Parkland and Newtown Suicide Cluster

We are in the midst of a suicide cluster. The copycat ripples are reaching wider and wider. Be aware. Talk to anyone at risk.

A contributing factor to suicides being linked to other suicide victims and to other survivors of violent deaths is the "copycat effect."

Canada's Centre for Suicide Prevention states it thusly: "It has long been believed that when suicidal contagion occurs, a suicide cluster can develop. A cluster, in this case, is defined as multiple suicidal behaviours or suicides that fall within an accelerated time frame, and sometimes within a defined geographical area."

In my two books on the topic, Suicide Clusters (Faber and Faber, 1987) and The Copycat Effect (Simon and Schuster, 2014), I define "suicide clusters" as three or more suicides in close proximity with reference to time and space.

A suicide cluster occurs, through word of mouth or a media event, when three or more suicides take place in a restricted setting - a school, a community or a region or state - to those who are similar to each other in age, race, gender, economic status or via similar situations who have died by suicide. If one strongly identifies with the victim, these other individuals may be at risk too. The next victim may feel they had no other choices or options but to do the same thing - take their own lives.

Considering what appears to be happening in real time right now, late in March 2019 - with three deaths by suicide of people closely linked to high profile school shootings - in these cases associated with the events at Parkland, Florida's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and Newtown, New Jersey's Sandy Hook Elementary School - this is officially a "suicide cluster."

On February 14, 2018, Valentine's Day, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre occurred in Parkland, Florida. It is one of the deadliest school shootings, with 17 fatalities and 15 injuries. 

On December 14, 2012, the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting occurred, resulting in 27 people (20 children and 6 adults plus the gunman by suicide), killed at the school in Newtown, Connecticut. The gunman had killed his mother before coming to the school. 

On April 20, 1999, the Columbine High School school shooting occurred at Columbine, Columbine. The carnage included the death of 12 students, one teacher, and the two 12th grade students (by suicide).

In late March 2019, it became apparent that suicide was haunting the survivors of the Parkland shooting.

On Sunday, March 17, 2019, St. Patrick's Day, a June 2019 graduate of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and survivor of the 2018 school shooting, Sydney Aiello, 19, (above) took her own life. The Broward County Medical Examiner’s Office said that Aiello died from a gunshot wound to the head.

Among the victims of the shooting was Aiello’s longtime friend, Meadow Pollack. Aiello was also friends with Joaquin Oliver, 17, another student killed in the shooting. She wrote lovingly about both on her social media following their deaths. 

Meadow Pollack, left, pictured with Sydney Aiello. Courtesy of Andrew Pollack. 

On Saturday, March 23, 2019, another Parkland student died by suicide. The Miami Herald reported that the male student, who was in tenth grade and attended Stoneman Douglas last year, died in “an apparent suicide” on Saturday night. The news came just days after the family of another Parkland survivor, Sydney Aiello, confirmed that she died by suicide after struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder and survivor’s guilt.

Then, on Monday, March 25, 2019, at about 7:00 am, the father of a Sandy Hook student who was killed in 2012, was found dead outside the Edmond Town Hall, the victim of suicide. The body of Jeremy Richman was found in his Connecticut office building Monday morning, Newtown police said.  Richman, 49, was the father of 6-year-old Avielle Richman, who was those killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Richman was one of the individuals who have sued InfoWars' Alex Jones. Police said they "will not disclose the method or any other details" of Richman's death, other than it does not appear to be suspicious.

Richman's death is the third suicide between March 17th and 25th, by survivors of school massacres.

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After the Columbine school shooting of 1999, it is felt there have been more deaths, related to suicides.

This week CBS News published what one Parkland parent recalls about the Columbine suicides:

"We tried to get the warning out last year," said Ryan Petty, whose daughter Alaina was killed at Parkland. He was worried survivors would take their own lives – just like some of those at Columbine High School did. Thirteen people were murdered in that 1999 shooting in Colorado.
"Almost as many people died after Columbine as died during the event, and that was suicide," Petty said.

