Season of Suicides: Of Phoenix, Fox and Paradoxes

On September 27, 2001, the Zug massacre "happened." In Zug, Switzerland, Friedrich Leibacher shot 18 citizens, killing 14 and then took his own life. Eleven years later, during the same week, things didn't look much better on the evening news.

Phoenix. 

Fox. 

Suicides.

Signs. 

Balaclava.

Lewis.

Scientology.

Anarchy.

Aurora.

James Holmes.

James Holmes.

Phoenix.

The live Fox News broadcast of the suicidal end of a car chase on September 28, 2012, perhaps was to be expected. In an autumn of atrocities following a summer of the gun, should we have seen this coming?

TVNewser carried the beginning of this news at 3:48 PM, with these words:

A man committed suicide live on Fox News a few minutes ago. FNC had been carrying a car chase in the Phoenix area and when the suspect pulled over, he ran down a dirt road, then stopped, put a gun to his head, and fell to the ground. No other national networks were carrying the chase.

Wall-to-wall coverage of car chases in California, for years, with some mainstreaming of them nationally, has always toyed with the possible tragic end of the scenarios. Car chases are a result of the copycat effect, and the danger is that televised suicide copycats could follow too.

The last two days have been especially violent, bizarre, and suicidal/parasuicidal.

On September 27, 2012, at the Stillwater (Oklahoma) Junior High School, there was the suicide of Cade Poulos, who had dressed like Two Face/Harvey Dent from The Dark Knight and the Batman comics. 

Then in the afternoon, at 4:35 PM Thursday, at Accent Signage Systems in the Bryn Mawr neighborhood in Minneapolis, Minnesota, an employee who was fired a few hours earlier, killed 5 [revised] people and then took his own life.

July 2012 photo shows Andrew Engeldinger. Photo: Bill Klotz.

Andrew J. Engeldinger ( = Warrior Angel Striker), 36, killed the company’s owner Reuven Rahamim, Accent’s Director of Operations John Souter, production manager Eric Rivers, and two others whose identities have not been released. Three others were hospitalized, two critically. (Update on September 29th: Death toll has risen to six; one other individual was identified, Keith Basinski, a UPS driver.)

The company is revolutionary, and the founder Reuven Rahamim (above) actually was profiled as the "Mad Scientist of Signs."

Earlier on Thursday September 27, 2012, a tragedy visited New Fairfield, Connecticut: 

A small Connecticut town was sent reeling in grief and confusion Friday after a popular fifth-grade teacher shot and killed a knife-wielding prowler in a black ski mask, only to discover it was his 15-year-old son.
No immediate charges were brought against the father, Jeffrey Giuliano, in the slaying of his son, Tyler, who was gunned down in his aunt’s driveway next door to his own home around 1 a.m. Thursday.
“It’s something out of a Hollywood script,” said John Hodge, the first selectman, or top elected official, in the town of nearly 14,000 people about 50 miles from New York city. He said he couldn’t recall another killing in his eight years on the job. (See rest of article here.)

Thursday's and Friday's incidents followed the bizarre falling (suicidal) death of Sons of Anarchy star Johnny Lewis:

Johnny Lewis' gruesome demise left many questions unanswered when the Sons of Anarchy star plummeted to his death Wednesday after allegedly killing his 81-year-old landlady.
But as more information continues to surface about Lewis—his criminal past, his custody battle over his young daughter—one particular revelation sheds an intriguing light on the troubled star: his deep ties to Scientology.
A Church of Scientology source exclusively tells E! News that the actor's father, Michael Lewis, was a high-level Scientologist and that the star was "born into the church."

Johnny Lewis, July 2010. Photo: Jerry Avenaim.

Jonathan Kendrick "Johnny" Lewis (October 29, 1983 – September 26, 2012), also credited as Johnny K. Lewis, was an American actor, best known for playing Kip "Half-Sack" Epps in the first two seasons of the FX original series Sons of Anarchy. Lewis also appeared in supporting roles in the films Underclassman, Alien vs. Predator: Requiem and The Runaways. Lewis jumped from a roof into the driveway at a home in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles, California.

We began in Phoenix (and are reminded of the "flashlight bombs" in May in Phoenix too); we shall end in Phoenix, with a developing news story:

Most of the people who saw a masked teenager wearing a sheet and armed with a grenade launcher told authorities they assumed the weapon was a fake as he pointed it at passing cars in northwest Phoenix, according to 911 calls released Thursday [September 27, 2012].
All of the callers calmly told 911 operators that a "small man" or a "kid" was pointing what looked like a bazooka, torpedo, rocket launcher, grenade launcher or a "long gun with a point at the end" at passing cars on July 28.
"I assume it's a fake. I hope so," one man told a 911 operator. "I think you guys should check it out."
"I don't know if it's real or not, but it's kind of bizarre," another male caller said. "He's wearing a dress with a torpedo on his shoulder and pointing it left and right."
"He had it pointed at me," another man said. "I got kind of freaked out."
A Phoenix man has been accused of filming his 16-year-old nephew to see how fast police would react to a mock terrorist act.
Michael D. Turley, 39, was arrested Monday [September 24, 2012], nearly two months after the bizarre film was posted to Google Inc.'s YouTube site.
In the film, the narrator whom police identified as Turley, said he wanted to see how long it took authorities to respond. The introduction to the video mentions the July 20 movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colo., that killed 12.
"Given this event, I wanted to run a little test here in Phoenix, Arizona," Turley said on the film in a disguised voice. "I want to find out how safe I really am, and I want to know the response time of the Phoenix police department."
The police response took just over three minutes from the first call, and a helicopter and SWAT team was dispatched as backup, according to Phoenix police spokesman James Holmes.
The YouTube clip showed the teen marching back and forth at an intersection with the camouflage-colored rocket-propelled grenade launcher on his shoulder. He was wearing a light-blue bedsheet and black head covering with black pants and black sneakers. The 911 callers' descriptions varied, with some saying it was a shawl, gown or dress.
"It looks like there's another kid with him videotaping him," one man told the operator. "They probably think it's funny. It's not really funny."
The first officer found Turley and the teen standing in Turley's driveway. The officer calmly told the boy to put down the weapon and Turley to put down the camera. Holmes said Turley told the officer they were just filming a movie, and the officer took down their names and left. (See rest of article, here).

