J.L. Bailey is an unclassified graduate student. He can be contacted at [email protected].Last Friday was a sunny, warm and very nice fall day for many of us. In Cleveland, Ohio, at SuccessTech Academy, chaos, fear and gunfire erupted. A 14-year-old named Asa Coon opened fire on teachers and students at his high school. In the end, Coon died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The others survived.
Coon’s uncle stated that his nephew experienced bullying and taunting his entire life and recently transferred to SuccessTech, an alternative school that stresses technology and entrepreneurship for high-achieving students.
Students at SuccessTech reported that Coon recently threatened to blow up the school, but they were not taken seriously. They also stated that teachers knew about the threats but did nothing. Reports indicate that Coon had recently been suspended from SuccessTech for fighting.
Coon’s uncle, Larry Looney, revealed that several years ago, his nephew talked about suicide and received counseling. Things seemed better, grades improved and he qualified for acceptance into SuccessTech this school year.
Four-hundred miles away in Norristown, Penn., Michele Cossey was charged with buying her 14-year-old son, Dillon, three guns: a .22 caliber handgun, a .22 caliber rifle and a 9 mm semi-automatic rifle.
On Wednesday, police in Norristown confiscated an assortment of weapons in Dillon’s bedroom, including the rifle, 30 air-powered guns, swords, knives, a bomb-making book, videos of the 1999 Columbine attack in Colorado and violence-laden notebooks.
Police report that Cossey’s father had tried to buy Dillon a rifle back in 2005 but was refused because he was a felon.
On his MySpace Web page, Dillon listed his interests as “shooting, war and bank robbery.” In one post it is reported that he describes himself as a mercenary soldier.
According to an MSNBC report, Bruce Castor, the district attorney for the region in Pennsylvania, stated: “I’m very, very upset about the role, the lack of oversight that apparently the parents had in this case. We need to recognize that parents are the primary persons responsible for teaching young people the difference between right and wrong.”
Authorities believe that no attack was imminent. However, this discovery makes one wonder what consequences would occur if this troubled teenager decided that an attack on his school would be the only way to solve his problems.
In 1999, before moving west to the slopes of Colorado and a mere week after the Columbine incident, I joked to a friend, “Should I take any weapons with me?”
She took issue with these comments. I thought they were mildly humorous; she thought they were superficial and uninformed. She was an alumna of Columbine High School.
These recent incidents add to the growing list of victims in our violent society. We ask questions such as: What was he thinking? What caused him to shoot classmates and teachers? Where will the next incident occur? When will it end?
I wish a conclusive answer could be offered for these questions. But questions like these are bigger than most of us possess the understanding or insight to offer tangible solutions.
We live in a very violent society that appears to have no end. One difficulty in addressing this matter lies in our collective denial about violence. Too often we believe it only happens elsewhere. But one look at our newspapers crime sections or the local reports during the 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. TV news reveals otherwise.
Usually, the perpetrators of these school crimes kill themselves before entering the criminal justice system. Should their parents be locked up?
Parents should know where their children are and what they are doing. No doubt. Unfortunately, there are no simple solutions. It is not as easy as screening every 14-year-old with psychological tests before their freshman year in high school.
A start may be in the direction of people stepping up and letting it be known that we’ve had enough. It depends on schools being equipped and funded to detect potential threats and having the personnel to intervene. It involves giving law enforcement the tools and funding to assist schools.
It also puts emphasis on parents to keep up with their children’s lives. If a child has a DVD titled “Game Over in Littleton” and books on how to make explosives, then something is awry. Getting a handle on potential fatal school incidents requires national resolve.
When do we begin?