The internet's oldest site (source) tracking the tragedies in the wake of Columbine gives this limited list:

October 22, 1999 -- Carla June Hochhalter (pictured), mother of surviving victim Anne Marie Hochhalter went into an Englewood pawn shop, bought a gun and shot herself there in the shop. She had been diagnosed with depression before the shootings and the stress of having a daughter paralyzed by the attack on Columbine pushed her over the edge.

February 13, 2000 -- Nicholas Kunselman, 15, and Stephanie Hart, 16, - both students at Columbine - were killed late Sunday night at a Subway restaurant two blocks south of Columbine High School. Nicholas was supposed to lock up the store; Stephanie was there to give him a ride home.

February 14, 2000 -- The bodies of Nicholas Kunselman and Stephanie Hart were discovered at the Subway restaurant around 1:30 AM (Valentine's Day) by another Subway employee who noticed the lights were still on when she drove by. Victim Rachel Scott worked at the shop before she was killed at the school. 

May 4, 2000 -- Greg Barnes, a Columbine High student in his Junior year and a basketball player for the school team, died by suicide (by hanging himself) two weeks after the first "anniversary" of the shootings. He was in the school on April 20, 1999 and escaped without injury, though he saw Coach Dave Sanders die and victim Matthew Kechter was a close friend of his. His father found Greg's body in the garage at 12:15 PM with a CD repeating one song over and over: Adam's Song by Blink 182. He left no note but it is believed the suicide was prompted by a recent break-up with his girlfriend. His death left his family and fellow students at Columbine stunned.

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What is clear is that suicides are occurring now, in March 2019. Do your best to ask someone if they are thinking about taking their own life today. Talking about suicide prevents suicides.

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If you need to talk, for any reason, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741.

The Most Dangerous Time of Year

The April 2, 2018, issue of Time has on the cover the image of five of the student survivors who organized the March for Our Lives. They are among the twenty students who cofounded Never Again MSD (MSD refers to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School) in the wake of the death of 17 on Valentine's Day, February 14, 2018.

Details about each of the pictured individuals are to be found in "The New Children's Crusade," that I wrote on March 2.

Jaclyn Corin, Alex Wind, Emma Gonzalez, Cameron Kasky, and David Hogg

The March for Our Lives was a student-led demonstration that took place on March 24, 2018, in Washington, D.C., with over 800 sibling events throughout the United States and around the world. According to data from Getty Images, more than 830 demonstrations took place.

With two million marching across the United States, it was the largest student protest in American history, one of the largest marches on Washington in history, and the second largest march in American history, with millions more estimated to have marched throughout the world.

Wikipedia summarizes the rally, thusly:

The speakers—all of whom were high schoolers or younger—included Marjory Stoneman Douglas students Cameron Kasky, David Hogg, Delaney Tarr, Sarah Chadwick, Alex Wind, Jaclyn Corin, Ryan Deitsch, Aalayah Eastmond, Sam Fuentes, and Emma González. Other participants included Naomi Wadler, who is an elementary school student in Alexandria, Virginia​, Trevon Bosley from Chicago whose brother was shot and killed leaving church, Edna Chavez, a high school student from Los Angeles, and Zion Kelly, whose twin brother was shot and killed during an armed robbery. Yolonda Reene King, granddaughter of Martin Luther King Jr., also made an appearance along with Mya Middleton, a student from Chicago, Matt Post, a senior from Montgomery County, Christopher Underwood, an 11-year old from New York, Alex King and D'Angelo McDade from Chicago, and Matthew Soto, brother of Sandy Hook victim Victoria Soto.
González, after briefly speaking and naming the 17 victims, stood silent for over four minutes, after which a cellphone alarm went off and she announced that it was the six minute and twenty second point in her speech, equal to the length of the Parkland shooting. Her speech and emotional moment of silence was praised by many media organizations as one of the "most memorable" and "powerful" moments in the day's events. González ended her speech by saying:

Since the time that I came out here, it has been 6 minutes and 20 seconds, The shooter has ceased shooting, and will soon abandon his rifle, blend in with the students as they escape, and walk free for an hour before arrest. Fight for your lives before it's someone else's job. [The footnote is #237, thus giving this quote a bit of cryptokubrology magic. ~ Loren]

Singers Ariana Grande, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Ben Platt, Miley Cyrus, Jennifer Hudson, Andra Day, Common, and Demi Lovato joined student-led marchers in Washington, D.C. Source.

