I could say it’s preposterously more complicated than the stupid and reckless parents just getting blindsided by this act. As if it were an out of the blue notion their boy hates his life. Joy comes from gaming guns and ? For he must hate his life to go down that road.
That’s not the slightest bit unlikely.
Ten million teenaged boys are into gaming, guns and whatever the question mark means.
Since he’s being tried as an adult the way the law wound typically handle a 15 year old without available parents (appoint a Guardian Ad Litem) may not be applicable here.
The issue of hiring a lawyer isn’t a concern, though. He will have an appointed public defender. But, he and that person will, I presume, have to collectively decide on the big legal issues in his case (such as whether to plead guilty) without any parental advice.
Perhaps he might have some other close family member who the court could allow to serve as a family connection. I don’t know.
As mentioned earlier, the thing that’s most notable for me was that with their troubled son in custody, they chose to run… (I mean, even if in your delusions you believe that “They” will be coming after you because you were identified… just leaving him at the mercy of the system?)
Yeah, between that and the “don’t get caught” it suggests they may have felt this was the school authorities being overreactive ZT snowflakes, that of course an adolescent male would have violent fantasies and say he hates his life, it’ll blow off.
Then the news break and it’s “OMG that was for real…”
(And I am mildly embarassed to admit, I found myself wondering whether they would have felt a cause for concern if his notebook had drawings and notes about, oh, wanting to be a princess…)
Ethan, Don’t do it
Imo. It was a request, Ethan don’t kill yourself. It already happened.
This was my thought too. The “don’t do it” was not to kill himself, not to not shoot the place up; that was already done
I dunno. That theory makes sense in a way, but it’s still puzzling. How, at 1:22, mere minutes after the shooting began, did she know he was done shooting others? With such a vague message, how could Ethan have known what she meant?
Don’t do it (let them catch you)
Don’t do it (surrender the gun to police)
Don’t do it (shoot anyone else)
Don’t do it (shoot yourself)
It’s so cryptic, and she didn’t follow it up with any other concerned texts, right?
Yes, that is what I think too. Mom was telling him not to off himself.
Getting no parental advice at all is probably better advice than whatever these idiots would be giving him.
^ Absolutely agree.
I wonder if giving him a firearm was a warped form of therapy (something that would give him a feeling of being in control over his own life). As it turned out, it seems to have given him a feeling of being in control over the lives of others. Whatever their rationale — if any — they are, IMHO, largely responsible for the tragedy.
They can afford a new gun for their murderous spawn, but
Come to think of it, this is probably especially true in this case, because the kid’s best defense is probably to blame the parents for everything: “Oh, he’s just an impressionable child (who should not be tried as an adult); he only did this because his parents drove him to it; please be merciful to this poor child”. Which is not, of course, a defense that his parents would advise him to pursue.
I do wonder what all is going to come up when people start digging into his family life.
Here’s something I haven’t seen in any reports, or maybe I just missed it:
The kid is apparently disturbed, and maybe has been for a long time. The message he drew with “the thoughts won’t stop, help me” is particularly troublesome.
So: Did either the parents or the school know, long before this, how troubled he was? It’s hard to imagine that his mental trouble came on suddenly just now, and it’s hard to imagine that his parents would not have known for a long time. The school, maybe.
So has there been anything in the news about this angle?
Obviously, nobody sane knew that he was THIS troubled.
But yeah, the school probably knew that he wasn’t all right.
Is he going to get some kind of insanity defense? Does it seem like he might really be a legitimate case for that?
If so, he would be committed to a mental hospital for an indefinite time. Those are commonly described as being worse than prison.
If he wins on an insanity defense (typically a very very heavy lift, as I understand it) then there’s an interesting interplay with the charges against the parents. In that situation they would be in really really deep shit, even deeper than they probably are already. “Your kid was so obviously mentally disturbed that a jury has judged him insane, and instead of seeking treatment for him, you bought him a handgun for Christmas?”
There are two issues to be considered. One is whether he is competent to stand trial. To be competent, he will have to be able to talk to his lawyers and understand what is going on.
The other issue is whether he’d have, as you said, an insanity defense. Note that the issue will not be whether he had mental problems - this seems obvious at this point, and would become relevant at sentencing after he was found guilty - but whether his mental problems prevented him from understanding that what he did was wrong. Based on the writings I’ve seen referenced, I think he fully knew that shooting other people was wrong.
As I said, though, I can see this becoming a consideration at sentencing. Not that he wouldn’t go to prison, but he might end up in some sort of psych ward prison.
A regular Bohemian Rhapsody.
Only works on the queen’s bench.