelm the reality of history. Killers do pick special dates.

And it is in the humble opinion of this narrator that strange things happen all the time. And so it goes, and so it goes. And the book says, "We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us." ~ Magnolia, 1999.

419 + 420

Today, April 19th, in Massachusetts and Maine, is Patriots' Day.



Patriots' Day (sometimes incorrectly punctuated Patriot's Day or Patriots Day) is a civic holiday commemorating the anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the first battles of the American Revolutionary War. It is observed in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and State of Maine (once part of Massachusetts), and is a public school observance day in Wisconsin. Observances and re-enactments of these first battles of the American Revolution occur annually at Lexington Green in Lexington, Massachusetts, (around 6 am) and The Old North Bridge in Concord, Massachusetts (around 9 am). In the morning, a mounted reenactor with State Police escort retraces Paul Revere's ride, calling out warnings the whole way.

Since 1969, the holiday has been observed on the third Monday in April, providing a three-day long weekend. In 2010, the date of April 19th falls on the celebrated Patriots' Day holiday on Monday. In Maine, it is being extended on April 20th, with the State of Maine government shutting down all state offices, for fiscal savings.

The Patriots' Grave (at top) in the Old Burying Ground, Arlington, Massachusetts, is a Masonic obelisk, as is the Acton Monument (below), gravesite of Abner Hosmer and Isaac Davis, who fell at North Bridge on April 19, 1775. The Revolutionary War was, in historical underpinning, a Masonic conflict.



The Boston Marathon is run on Patriots' Day every year so many Bostonians know the holiday as "Marathon Monday". Maine's oldest road race, the Boys and Girls Clubs Patriots' Day 5-Miler, is held in Portland, Maine. The Boston Red Sox have traditionally been scheduled to play at home in Fenway Park on Patriots' Day every year since 1959. Since 1968 the games have started early in the morning around 11:00 AM.

April 19 is also the anniversary of the deaths occurring at the end of the Waco events and the Oklahoma City bombing.

The Waco siege began on February 28, 1993, when the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) attempted to execute a search warrant at the Branch Davidian ranch at Mount Carmel, a property located nine miles (14 km) east-northeast of Waco, Texas. An exchange of gunfire resulted in the deaths of four agents and six followers of David Koresh. A subsequent 51-day siege by the Federal Bureau of Investigation ended on April 19 when fire destroyed the compound. Seventy-six people (24 of them British nationals) died in the fire, including more than 20 children, two pregnant women, and Koresh himself.

The Oklahoma City bombing was the bomb attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, when American militia movement sympathizer Timothy McVeigh detonated a truck filled with explosives parked in front of the building. McVeigh's co-conspirator, Terry Nichols, had assisted in the bomb preparation. Their motive allegedly was to avenge the government's handling of the Waco siege and Ruby Ridge incidents.

Don't forget. Tomorrow is 4.20.

April 20 is the 121th anniversary of the birth of Adolf Hitler and the 11th anniversary of the Columbine school killings. On April 20, 1999, one teacher, 12 students were killed and 24 wounded at Columbine High School, in Littleton, Colorado, by two heavily armed, trenchcoated students, 17 and 18, who then took their own lives. They liked speaking German to each other and "honored" Hitler, according to their diary entries.

Columbine School Shooting, April 20, 1999's list of dead:
* Cassie Bernall, 17
* Steven Curnow, 14
* Corey DePooter, 17
* Kelly Fleming, 16
* Eric David Harris, 18
* Matthew Kechter, 16
* Dylan Bennet Klebold, 17
* Daniel Mauser, 15
* Daniel Rohrbough, 15
* William David "Dave" Sanders, 47
* Rachel Scott, 17
* Isaiah Shoels, 18
* John Tomlin, 16
* Lauren Townsend, 18
* Kyle Velasquez, 16


April 19 is followed by 420.

What does "420" mean? April 20th? Or something deeper?