The next mass student demonstration comes on April 20, 2018, the anniversary date of Columbine (1999). Traditionally, this week in April has is the most dangerous week of the year for school shootings and mass violence. 

The Red Zone of April: A Dangerous Time

April 14-5

1865 – On the eve of the fifth day of Passover, April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was shot and died of his wounds in the early morning of April 15th, which had already been scheduled as a national day of prayer to mark the end of the Civil War. Jews across the land were gathering in synagogues to give thanks. When news of Lincoln's death arrived, the synagogue altars were quickly draped in black and, instead of Passover melodies, the congregations chanted Yom Kippur hymns. Lincoln had been protective of American Jewry, overturning General Grant's infamous General Order #11 expelling Jews from the Department of the Tennessee and supporting legislation allowing Jewish chaplains to serve in the military.

April 15

2013 – The Boston Marathon bombing was a terrorist attack, followed by subsequent related shootings, that occurred when two pressure cooker bombs exploded during the Boston Marathon on Boylston Street, Boston, Massachusetts. Six died in the events, and 280 injured, some with loss of legs and arms.

April 16
73 – Masada, a Jewish fortress, falls to the Romans after several months of siege, ending the Great Jewish Revolt.
1947 – French freighter S.S. Grandcamp explosion loaded with ammonium nitrate docked at the Port of Texas City, Texas, and erupted in flames, causing a massive explosion that killed at least 581 people.
1995 – George W. Bush names April 16 as Selena Day in Texas, after she was killed two weeks earlier.

2007 – Virginia Tech shooting: Seung-Hui Cho guns down 32 people and injures 17 before dying by suicide.

April 17

1961 – Bay of Pigs Invasion: A group of Cuban exiles financed and trained by the CIA lands at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba with the aim of ousting Fidel Castro.
1978 – Mir Akbar Khyber is assassinated, provoking a communist coup d'état in Afghanistan.
1984 – Police Constable Yvonne Fletcher is killed by gunfire from the Libyan People's Bureau (Embassy) in London during a small demonstration outside the embassy. Ten others are wounded. The events lead to an 11-day siege of the building.
2006 – A Palestinian suicide bomber detonates an explosive device in Tel Aviv, killing 11 people and injuring 70.

April 18

1775 – American Revolution: The British advancement by sea begins; Paul Revere, William Dawes (above) and other riders warn the countryside of the troop movements. (The syncinematic film, 2009's Knowing has student Caleb Koestler - a name game there - going to the fictional William Dawes Elementary, located in 1959 Lexington.)
1906 – An earthquake and fire destroy much of San Francisco, California.
1983 – A suicide bomber destroys the United States embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 63 people.
2007 – A series of bombings, two of them being suicides, occur in Baghdad, killing 198 and injuring 251.
2013 – A suicide bombing in a Baghdad cafe kills 27 people and injures another 65.
2013 – Fertilizer plant explosion, West, just north of Waco, Texas, killed 15 killed and about 200 injured. Eighty homes and a middle school are leveled.

April 19

Blood Sacrifice to the Beast. Fire sacrifice is required for this specific date.
1775 – Battles of Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, the first battles of the American Revolutionary War. This is the actual anniversary of the battles, even though the observance has become a date tied to the third Monday in April.
1897 – First running of the Boston Marathon, with marathons named after the Greek Battle of Marathon. 

1993 – The 51-day FBI siege of the Branch Davidian building outside Waco, Texas, USA, ends when a fire breaks out. Eighty-one people die.
1993 – South Dakota governor George Mickelson and seven others are killed when a state-owned aircraft crashes in Iowa.
1995 – Oklahoma City bombing: The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, USA, is bombed, killing 168.
1995 – Richard Wayne Snell, a convicted murderer, member of the white supremacist group The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord (CSA), is executed in Arkansas. Snell was involved in filming the planes that landed at the restricted airport in Mena, Arkansas, believed by many conspiracy theorists to be used in a CIA-sanctioned cover-up to smuggle drugs into America. Snell had been accused of plotting to bomb the Murrah Building in the 1980s. Snell reportedly watched televised reports of the Oklahoma City bombing on the day of his execution and nodded in approval. 