Colorado = red. Aurora = dawn. Suspect shooter James Eagan (= fiery) Holmes.
Arizona = arid zone, small oak. Phoenix = fire bird. Police spokesman James Holmes.
Amazing.

The Phoenix has long been presented as a symbol of rebirth, immortality, and renewal. Is it also a symbol of the copycat effect, repeating patterns, and behavior contagion?

It has a 500 to 1000 year life-cycle, near the end of which it builds itself a nest of twigs that then ignites; both nest and bird burn fiercely and are reduced to ashes, from which a new, young Phoenix or Phoenix egg arises, reborn anew to live again.... The Phoenix's ability to be reborn from its own ashes implies that it is immortal, though in some stories the new Phoenix is merely the offspring of the older one....In the course of the colonization of Northern America a number of cities have received the name of Phoenix or have been associated with its symbolism. Phoenix, the capital of Arizona, was so named as it was built on the ruins of the Hohokam civilization that had existed on the site centuries before. The Phoenix became the official symbol of Atlanta, Georgia in 1888 because it was "reborn" from the ashes after it was burned down in the American Civil War. ~ Wikipedia

Two other cities that use the Phoenix as their symbol: Detroit, Michigan and Portland, Maine (where I have lived since 1983).

Locations associated with the "Phoenix" symbolism are said to have had "new dawns" (auroras) occur after terrible fires destroyed large parts of their cities.

Thanks DJ, SM, MB, AWG, AM, CS, and others.

Oklahoma "Red" Suicide: Dressed As Batman's Two Face

Breaking News: Cade Poulos, September 26th's suicide, was dressed as the Batman supervillain Two-Face (Harvey Dent), for his school's "Super Hero Day." This appears to be in the realm of a copycat and continues the outcome we are seeing issuing from the "Bane/Joker" red dawn event in the wake of the Aurora shooting (July 20, 2012), allegedly carried out by James Eagan Holmes.

The comment from the Joker character that I quoted at the beginning of a recent posting, here, was delivered to Harvey Dent/Two Face in The Dark Knight (2008). There is a direct link from Bane/Joker to Harvey Dent/Two Face, Aurora to Stillwater, from Colorado to Oklahoma, from The Dark Knight Rises to The Dark Knight. The duality here is deadly obvious. We are sad to see that Cade Poulos' metaphoric flipping of the Harvey Dent/Two Face coin, to determine his own fate, landed on this tragic side.

The Daily Mail notes:

Several students told KOCO that Cade had gone to school dressed as the fictional character Two-Face, also known as Harvey Dent, for the day of costumes as part of Breast Cancer Awareness week.
***
Approximately 750 to 760 students attend the junior high school with students in grades eight and nine, according to Stillwater Superintendent Ann Caine.
The school sent a statement to parents saying there had been a 'single shooting incident' at the school and that staff and students – eighth and ninth graders – had been moved to a safe location. Parents were told to pick up their children at a nearby shopping center.
With Cade allegedly dressed as a popular Batman villain, the scene may have painted a grisly reminder of this summer's shootings at the Aurora, Colorado movie theatre where accused gunman James Holmes shot and killed 12 while dressed as the Joker.
'Everyone thought it was a joke at first,' ninth-grader Ashlyn Lundholm told the Stillwater NewsPress. 'Then I heard people screaming. Then we went to lockdown for 35 to 40 minutes.'

Cade Poulos

###

The Dark Knight character of Alfred Pennyworth (on right), Bruce Wayne's butler, was played by Michael Caine, in all three Christopher Nolan Batman films. 

Stillwater Superintendent Ann Caine is shown at the September 26th news conference, waiting to answer a question about the costumed Batman Harvey Dent/Two Face suicide event.

Earlier news:

Word has been received (early this a.m.) from the Red Dirt Report in Oklahoma that there's been a death in a school in Stillwater, Oklahoma. The victim of a fatal self-inflicted gunshot wound at Stillwater Junior High School is a student and the shooting occurred at 7:50 a.m. on Wednesday, September 26, 2012. The suicide victim took his own life in a hallway as the school day was beginning.

The dead youth has been identified as Cade Poulos, 13, a natural redhead, who some have compared to the recent images of the "Joker."

According to one legend, Stillwater, Oklahoma got its name because local Native American tribes, the Ponca, Kiowa, Osage, and Pawnee, called the creek “Still Water” because the water was always still. "[H]e leadeth me beside the still waters" (Psalm 23:2b).

The name Oklahoma comes from the Choctaw phrase okla humma, literally meaning red people. Choctaw Chief Allen Wright suggested the name in 1866 during treaty negotiations with the federal government regarding the use of Indian Territory, in which he envisioned an all-Indian state controlled by the United States Superintendent of Indian Affairs. Equivalent to the English word Indian, okla humma was a phrase in the Choctaw language used to describe the Native American race as a whole. Oklahoma later became the de facto name for Oklahoma Territory, and it was officially approved in 1890, two years after the area was opened to white settlers. ~ Wikipedia

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Thanks AWG, AM, MB and CC.