High school student Jeff Weise, an Ojibwa, killed ten, including himself, at the Red Lake Ojibwa Reservation in Minnesota, on March 21, 2005. A great admirer of Columbine, it was discovered that Weise left references to Columbine throughout his online presence. For example, he employed a username, which translated to "Abandoned 420."

Columbine and 420

Obviously, one meaning of "420" is directly linked to the Columbine date, as "4/20" is April 20, the anniversary of the Littleton, Colorado shootings. This date is also Adolf Hitler's birthday. The Columbine shooters, Klebold and Harris were extremely conscious that it was Hitler's birthdate, and often spoke German to each other, while walking around in long black trench coats, videotaping themselves.

Copycat Weise left messages on such sites as nazi.org. Weise wore a dark trench coat to school all year round, and had a swastika fascination, a symbol used by both First Nations people and Nazis. In one of Weise's online profiles, he noted that two of his favorite movies were Elephant and Zero Day, based on the events of the Columbine High School massacre.

Jeff Weise virtually haunted the Neo-Nazi Internet forum of the Libertarian National Socialist Green Party under the aliases NativeNazi and Todesengel (German for "Angel of Death"). He admired Hitler, his posts revealed. Weise also alleged online that his school was warned in 2004 that someone was going to "shoot up" the school on April 20, the birthday of Adolf Hitler and the anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre, and that the school authorities "pinned" the threat on him.

But Weise sometimes would sound almost typical. For example, on one of his user info pages, he said he was "nothin' but your average Native American stoner" and mentioned that he used marijuana. After Columbine, one oft-repeated story circulated that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were upset by an unfounded accusation made by an anonymous classmate that the two had brought marijuana to school, prompting a search of their property. Harris and Klebold were said to have found the incident humiliating.

The Other Meaning of 420

The use of "420" for almost four decades is related to the use of marijuana.

4:20 or 4/20 (pronounced four-twenty) is a term used in North America as a discreet way to refer to cannabis and, by extension, a way to identify oneself with cannabis culture. Phrases such as "420 friendly" sometimes appear in roommate advertisements, indicating that the current occupants are tolerant of cannabis users.

It is widely accepted that in 1971, a group of teenagers at San Rafael High School in San Rafael, California, calling themselves The Waldos, used to meet every day after school at 4:20 p.m. to smoke marijuana at the Louis Pasteur statue. The term became part of their group's salute, "420 Louis," and it eventually caught on more widely. Many cannabis users continue to observe 4:20 as a time to smoke communally. By extension April 20 ("4/20" in U.S. dating shorthand) has evolved into a counterculture holiday, where people gather to celebrate and consume cannabis. Source: Wikipedia

It was the research of Steven Hager, editor of High Times, who found the term 420 originated at San Rafael High School in 1971, among the Waldos. A quote from one of the Waldos in the article notes, "We did discover we could talk about getting high in front of our parents without them knowing by using the phrase 420."

Adolf Hitler, marijuana, Columbine: For copycats, 420 appears to have served as a reflective mirror. For the rest of us, 420 may reflect a dangerous combination that has resulted in terrible memories that now reach beyond the mere date of April 20th.

P. S. - Please give me the intellectual respect to understand this is not an anti-drug message, but one about awareness of the twilight language behind code words like "420" in one shooter's message. To think this is as an anti-marijuana blog is as illogical as thinking I am going to let myself get involved in the quicksand of a pro-gun-control vs pro-gun debate. Blaming drugs, guns, video games, and the long list of candidates seems to ignore what's happening in the imprinted mind of the suicidal potential school or spree shooter.

Finally, a couple other "hot dates" in April are worthy of noting.

April 26th is Hitler's right hand man, Rudolf Hess's birthday and the anniversary of the Erfurt, Germany school shooting in 2002, when Robert Steinhäuser killed 16 and then himself.

Hitler died by his own hand, ten days after his birthday, on April 30, 1945, which was 65 years ago.

Killers Pick Special Dates

The Canadian media continue their balanced and insightful approach to examining various factors in multiple homicidal-suicidal events.