2013 – Boston Marathon bombings suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev is killed in a shootout with police. His brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is captured while hiding in a boat inside a backyard in Watertown, Massachusetts.

April 20 

1889 – Adolf Hitler, Austrian-German soldier and politician, Chancellor of Germany (d. 1945) is born
1939 – Adolf Hitler's 50th birthday is celebrated as a national holiday in Nazi Germany.
1945 – World War II: Führerbunker: Adolf Hitler makes his last trip to the surface to award Iron Crosses to boy soldiers of the Hitler Youth.
1961 – Failure of the Bay of Pigs Invasion of US-backed Cuban exiles against Cuba.
1971 – According to Steven Hager, editor of High Times, he found the term 420 originated at San Rafael High School in 1971, among the Waldos. They would meet every day after school at 4:20 p.m. to smoke marijuana at the Louis Pasteur statue. One of the Waldos notes, "We did discover we could talk about getting high in front of our parents without them knowing by using the phrase 420." By extension now, April 20 ("4/20" in U.S. dating shorthand) has evolved into a counterculture holiday, where people gather to celebrate and consume cannabis. 
1978 – Korean Air Lines Flight 902 is shot down by the Soviet Union. 

1999 – Columbine High School massacre: Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, killed 13 people and injured 21 others before dying by suicide at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado.
2007 – Johnson Space Center shooting: William Phillips with a handgun barricades himself in NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas before killing a male hostage and himself.

2015 – A substitute teacher was killed at the Joan Fuster School in the La Sager neighborhood of Barcelona, Spain, by a 13-year-old student with a crossbow and machete. Four other people were injured.

April 21 
1506 – The three-day Lisbon Massacre comes to an end with the slaughter of over 1,900 suspected Jews by Portuguese Catholics.
1985 – The compound of the militant group The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord surrenders to federal authorities in Arkansas after a two-day government siege.

April 22 
2004 – Two fuel trains collide in Ryongchon, North Korea, killing up to 150 people.
2013 – Six people die in a shooting in Belgorod, Russia.
2013 – The Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrest and charge two men with plotting to disrupt a Toronto area train service in a plot claimed to be backed by Al-Qaeda elements.
2014 – More than 60 people are killed and 80 are seriously injured in a train crash in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's Katanga Province.
2016 – The one-month anniversary of three suicide bombers killing 35 people and injuring 316 in the 2016 Brussels bombings at the airport and at the Maelbeek/Maalbeek metro station.

April 23
303 – Saint George, Roman soldier and martyr (b. 275) dies
St George's Day (England) and its related observances
1343 – St. George's Night Uprising commences in the Duchy of Estonia.
1968 – Timothy James McVeigh, who blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Building in 1995, on April 19, was born. He is executed on June 11, 2001.

April 24
1184 BC – Traditional date of the fall of Troy.

April 25
1946 – Naperville train disaster kills 47 in Naperville, Illinois.

1965 – Teenage sniper Michael Andrew Clark kills three and wounds six others shooting from a hilltop along Highway 101 just south of Santa Maria, California.
2005 – One hundred seven people die in Amagasaki rail crash in Japan.
2010 – Joseph McVey, 23, from Ohio, is arrested with a shotgun, in a car made to look like a police vehicle with working lights and sirens in the Asheville, NC airport parking lot, when President Obama and his family were departing in Air Force One.

April 26
1865 – Union cavalry troopers corner and shoot dead John Wilkes Booth, assassin of President Lincoln, in Virginia.
1894 – Birthdate of Rudolf Walter Richard Heß, also spelled Hess, who was a prominent politician in Nazi Germany. Appointed Deputy Führer to Adolf Hitler in 1933, he served in this position until 1941, when he flew solo to Scotland. Neo-nazi "celebrations" have been held for him in Germany, on the date of his death, August 17, but some indications are that his birthdate is acknowledged, as well.
1982 – Fifty-seven people are killed by former police officer Woo Bum-kon in a shooting spree in South Gyeongsang Province, South Korea.
2002 – Robert Steinhäuser, 19, infiltrates the Gutenberg-Gymnasium (a secondary school) in Erfurt, Germany. He stalked the halls, and killed 12 teachers, an administrator, two students, one policeman, and wounded 10 other people before he killed himself. Seventeen people in total died.

