Chapter 9

Preventing School Shootings

Threat Assessment and Warning Signs

There is no one way to prevent school shootings. Most public discussion has focused on what can be done to stop an assailant once he or she has arrived at school: lockdown procedures, armed guards, and so on. These practices can minimize the damage a shooter inflicts, but they are emergency-response procedures, not prevention. For example, Virginia Tech had armed campus police, Columbine High School had an armed security guard, and Red Lake High School had an armed guard and metal detector. Clearly, physical security measures cannot be counted on to stop rampage attacks.

Many schools attempt to restrict access to their buildings in order to keep out strangers. It should never be assumed, however, that an attacker can be kept out. At Sandy Hook Elementary School, for instance, Adam Lanza simply shot out a window and entered the school. It is important to note that keeping strangers out of the school does not guarantee safety. Some shooters gunned down children as they arrived at school, while they played at recess, or upon dismissal. A school shooting does not always happen inside the building.

Of course, shooters usually attack schools they are attending, so unless they are visibly armed, there is no reason to keep them out of the building. A more proactive approach to prevention is to keep people from reaching the point where taking a gun to school seems like a good idea. Within schools, this can take the form of promoting a positive environment, minimizing peer harassment, and creating a physically and emotionally safe space. At the broader societal level, it means improving child-protective services to minimize child abuse and its damaging effects, as well as expanding mental health services to treat people long before they reach the point of violence.

Then, of course, there is the issue of access to firearms. The key here, at least as it applies to youths, is to limit access to guns within their own homes or those of friends and relatives. All too often secondary school shooters obtained firearms at home. In addition, family members can keep impaired adults from using firearms. For example, despite his mental health problems, Adam Lanza’s mother trained him to use firearms and kept weapons accessible in the home.^[1] Failure to secure the guns cost not only her own life but those of twenty-six others. This is not about gun control, but about people doing a better job of securing their firearms.

The best method of preventing school shootings, however, is through threat assessment. This means identifying potential shooters before they show up at schools armed and with an urge to kill. Threat assessment involves knowing the warning signs of potential violence, having teams of school personnel who are trained to evaluate threats of violence, and taking whatever action is necessary to maintain safety. Before discussing threat assessment and warning signs, a few preliminary comments are in order.

THE MANY FACES OF SCHOOL SHOOTERS

Recognizing the diversity of school shooters is important for prevention. If we are confined by the belief that shooters are white males, we may miss the warning signs of those who don’t fit this stereotype. We need to know that rampage shooters can come from any racial or ethnic background. And though the vast majority of school shooters are male, female students who exhibit warning signs of violence need to be taken just as seriously as male students.

School shooters are often thought to be odd kids on the periphery of their peer groups who are depressed, unathletic, harassed, uninvolved at school, and disconnected from their communities. This is a dangerous assumption. For example, Mitchell Johnson had friends, dated several girls, played on the school’s football, baseball, and basketball teams, and sang in a church choir that performed for the elderly. Similarly, Andrew Golden had friends, dated at least one girl, played trumpet in the school band, raced go-karts, played baseball, and was a mischievous class clown.

Though Eric Harris has been portrayed as an ostracized loner, he had many friends, dated girls, played sports, and was a successful student. On his report card three teachers indicated he exhibited a “positive attitude and good cooperation,” and one added that he showed “strong interest and participation.”^[2] On a progress report, one teacher wrote, “Eric is doing awesome!”^[3] What did Harris’s teachers see when they looked at him? A bright, eager student who was a pleasure to have in class. If we think all shooters look like Adam Lanza, we will miss the warning signs in an Eric Harris.

Contrary to expectations, the smallest, least intimidating kids may be the most dangerous. Some shooters were large and scary, such as surly Jason Hoffman. Very often, however, students who seemed least likely to be violent have gone on rampages. Students who are unusually small or physically undeveloped may be the most likely to use guns to establish a sense of power.