School Shootings
Killers often pick special dates for their attack

They 'compete' for high body count, expert says
Apr 17, 2009 04:30 AM

by Trish Crawford, Toronto Star

This year, April 20 – Hitler's birthday – will mark the 10th anniversary of the Columbine school killings.

And, psychiatric social worker Loren Coleman is worried, because mass killers often choose special dates and anniversaries for their carnage. The killers at Columbine did, by picking the birthday of one of history's monsters.

The author of The Copycat Effect (Simon & Schuster) says the amount of attention this anniversary gets may determine whether any other disaffected males bent on vengeance pick April 20 for their act of destruction.

"Anniversaries can be dangerous," Coleman says. "These individuals compete with each other."

From the 14 deaths at Montreal's 1989 École Polytechnique to Columbine's 1999 death toll of 13 and Virginia Tech's all-time record of 32 deaths, the numbers of fatalities climb as shooters learn from each other, says Coleman, a former university professor and senior researcher at the Muskie School of Public Service in Maine.

Creating a high body count is the goal of these killers, he points out.

Chaining doors to prevent escape or rescue, carrying large amounts of back up ammunition and bringing ties and ropes to restrain victims are all refinements added over time as publicity over school killings reaches angry, disenfranchised males, Coleman says.

In the wake of the recent rampage in Winnenden, Germany, which saw a former student return to his school and kill 12 people there, Coleman called schools "a fish bowl setting with a vulnerable population."

Even people with no connection to a school, such as Pennsylvannia truck driver Charles Roberts, who killed five Amish school girls in October 2006, have picked a school as a site of easy victims. The week before, six female students had been taken hostage and one was killed in Colorado by a 54-year-old man who had chained the front doors shut. Roberts used that trick, too, Coleman says.

The killers are uniformly "homicidal, suicidal, sexually dysfunctional males" who feel powerless and blame others for their problems. Attacking school students – young girls are favoured targets – makes these people feel powerful and strong, Coleman says.

Eleven of the 12 school victims in the attack in Germany last month were females students and teachers.

Read more here.

Publicity may have contributed to the increase in school shootings in the past two decades.

Dec. 6, 1989 –14 women at Montreal's École Polytechnique killed with a semi-automatic rifle by Marc Lepine, 25.

March 13, 1996 – 16 children and their teacher killed by a 43-year-old avid gun collector in Dunblane, Scotland, after telephone lines cut.

April 20, 1999 –12 killed and 24 wounded at Columbine High School, in Colorado, on Hitler's birthday by two heavily armed, trenchcoated students, 17 and 18.

Sept. 1, 2004 – 333 hostages die in explosions after Chechen militants take over a school in Beslan, Russia.

Oct. 2, 2006 – 5 Amish girls killed and others injured in one-room Pennsylvania school by 32-year-old husband and father who kills self.

April 16, 2007 – 32 people killed in two separate attacks at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University by gunman who sent photos to TV station.

Sept. 23, 2008 – 10 people die in Finland's second school shooting that year, as a masked student rampages following YouTube warning.

March 11, 2009 – 15 people are killed in a school shoot-up and car chase in Winnenden, Germany, by a 17-year-old former high school student.

Source: Toronto Star, Toronto Star Library.

Support and today....

Marketing Columbine and VA Tech

Two years ago, NBC News got a package in the mail from the VA Tech killer, Seung-Hui Cho, a South Korean immigrant. The impact of that style of "self-marketing" of mass killings lives on today.

We saw it as recently as the self-marketing of 2009's Birmingham killer in his alleged letter to TV channel NY1. The letter, in broken English was from Jiverly Wong, an ethnically Chinese immigrant, who was born in Vietnam. It was mailed, along with his driver's license, his gun permit, and several photos of himself, to News 10 Now in Syracuse, New York. The envelope was twilight languaged in how it was mailed by using three specific stamps: two Purple Hearts and a Liberty Bell. It was sent hours before Wong walked into the American Civic Association and opened fire in one of the worst massacres in the state's history, (13 killed + his own suicide).

Wong copycatted other recent mass killers, such as the Bailey, Colorado & Amish schoolhouse (2006) killers and Seung-Hui Cho (2007) in blockading the doors.

