Here’s an interview with his uncle, who appears to be somewhere on the spectrum between “in shock” and “brain dead”, leaning towards the latter. It’s about 3 1/2 minutes in length.
He doesn’t seem brain dead, but he does seem like he may be developmentally disabled.
Put a nominally functional person into an insane situation and they will often appear to be fucked up. I suspect he is not mentally challenged, but the stress of this is a huge weight on him.
Hmm… well that’s interesting. A number of Bob’s (the father) likes have disappeared from his Facebook page. One of them is for Erika’s Lighthouse, an organization helping adolescent depression. (Another I remember from Monday that is gone is Donald Trump Jr, but he did not have a like for his father.) I also notice Steve Greenberg, the attorney he’s retained, has been added to his likes. Hmmm …
This is another example of how oblivious people can be about friends or family. You’d think once your kid threatened to kill everyone in the family and the police had to get involved, maybe you shouldn’t have helped him purchase a firearm. Also, these people weren’t poor, why wasn’t he getting treatment for his actions? It’s not like we’ve never had a teen shooter in the US.
His mom seems to be quite the good example setter. When they searched her house, she spent half the time pulling down her shirt to flash the officers while yelling obscenities.
On a lighter note, upon seeing this photo, did anyone else think “ruh-ro, Shaggy lost it and shot up a parade”?
The police report from April, 2019, says the shooter (I’ve decided not to use his name any longer, as cops have told me the notoriety one shooter gets encourages others.) attempted suicide by a machete.
His father said the family had no idea his kid was going to shoot people: he’d asked his kid if he had plans for the Fourth, and the shooter said, “no.” Well, there you have it. I mean, there’s no stronger proof than that, right?
Also, the cops had been called to the house multiple times between 2009 and 2014 for domestic disputes that apparently didn’t involve the shooter.
I looked up Erika’s Lighthouse, thinking it provided psychiatric services, and maybe the dad Liked it because he was grateful. It doesn’t do that, though. It goes to schools to educate students about depression and suicide prevention…a worthy mission, but it makes that Like pretty ironic.
Do you have a cite for this? I don’t doubt you a bit. I’d just like to read the article.
Now that you mention it…nah, Shaggy looks more intelligent.
ETA this link for the source of the info…
This is not the original one I saw, but it’s pretty close. Her chest is blurred out because of the nudity, although it doesn’t mention it in the story. Maybe the first story was wrong and it’s blurred because of the low cut shirt. The original story also mentioned her starting to lower her pants to moon the officers and pointed out that the officers politely turned their heads.
You are right, it’s probably all the facial tattoos.
Looks like dad is already backing away from any defense of the shooter.
Edit: This is the original that I saw, with the blurred out boob flashing video and story.
It could be complete coincidence, but I was thinking more that it possibly implies that he liked it because he knew something was up with his son. And the fact that it was sanitized from his “likes” (I’d guess under the advice of his attorney) also seems a little odd. I wish I had taken a screenshot of what his likes were before, because they were more extensive. But Donald Trump, Jr. and Erika’s Lighthouse are the only ones that jumped out at me.
Mind you, none of that is absolutely damning, he may have just liked the organization for some other reason unconnected to any knowledge about his son’s mental state, but it just seems odd.
If so, he needs a better attorney. The likelihood of actually making this bit of information go away is rather slim, and attempting to do so and getting busted is hardly helping his case that he had no idea something like this might happen.
What I don’t understand is why he hasn’t locked down the privacy settings on his account. Someone has clearly been to his page and cleaned stuff up — unless there’s a page of likes or follows I’m missing. I do see some other likes like Chowhound that I remember from before.
I worry that “shooter” is too close to how they (the murderer) would want to be described in the alternative. It’s almost cool or something. So I personally try to refer to them simply as a murderer. That’s just a thought/observation, to the extent some people might be similarly minded. I understand “shooter” might have the benefit of linking the violence to gun use, but there are other ways of maintaining that emphasis I think. To the extent it may still be an open question legally speaking as to whether they actually committed murder, you could say the same should apply to their identity as the “shooter” (murderer). And there’s always alleged/suspected murderer if you want to adhere to journalist CYA standards.