It is essential that we resist stereotyping school shooters. As long as we believe that students do not pose a risk because they have friends, play sports, are too small to hurt anyone, or are not white males, we will put ourselves and our communities at risk.

THREAT ASSESSMENT

The best way for schools to prevent rampage attacks is to have threat assessment teams to evaluate and respond to potential threats of violence. Threat assessment is for preventing not just rampage attacks but also any school-related violence. The details of setting up such teams are beyond the scope of this book, but a few comments will be made.

Many students make threats with no intention to hurt anyone. For instance, a student who feels insulted may threaten, “If you say that again, I’m going to kill you.” Maybe he means this literally, but in most cases, he doesn’t. The job of a threat assessment team is to conduct an investigation to distinguish real threats from false alarms. What does this involve? As stated by Dr. Brian Van Brunt in his book Ending Campus Violence: New Approaches to Prevention, threat assessment “involves viewing the student from multiple perspectives, collecting information about their past academic, social, and legal history, understanding their family of origin, how they interact with others, their access to lethal means and their interactions with other students, faculty, and staff.”^[4]

Who serves on threat assessment teams? Drs. Dewey Cornell and Peter Sheras address this issue in their book, Guidelines for Responding to Student Threats of Violence. They advise that secondary school threat assessment teams should include the principal or assistant principal, a school resource officer, a school psychologist or social worker, and a school counselor.^[5] Not every school has all these professionals, so the team membership will vary.

In higher education the membership primarily includes the dean of students or vice-president of student affairs, campus law enforcement, and the counseling center director. Additional members can represent residential life, academic affairs, health services, or legal counsel.^[6]

All school personnel need to be trained to recognize warning signs of potential violence so they know when to alert the threat assessment team. Teachers, administrators, and guidance counselors, office workers, cafeteria staff, and maintenance workers—all are on the front line of violence prevention.

Most importantly, students must be trained to recognize and report warning signs of potential violence. As emphasized in an FBI report by Dr. Mary Ellen O’Toole, “The School Shooter: A Threat Assessment Perspective,” “students are often in the best position to see and hear signs or cues of potential violence, and training should stress that ignoring those cues or remaining silent can be dangerous for themselves as well as others. Training should also confront the common teenage ‘code of silence’ and students’ reluctance to be branded as a ‘snitch’ or to violate a friend’s confidence.”^[7] All too often, students have observed warning signs without reporting them. On the positive side, most foiled attacks have been due to students communicating their concerns.

WHAT ARE THE WARNING SIGNS?

Most school shooters leave a trail of warning signs that are either not noticed or not responded to. As noted by Dr. James Alan Fox and Harvey Burstein in their book Violence and Security on Campus: From Preschool through College, “in the aftermath of virtually any high-profile episode of school violence, much of the focus (and finger-pointing) surrounds the warning signs that were reportedly missed or ignored by parents, teachers, peers, and law enforcement officials.”^[8]

What constitutes a potential warning sign of violence? Warning signs do not relate to students’ clothing, video games, musical preferences, or other aspects of their lifestyles. Warning signs are actions that constitute attack-related behaviors. These are behaviors related to preparing a rampage: stockpiling weapons, diagramming the school, recording plans, making a hit list, and so on.

A key aspect of attack-related behavior is leakage—leaking plans to other people. Leakage is important because it is how people are most likely to learn about a perpetrator’s intentions. Leakage takes many forms and can be direct or indirect. Ironically, even the clearest leakage may fail to generate an intervention.

Forms of Leakage

Students often miss obvious warning signs because they do not take them seriously. For instance, Michael Carneal told students “he was gonna come to school and start shooting people.”^[9] Standing on a cafeteria table, Andrew Golden announced, “You’re all going to die.”^[10] Mitchell Johnson told peers, “Tomorrow you will find out if you live or die.”^[11]

Why, despite clear threats, did nobody intervene? First, people may have believed the students were too young to commit murder. Second, sometimes the students making the threats were considered weird and were known for saying strange things. Third, sometimes shooters made direct threats but, when questioned by friends, denied actual intent. Finally, people may assume that anyone intending to commit mass murder won’t announce it publicly. This is where school shooters differ from other killers, often leaving a long trail of leakage.