Columbine is the primary model for copycatting, and it was confirmed to be part of the mental process of the VA Tech shooter.

NBC's and MSNBC's unfolding of this story demonstrates they have rather wholehearted published the VA Tech shooter's photos, some of his words, and his video. The way they teased the public (e.g. "Turn in at 6:30 to see the exclusive video"; "See different photographs on MSNBC following NBC Nightly News"; "There will be more revealed on The Today Show in the morning") was so obviously a draw for higher rating. It was about the bottomline, when news becomes entertainment, a grab for more ad revenue. Death sells. If it bleeds, it leads.

How can we not expect it to be the same on the 10th anniversary of Columbine. The "expert" interviews have been coming hot and heavy.

This is exactly the level of glorification of school killers that I have recommended against for several years now, and brought to together in my book.

The Columbine killers, I was not surprised to hear, were noted in the VA Tech shooter's materials. Cho Seung-hui called Columbine's Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold "martyrs." Harris and Klebold live on in their videos and got them broadcast; why won't the VA Tech shooter wish to get his images shown to the world too. NBC fell right into his master plan.

Of course, not acknowledged by the graphic wall-to-wall cable networks is what a central role they have in triggering copycats. On "Hardball," on April 18, 2007, Chris Matthews made an under-informed remark about the "copycat effect." Matthews challenged the notion of the copycat effect by saying aloud that there had not been any copycats of Columbine since Columbine. He said that it was odd that there had been a skipping of the eight years since Columbine, saying VA Tech was unique apparently, as if his facts were correct.

What Matthews and others could find if they looked is that there is a clear history of Columbine copycats. This trickle down through the years, with some of the most concrete elements of direct links and copycatting to be found between Columbine, Santee Red Lake, Dawson College, and VA Tech.

Just read about the direct copycats that happened immediately after Columbine:

On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, killed one teacher and 12 students and wounded 23 others at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Focusing their attack on the cafeteria, Harris and Klebold spoke German and worn trench coats, as they reenacted scenes from Matrix and The Basketball Diaries in the nation's deadliest school shooting. They had plotted for a year to kill at least 500 and blow up their school. At the end of their hour-long rampage, they turned their guns on themselves. Harris and Klebold appeared to have deliberately chosen the anniversary date of Hitler’s Birthday for their attack. At one point, Harris and Klebold had considered the highly important date of April 19, too – the anniversary of Waco and the Oklahoma City bombing – but transportation problems forced a delay in their plans. They finally carried out their attack on the 20th – speaking German and “honoring” Hitler. (They had also discussed that after the attack, they would hijack a jetliner, fly it from Colorado, and crash it into Manhattan. This was two years before the terror of 2001.)

In the wake of the shootings in Littleton, the nation’s schools were under attack by copycats. Some 400 related incidents were reported in the month following the killings. “Across the nation after the 1999 Columbine tragedy,” noted Court TV’s Katherine Ramsland, “other kids called in bomb threats, wore trench coats to school, or used the Internet to praise what Klebold and Harris had done. Only ten days later, on April 30, people feared the eruption of some major event because that day marked Hitler’s suicide in 1945. Schools in Arizona, New Jersey, Michigan, North Carolina, and DC closed to investigate potential threats. It wasn't Paducah, or Jonesboro, or Springfield that they wanted to imitate; the mantra was ‘Columbine.’”

One week after Columbine, on April 28, 1999, one student, Jason Lang, 17, was killed, and one wounded at W. R. Myers High School in Taber, Alberta, Canada. This was the first fatal high school shooting in Canada in 20 years. The shooter was a 14-year-old boy. Exactly a month after Columbine, on May 20, 1999, at Conyers, Georgia, six students were injured at Heritage High School when classmate Thomas Solomon, 15, opened fire. No one died. Witnesses reported that Solomon placed the revolver in his mouth as if to shoot himself, but he did not pull the trigger.