I read that the father’s house was going to be foreclosed on as he’s almost $200,000 behind (if the Daily Mail is to be believed). Still, they should have sought treatment.
From the linked article:
A former coach of Crimo’s said the alleged killer stood out to him as he and his younger brother were often left behind at their after school program because their ‘flighty’ mom forgot to pick them up or their dad was at work.
I’ve long said that kids can raise themselves. It’s just that they tend to do a really, really bad job of it.
And I guess exposing your breast to the SWAT team looking for your murderer son … is … well … “flighty.” Got it.
Damnatio memoriae I can understand, but this seems more like a folk belief than anything. If you talk about the deeds but avoid the name, how would that deter anyone? Note: this is not a criticism of you or your choice here, just that I don’t see the logic. I suspect the police have a vested interest in making sure criminals aren’t glorified or turned into heroes. I’ve heard the same thing about suicides, that somehow discussing them makes them more frequent.
If someone is already planning a mass murder, it’s hard to see how one that resulted in the perpetrator’s arrest shortly after would be encouragement.
Then again, we seem to have a lot of these, so maybe it does happen as you say.
I wondered about that when I read this article and saw the photos. For being such a nice neighborhood, the house and yard seem pretty run down. Not to mention the car parked across the front lawn (I noticed the pictures show all the decals except the “pussymobile” across the rear end) and the painting of a 
- faced gunman on the back of the building.
Not to mention all the police visits for domestic violence when the parents were home. I seriously hope someone more responsible is taking care of his younger brother. I haven’t seen any mention of his living arrangements.
Whenever one of these “loner” shootings happens, I wonder if it’s the inability to make friends that pushes someone towards shootings or if it’s the weirdness of the shooter that drives people away from them. Kind of like the chicken/egg thing. Is it loner and then becomes a weirdo, or were they always a weirdo and then a loner?
I don’t know if it’s just particular to me on this subject, but I simply do not remember any of these peoples names. I could tell you the name of the guy that shot from the bell tower in Texas before I was born because it was so unusual. I can also tell you the names of the two guys that shot up the school in Colorado, which seemed to kick off mass shootings. The rest of them? No idea, there are just too many. And I have a really good memory.
It did seem pretty run down. Though they live(d) in Highwood, next to Highland Park, which parts of aren’t nearly as nice. Typical home value, per Zillow, is $200k less than Highland Park.
It’s one part of the package. Notoriety is well-established as a contributing factor. From this NIH article:
"….the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training team, in collaboration with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, has developed the “Don’t Name Them” campaign. The campaign aims to curb media-induced imitational mass shootings and suggests minimizing naming and describing the individuals involved in mass shootings, limiting sensationalism, and refusing to broadcast shooter statements or videos. James Comey, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, followed a similar strategy in describing the 2016 shooting in Orlando:
You will notice that I am not using the killer’s name and I will try not to do that. Part of what motivates sick people to do this kind of thing is some twisted notion of fame or glory, and I don’t want to be part of that for the sake of the victims and their families, and so that other twisted minds don’t think that this is a path to fame and recognition.17
Adopting the recommendations of the World Health Organization and the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training team could help decrease the number of mass shootings in the United States.
Bolding is mine.
I think not discussing suicides at all is a very poor idea. It’s HOW they’re discussed that matters. That same article discusses WHO recommendations, which
include suggestions such as not sensationalizing suicide (e.g., suggesting an “epidemic”), avoiding prominent headlines, not suggesting that suicide is caused by any single factor such as depression, not repeating the story too frequently, not providing step-by-step descriptions of methods, limiting use of photographs and videos, and being particularly careful with celebrity suicides.
And as this excellent article points out, mass shootings are also typically suicides. I wondered why the Highland Park perp didn’t kill himself. I suspect he intended to do so after the Madison shootings he planned.
Thanks, especially for the point that “mass shootings are also typically suicides,” which hadn’t occurred to me—interesting food for thought.
Excellent point. I wasn’t using “shooter” to make connections with gun use, though. My problem with murderer, which is preferable to “shooter,” is that there are often so many people wounded, and inevitably the community is traumatized. “Terrorist”? But that has its own issues.
I’m switching to “perpetrator,” though that isn’t quite right, either.