Students sometimes attempt to recruit peers to join the attack. Andrew Golden convinced Mitchell Johnson to be his partner. That same year, Andrew Wurst tried to recruit a friend but was turned down. Unfortunately, the friend did not notify adults about Wurst’s plans. A better outcome occurred in 2008 when Dillon Cossey asked a friend to join his attack. The friend told authorities, who arrested Cossey and foiled a potential rampage.

Occasionally, shooters asked friends to provide supplies for their attacks. Barry Loukaitis wanted ammunition; Eric Harris asked for guns. Though, as in these cases, peers may not know why they wanted weapons, attempts to illegally obtain weapons should raise red flags.

Some shooters wanted their friends to be safe, warning them to avoid school on a particular day. Michael Carneal, for example, told friends to stay away from school on the Monday after Thanksgiving. If someone had spoken up, his rampage that day might have been prevented.

Sometimes students communicate their plans less directly, leaking their intentions by praising other school shootings. They may refer to a rampage as “cool” or say, “Somebody should do that here.” Andrew Wurst made such comments about Golden and Johnson’s shooting. A month later, Wurst carried out his own attack. Kip Kinkel was similarly fascinated by the Jonesboro shooting, saying somebody should do that at his school. Two months later, he went on his rampage.

Making a pilgrimage to the site of a school shooting shows intense admiration. Matti Saari was fascinated by Pekka-Eric Auvinen’s attack; he traveled to Jokela, took photographs of Auvinen’s school, and ordered guns from the shop where Auvinen had bought his weapons. Similarly, Alvaro Castillo was so obsessed with Columbine that he convinced his mother to take him from their North Carolina home to see the Colorado school, Harris’s home, and the pizzeria where Harris had worked. Pilgrimages like these are warning signs.

School Assignments

Shooters sometimes foreshadowed their attacks through school assignments. This is another form of leakage. For example, Kip Kinkel, who told peers he wanted to be the next Unabomber, gave an oral report on how to make bombs. Though his attack did not involve bombs, he left numerous explosives in his home. Furthermore, when asked to write about love at first sight, Kinkel wrote an ominous essay that included the following sentences: “That is why you go to a pawn shop and buy an AR-15 because you are going to execute every last mother fucking one of you” and “My firearms will be the only things to fight my isolation.”^[12] The entire essay is strange and disturbing, especially considering it was supposed to be about love.

At least five shooters wrote essays about school shootings, including how to prevent them—Eric Harris, Seung Hui Cho, Pekka-Eric Auvinen, Steven Kazmierczak, and Tim Kretschmer. Of course, students may write about rampage attacks without being at risk for violence. If a student who writes on this topic, however, shows other warning signs, the interest in school shootings may not be innocent and should be investigated.

Apart from nonfiction essays on school shootings, other assignments foreshadowed future violence. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold made a film for their video-production class called The Trench Coat Mafia: Hitmen for Hire. The film portrays Harris and Klebold as hit men who are hired by a student who is picked on. They come to school and gun down the bullies. Later, Klebold wrote a story about a man killing students. Likewise, Michael Carneal wrote about a boy who goes on a rampage against “preps.” There is no way of knowing how many students write stories like Carneal’s and Klebold’s without committing school shootings. Nonetheless, any story in which students murder other students should raise concern.

Though there is no sure way to predict violence based on fictional writings, several aspects of Klebold’s and Carneal’s stories are disturbing. First, both writers identified with the killer. Klebold described the killer as left-handed, 6’4”, and wearing a black trench coat. Klebold was left-handed, approximately 6’4”, and wore a black trench coat. In Carneal’s story, the killer is named Michael, just like Carneal himself. In addition, the names of murdered students in the story were the names of actual students in his school, giving the story a sense of imminent danger.