On November 19, 1999, Victor Cordova Jr., 12, shot and killed Araceli Tena, 13, in the lobby of Deming Middle School in Deming, New Mexico. At Fort Gibson, Oklahoma, on December 6, 1999, four students were wounded as Seth Trickey, 13, opened fire with a 9mm semiautomatic handgun at Fort Gibson Middle School.The Copycat Effect, pages 175-176

But for MSNBC's Chris Matthews and others who have so quickly forgotten what they have talked about on their own shows in the recent past, there are other shooters who have joined the cult of Columbine before they have untaken their shootings.

The Santana High School, Santee, California, was the site of a school shooting on March 5, 2001, when fifteen-year old student Charles Andrew Williams opened fire with a pistol, killing two fellow students, and wounding 15 others. Williams told friends he was going to "pull a Columbine."

Let's not forget that Columbine happened on Hitler's birthday. On April 26, 2002, on Rudolf Hess's birthday, Robert Steinhäuser, killed 16 people plus himself at his Erfurt, Germany high school. He had files on his computer, which contained information about the Columbine Massacre. Steinhäuser had outdone the Columbine total (which may have been one of his goals).

Jeff Weise, at the Red Lake Chippewa Reservation in Minnesota, a Native youth who identified more with the Columbine shooters than his own people, picked Monday, March 21, 2005, to kill his grandfather (whom he lived with), his grandfather's girlfriend, and then went to the high school to kill seven. He turned the gun on himself, dying by suicide. The death toll was ten. He used a .22 handgun, 9mm Glock 17, and had a shotgun. Weise would reference Columbine over the internet, with the username which translated to "Abandoned 420." In an incident mirroring what took place during the Columbine shootings, one eyewitness said that Weise asked a victim if he believed in God before shooting him.

Forgotten today is that many near-Columbines were discovered in 2005 (the same year, reportedly, that Cho Seung-hui's contacts with mental health and law enforcement reached its first peak). According to Canada's National Post on March 18, 2005, New Brunswick's Saint John and Harbourview high schools were disturbed to discover three teenage boys, aged 15 to 17, had in mind a well-planned massacre for April 20 (Columbine High School massacre's anniversary date, of course). Other Columbine-like plots were also discovered in March 2005 in Colorado and California. During mid-March 2005, news reports furthermore told of Utah's Uintah High School where four students had a serious plot to carry out a Columbine-like raid, and of a Oregon, Illinois, school, where two 15-year-old sophomores and one 14-year-old freshman who exploded two homemade bombs nearby.

James Scott Newman, a 14-year-old boy opened fire, injuring two students at a Reno middle school on March 14, 2006. Newman planned the shooting for a week by "Research[ing] the Columbine High School shooting on the Internet, and this further inspired him to do the shooting," reported law enforcement investigators.

On August 29, 2006, in Hillsborough, North Carolina, one was dead (father of teenage shooter) and two wounded (two students) at the Orange High School. After killing his father at home, the shooter showed up in a trench coat, with guns, pipe bombs, in a copycat of Columbine. Asked by police why he went to Orange High School, Alvaro Rafael Castillo, 19, responded: "Columbine. Remember Columbine."

The most obvious recent copycat event that closely serves as a bridge between Columbine and VA Tech, which Chris Matthews should have hardly forgotten, is the Dawson College campus shooting of September 13, 2006, in Montreal, Quebec. Kimveer Gill, the 25-year-old shooter, a self-described atheist Goth Columbine copycat, with an Indian Sikh heritage, wearing a trenchcoat, dark clothing, and a strange looking haircut, came to Dawson College, fully armed. He had with him a Beretta Cx4 Storm carbine, a Glock 9mm handgun, and a Norinco HP9-1 short barreled shotgun. He appeared to target what students call the "Jew Caf" and opened fire, killing Anastasia de Sousa, 18, and wounded 19 other students. Police fired upon him, and then Gill turned the gun on himself. Gill was obsessed by the Columbine massacre. He mentioned online being a fan of several computer games (e.g. Super Columbine Massacre) and movies (e.g. Natural Born Killers, Matrix).

