The University of Alberta Triple Homicide

The BBQ Pit
1

I awoke at 3 am that morning, tickled at first because my new tablet and news app was giving breaking news. New technology is truly amazing I thought as I focused and refocused my eyes at the words in the screen, short and to the point… 3 people were gunned down on my Cities University Campus.

This was on June 13th and it’s shock sent ripples through the city and the country not unlike but in its own way deeper than our Countries newest celebrity: Luka Magnotta.

I am not entirely sure why this story still brings tears to my eyes.
I never knew the victims. I never knew the killer… hell, I have only walked across that campus. But it hit me emotionally unlike every other murder killing rape disaster has…ever.
Maybe it was the fact that it was at the fucking U of A. Maybe it was because he was just like us, an Albertan, a kid some average joe I have interacted with hundreds of times. Maybe it was the age of him and his victims. The woman Michelle is the one that makes me the angriest.
What I can’t help but think is that maybe, just maybe this guy was a self diagnosed martyr. You read about his favorite game Gears of war, his contradictory Facebook and plenty of fish profiles, his quotations from Heath Ledgers portrayal of The Joker, and I think he has had these bi-polar thoughts for sometime. He doesn’t sound unlike a thousand other men I have met and scariest of all myself. He just had the means to act, but not the foresight to stop.
Killing three people and attempting to kill a 4th was totally unnecessary to steal a meager 330k and not even close to being worthwhile.
He was new to the job and as far as we know had no illregard to his coworkers who were just trying to live.
He could never get away, and I think he knew that.
He had a half asked attempt to flee and has not put up a fight since being captured almost like this was “All part of the plan.”
At this point I have nothing to say to him, nor any condolences to the victims families because nothing ever said or done will ever make a difference.
Travis, when I see you I see myself at a younger weaker time, and maybe deep down that’s what makes me the saddest. I am so so sorry for the victims families and I am to numb to want revenge or justice. I am not even sure I care to hear the reasons behind your actions. I just know that you have impacted me and hundreds if not thousands of people who can not go back to the way things are. I think of the Joker, like a dog chasing cars who wouldn’t know what to do if he caught one and I wonder if you think you were going to be that guy, that guy who shocked this small city by being the one who just murdered 3 people without any provocation.The ‘one’ who will change everything.

You are not the Joker, Travis. You are a damned fool who had unfounded opinions about himself and the world leading to your botched attempt at crime.
Why did you LOCK THE FUCKING SECURITY DOOR Trapping the one guard who lay screaming for help and dying for 15 minutes while the police desperately tried to break the glass. You had no fucking reason to kill these people, these fathers and newly weds these Albertans. You are beyond stupid and fucked up royally.
I want to forget your name and what you did and go back to pretend something so pointless could never ever happen.

2

I had not heard about this yet. Here’s a link for anyone else who may have missed it.

3

The whole thing struck me as incredibly sad and pointless. The good people killed, his strange social media postings, and his total incompetence at the heist. For some reason I think I’d feel better if he’d been a one-man Oceans 11, instead of driving the van back to the depot to pick up his truck to try to cross the US border with no passport where he could presumably spend his Canadian cash unobtrusively. :rolleyes:

4

My first few weeks at the University of Florida was when serial killer Danny Rollingkilled five UF students in 1990. Yeah, I learned a lot that year, which is why this quote from the director of Grizzly Man resonates so strongly with me:

“I believe the common character of the universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility, and murder.” – Werner Herzog.

In 2010 I lost a work acquaintance to a homicidal, selfish piece of shit similar to Rolling and this Travis clown. Of course, he had a promising career, a loving wife and young children, just like several other dead friends of mine, while my biggest problem is usually that there’s nothing good on TV tonight. I’m still not sure how to process their deaths. I’m not religious, but I try to be a positive person. Still, it’s harder every day to not give in to Mr. Herzog’s point of view entirely (“better thee than me”). All this is cold comfort, but I guess I’m trying to say I empathize. Things like this highlight to me how precious family/friends/hell, anything that brings us happiness is. Whether that’s the exception or the rule of the Universe is something we all have to decide for ourselves.

5

I attend the U of A, and it still hasn’t sunk in for me. I truly haven’t had an emotional reaction to it (yet). Maybe it’s because I haven’t been back to campus since the afternoon after the shootings (it was finals at the time, and it’s between the spring and summer semesters now). It just doesn’t seem like a thing that would happen there. Sometimes I try to imagine the crime scene at HUB, but it just feels like a ludicrous hypothetical, like imagining a herd of zebras stampeding across campus. They’re real things, but they don’t go together.

6

<never mind>

7

Thank you Rachel, I was originally going to put that first but after giving it a last read threw I just got teary again and just submitted

8

I’m in Calgary. I was shocked by this as well, and followed the story closely - very happy he was captured. I feel for the families and friends, and wonder what the outcome of the trial will be. Very sad.