FUCKIN’ DIMWIT IN-DENIAL PARENTS! How can they go on like this? Oblivious dimwits! I wanna cry.
You know it’s a bad sign when the cops and parents can’t agree on the kid’s age.
Um, whether he intended to or not, isn’t the very ACT of making a death threat illegal?
It kills me that his father said the police were “blowing this out of porportion” and his mother insisting that he was doing this to “impress a girl from school who was also posting”.
THAT’S how he tries to impress a girl?
Dear lord, I tell you right now, I would turn in my very own kids for pulling such a stunt. I don’t care if he meant it as a “joke”, if he was “just blowing off steam”, or “reacting to a bully at school”. (Wait, I can count this, I know I can…that’s 4 different excuses his parents made for him in ONE newspaper article).
After Columbine, we cannot afford to take these things as joke…ever.
~J
I hope they get the kid excellent therapy, and anger management training. It sounds like he needs it. I think the parents also need counseling/therapy to come to terms with reality, and stop denying it. IMO it seems they are a contributing factor too, although they mean well.
I was bullied severely in school by large male jocks, and stuck up preppie females. (beaten with metal meter sticks, spat on, sexually accosted both physically and verbally, called bitchslutwhore etc.) I did not choose a course of action anywhere near that. I graduated, with a high B G.P.A. despite all the crap.
My point is, that you can still choose not to let their hostility get the better of you. You don’t have to respond with violence, and hatred. That just prevents/slows you from finishing school. I did defend myself a time or two, when I felt I was threatened with serious harm. The principal agreed, and did not penalize me.
I decided I was not going to fall into the pit my tormentors were trying to push me into, I was going to keep going to school, and not retaliate, and graduate. It was a better revenge.
I saw many of my classmates at a 10 year reunion not that long ago. They are largely unhealthy, and unhappy/bitter. I think it may be due in part to all the hostility they have been directing outwards all these years.
Anyway, I agree with other posters, we can’t afford to take such threats lightly. Whether he was bullied or not, is no excuse to commit acts of violence on everyone in the vicinity of the bully. I hope the boys father did not do similar things to “impress girls”. I really hope the boys mother did not find that kind of thing attractive. Shudder I hope that this is not why they came up with that lame excuse.
I love how they kept playing up the grandma angle. “He’s not a bad kid! See! He’s taking care of his poor sick grandma! He’s a Bible study student! We all know they can Do No Wrong! Just let our boy take care of his poor sick grandma!”
Throw the chair at him, I say.
Hey, Norman Bates always took care of his Mother.
Fun with out-of-context quotes:
Authorities "woke us up by pounding on the door at 2 a.m. asking ‘Do you have an AOL account?’ "
And you thought getting those CDs in the mail was bad.
Been checking for updates on Google News.
Nada yet…
By identifying his parents by name, doesn’t that identify the minor by default?
and aren’t the press prevented from idenitfying minors involved in criminal cases?
Yeah, I liked that part, irishgirl:
(emphasis mine)
They didn’t release his name, but they did release the AOL screen name and identified it as the name and initials of the father. Oooooo kay!
Wow, scary.
I find it interesting that the mother could try to use the defense that all of the handguns were locked up, even though the rifles clearly weren’t. Am I supposed to feel better about the situation because he couldn’t get his hands on all of the guns???
Having said that, I’m not so sure we should be coming down on the parents too hard just yet. I think that it is normal for a parent to try to defend their child, at least initially. I’m sure it was quite a shock to them as well. I’m not defending their statements, just saying that what they are saying now is probably based more on their emotions than anything. Denial usually precedes acceptance. Hell, these quotes were on the same day as the arrest. Their opinion on the matter may have changed a little since then. One can hope, at least.
Welcome to the post-Columbine world.
You may no longer freely:[ul][li] Yell “fire” in a crowded theater.[/li]
[li] Joke about hijacking the plane you’re flying on.[/li]
[li] Wisecrack about bombs in your baggage.[/ul][/li]Certain inessential (admittedly, a controversial term) yet inflammatory forms of (otherwise) free speech and expression (i.e., cross burning) are no longer allowed.
Imagine these incidents:
A twelve year old brings his Father’s M-16 carbine rifle to school for a full classroom show and tell.
A ten year old brings a crossbow to school for a class play.
Both of these incidents happened in my youth. One child shared about how his father carried the gun during wartime and the other played William Tell in my fifth grade class play. Think that will ever happen again?
What didn’t happen all through my childhood was any mention, ever, of someone performing a mass killing, at school or anywhere else. It’s not so much that this was impermissible as it was just plain unthinkable. These sort of thoughts were confined to the meanderings of utter and complete psychotics.
I realize that there may have been recent legal cases where a child’s (written) imaginings about killing someone else (a bully) was not felt to merit incarceration. I do understand that a person might actually inscribe such thoughts without carrying them out. I DO NOT understand how a person can entertain the notion of mass murder being some way to achieve another’s notice or any sort of notoriety, period. Wishing to be remembered for the brutal slaying of other children is a step well beyond the pale of adolescent fantasies.
For this reason, I’m nigh well prepared to see the written threat of a school mass murder become actionable. Anyone evil or stupid enough to fixedly entertain such deviant plans needs to be out of society’s loop. High population density is accompanied by equally strong concentrations of children in academic settings. This vital component our nation’s future and citizens’ lives requires levels of protection unknown in the days of one room schoolhouses.
Parents who are unaware of a child’s bedroom arms cache are guilty of gross negligence. Had this narrowly averted tragedy occurred, they should have been found liable as well. Giving a teenager unrestricted access to high caliber weapons is a recipe for disaster. Locking up the handguns is a feeble excuse when rifles and the like are still floating around. Haven’t these morons ever heard of a gun safe? If found guilty, I hope their son is locked up for years after trial on adult charges. This arrest record needs to be a permanent part of his legal landscape for a long, long time.
Last year a girl in one of my classes brought her grandfather’s WWII knife as part of a project she did on 20th Century wars. Her father had to bring the knife to school, check in, sign a paper acknowledging that he knew about the knife, and carry it to the class where the girl held it for all of about twenty seconds (sheathed) before giving it back to her father who had to go back to the office with the knife and check out.
Zenster, I’m pretty sure you couldn’t do those things before Columbine either. I remember a teacher telling us a story about his uncle having Super Bowl tickets back in the 1970s. When he arrived in Louisana, he made a joke when going through the metal detector-“Oops, watch out for that bomb in there!”
Guess what? He didn’t make it to the Super Bowl.
Death threats have always been illegal, I believe.
Actually, they gave the father’s name Carl Hagerman and the mother’s name (Yvette) directly in the article.
That’s my point, In Conceivable. If you know the parents’ names, the kid’s name won’t be extremely tough to discern, I would think. How many kids do they have at Riverside Polytechnic with that last name?
Best not to take any chances. They should amputate this kids trigger fingers.
The kid also reportedly said "“I’m a millionaire. I have 100 mill…”
Kids talk bollocks. Fuck! Adults talk bollocks. I’m not sure that “school shooting averted” isn’t over-egging the pudding, at the very least pre-judging the facts.
Troubled kids resorts to wild hyperbole and idle threats on forum might be closer, but not so headline friendly.
Whatever.
Best not to take any chances. They should amputate his head.
No foolin’. I don’t wanna share the same planet with this little waste of flesh when I’m old & grey.