Death sells. If it bleeds, it leads. What was NBC thinking?

A Week Of Body Counts

I predicted an increasing build-up in copycat activity as the calendar ticks off days moving towards April 20, 2009, the tenth anniversary of Columbine.

Here's the week that just was (click on the dates for full details):

Saturday, March 27.

A 23-year-old beheads his younger sister Bianca, 5, and kills Samantha Revelus, 17, at their home in Milton, Massachusetts. The killer is killed by police officers.

Sunday, March 29.

Seven patients and a nurse were killed during a Sunday morning shooting at a Carthage, North Carolina, nursing home. The 45-year-old man accused of carrying out the attack was shot by a police officer, and his condition "is currently unknown."

Friday, April 3.



A 41-year-old gunman barricaded the back door of a community center with his car and then opened fire on a room full of immigrants taking a citizenship class Friday, killing 13 people before dying by suicide, in Binghamton, New York.

Saturday, April 4.

The bodies of five children between the ages of 7 and 16 years old and their father were found dead in separate locations south of Seattle, near Orting, Washington State on Saturday. The father apparently killed his children before dying by suicide near a casino some distance away from their home.

Three Pittsburgh police officers responding to a domestic-disturbance call on the morning of Saturday, were killed when a man, who is hiding and waiting, armed with an AK-47, opened fire on them.

Other very recent shootings include these:



A gunman (pictured above) killed 10 people and himself in Samson, Alabama; shootings that began with a traffic stop in Oakland, California, left four police officers and the gunman dead; an apparent murder-suicide in Santa Clara, California, left six dead. At an Illinois church, a man shot and killed the pastor and stabbed two parishioners, and a 17-year-old (below) in Germany killed 15 people in two small towns before dying in a shootout with police.



Updates: It appears I'm not the only one with the notion that an overview is in order. Thanks to Patrick Huyghe who told me about "No End In Sight," after I wrote the above.

Another overview article has been published on Monday: "Deadly Rampages Rack the Nation," Wall Street Journal, April 6, 2009.

Yet another such long discussion has been published, and it notes the role of the media and other factors.

The AP detailed it this way, later on April 5th:

A string of shootings in the U.S. in the last month alone has claimed the lives of 53 people:
_MARCH 10, SAMSON, Ala. — A gunman kills 10 people and commits suicide in a rampage that spanned two dozen miles across the southern Alabama countryside. Police say Michael McLendon had struggled to keep a job and left behind lists of employers and co-workers he believed had wronged him.
_MARCH 22, OAKLAND, Calif. — A man pulled over in a routine traffic stop fatally shoots two officers and then kills two more in a gunfight in which the suspect was also killed. Relatives say Lovelle Mixon, 26, had been frustrated about not finding work and feared returning to jail.
_MARCH 29, SANTA CLARA, Calif. — A man shoots and kills his two children and three other relatives, then kills himself at a family housewarming party in an upscale neighborhood. Investigators don't yet know the motive of Devan Kalathat, a 42-year-old engineer at Yahoo.
_MARCH 29, CARTHAGE, N.C. — A man opens fire in a nursing home and kills seven elderly residents and a nurse who cared for them. Investigators say Robert Stewart, 45, apparently had targeted an estranged wife, a nurse's assistant who escaped by hiding in a bathroom.
_APRIL 3, BINGHAMTON, N.Y. — A gunman bursts into an immigrant center and kills 13 people before killing himself. Police say Jiverly Wong, a 41-year-old Vietnamese immigrant, was apparently upset about losing his job and about people picking on him for his limited English.
_APRIL 4, PITTSBURGH — A gunman wearing a bulletproof vest opens fire on officers responding to a domestic disturbance call, killing three of them. Police say Richard Poplawski, 23, had been upset about losing his job and feared the Obama administration was poised to ban guns.
_APRIL 4, GRAHAM, Wash. — A man fatally shoots his five children in their mobile home and then takes his own life in his car miles away. Relatives identified the father as James Harrison. A motive was not yet known.



Support my research, please, and today....click below:

Thank you.