April 27
711 – Islamic conquest of Hispania: Moorish troops led by Tariq ibn Ziyad land at Gibraltar to begin their invasion of the Iberian Peninsula (Al-Andalus).
1805 – First Barbary War: United States Marines and Berbers attack the Tripolitan city of Derna (The "shores of Tripoli" part of the Marines' Hymn).
2011 – The April 25–28 tornado outbreak devastates parts of the Southeastern United States, especially the states of Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, and Tennessee. Two hundred five tornadoes touched down on April 27 alone, killing more than 300 and injuring hundreds more.
2012 – At least four explosions hit the Ukrainian city of Dnipropetrovsk with at least 27 people injured.
2014 – A tornado outbreak over much of the eastern United States kills 35 people.

April 28
1192 – Assassination of Conrad of Montferrat (Conrad I), King of Jerusalem, in Tyre, two days after his title to the throne is confirmed by election. The killing is carried out by Hashshashin.
1949 – The Hukbalahap are accused of assassinating former First Lady of the Philippines Aurora Quezon, while she is en route to dedicate a hospital in memory of her late husband; her daughter and ten others are also killed.
1978 – President of Afghanistan, Mohammed Daoud Khan, is overthrown and assassinated in a coup led by pro-communist rebels.
1996 – Port Arthur massacre, Tasmania: A gunman, Martin Bryant, opens fire at the Broad Arrow Cafe in Port Arthur, Tasmania, killing 35 people and wounding 23 others.

April 29
1429 – Joan of Arc (tied to name game, Fay/Fairy/Beech) arrives to relieve the Siege of Orleans.
1945 – World War II: Führerbunker: Adolf Hitler marries his longtime partner Eva Braun in a Berlin bunker and designates Admiral Karl Dönitz as his successor. Both Hitler and Braun died by suicide the following day.

April 30
1945 – World War II: Führerbunker: Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun die by suicide after being married for less than 40 hours. Soviet soldiers raise the Victory Banner over the Reichstag building. 

2009 – Eight people are killed and another ten injured at a Queen's Day parade in Netherlands in an attempted assassination on Queen Beatrix and members of the Royal Family. The attack occurred at the De Naald (in English The Needle), which is the obelisk monument in the Dutch city of Apeldoorn. The car of the assailant, identified as Richard Karst Tates, ended up crashed at the base of the obelisk.

2009 – Azerbaijan State Oil Academy shooting: Twelve people were killed (students and staff members) by an armed attacker.

Beltaine Festival - April 30-May 1. Walpurgis Night. This is the highest day on the Druidic Witch's Calendar. May 1 is the Illuminati's second most sacred holiday. Human sacrifice is required.

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Bridget Brown of Toronto's Canadian TV online edition wrote the following on October 4, 2006:

Coleman says violent offenders, intent on shocking the public, sometimes "compete for the highest body count."...the copycat crimes will likely slow down as we near winter. He says spring, and the anniversary of Columbine, could be enough to spark another cycle of tragedy.

Here's a snippet from Montana's Daily Inter Lake, for October 5, 2006:

There is also the influence of cable news to be accounted for, as wall-to-wall coverage of shootings and murder could easily sway sick minds to think of killers as culture heroes. Indeed, researcher Loren Coleman believes copycats imitate previous violent attacks on a regular basis. He says school attacks follow a pattern after a media event in a day, a week, two weeks, a month, a year, or 10 years. "Vulnerable humans have internal media clocks," he maintains.

"Killers often pick special dates for their attack," April 17, 2009 by Trish Crawford, in Toronto Star

...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."
...Coleman called schools "a fish bowl setting with a vulnerable population."
...The killers are uniformly "homicidal, suicidal, sexually dysfunctional males" who feel powerless and blame others for their problems. Attacking school students – young girls are favored targets – makes these people feel powerful and strong, Coleman says.

Michael Hoffman III, being interviewed for "Cereal Murder and the Group Mind" in 2000, notes:

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.