Beyond identifying with him, Klebold wrote about the killer with admiration—almost worship. “If I could face an emotion of god,” he wrote, “it would have looked like the man. I not only saw in his face, but also felt emanating from him power, complacence, closure, and godliness. The man smiled, and in that instant, thru no endeavor of my own, I understood his actions.”^[13] Furthermore, both boys’ stories revel in brutal violence. Carneal’s is particularly graphic and sadistic. In a passage about killing five students, he wrote, “The first one he crucified on a metal cross that had been heated up to a glowing red temperature. . . . The third one he heated up a drill bit and drilled it into one of his eyes.”^[14] The sadistic nature of the violence may help to distinguish this paper from typical student writings.

Finally, Carneal’s paper contains bizarre elements that suggest disorganized thinking. For example, he wrote, “Michael’s Mom’s birthday was the next day so he decided to get a present from the ‘Your Mom Has a Birthday Only When There’s a Riot’ store.”^[15] Other elements of the story are illogical or bizarre, suggesting cognitive disorganization, a symptom of schizophrenia. When evidence of psychosis occurs alongside warning signs of violence, a risk assessment and a mental health evaluation are important.

Warning Signs at Home

Some parents of school shooters were aware of their children’s disturbing behavior but did not follow through effectively. For example, Kip Kinkel’s parents knew he was obsessed with guns and knives, was building bombs, and was explosively angry and severely depressed. If they had searched his room after finding his bomb-making materials, they might have found his journal documenting his suicidal anguish and homicidal rage.

Alvaro Castillo’s parents knew he was obsessed with Harris’s attack (his mother drove him on his “pilgrimage”). They knew he had planned to kill himself on the seventh anniversary of Columbine. They knew he had significant mental health issues and was obsessed with his firearms. Taken together, this was a dangerous combination.

Parents need to respond to warning signs that their children may become violent. Sadly, Kinkel’s parents and Castillo’s father were among the murdered. Their failure to act cost them their lives.

Warning Signs Online

Several perpetrators posted text, photographs, or videos online that foreshadowed their upcoming attacks. As previously noted, one might doubt that someone would publicize an upcoming killing spree, yet shooters have done just that. Eric Harris posted explicit homicidal rants, including, “God I can’t wait till I can kill you people. . . . I don’t care if I live or die in the shootout, all I want to do is kill and injure as many of you pricks as I can.”^[16] He even named a student he wanted to kill.

Finnish shooters Pekka-Eric Auvinen and Matti Saari each posted online videos. Auvinen showed himself shooting a gun and praised Harris and Klebold, Timothy McVeigh, and the Unabomber. His manifesto echoed and quoted Harris. Notably, Auvinen even announced his intention to carry out a rampage, naming his school and the date of the attack. Unfortunately, these details were posted the morning of his rampage. Because explicit online messages may be posted with little time to spare, an immediate response is imperative.

Like Auvinen, Saari posted online clips of himself shooting a gun and publicized that his favorite videos were about Columbine. In one video he said, “You will die next” and fired a series of shots.^[17] These videos came to the attention of police, who interviewed him. Saari denied violent intent and was allowed to keep his gun. The next day he went on his rampage.

Sudden Purchase of Firearms

Leakage is just one type of attack-related behavior. Other actions often indicate a risk of violence. For example, several shooters who had conflicts with their universities bought firearms and began practicing with them months before their rampages. This is notable because these shooters had no prior histories of hunting or target shooting. Firearm purchases in the midst of significant conflict with schools, particularly if other warning signs are present, could indicate impending danger. In hindsight, this behavior occurred in the following cases:

·  Never a hunter or shooter for sport, Gang Lu bought a gun and began target practice six months before his attack. This was around the time he learned he did not win the prize for the best dissertation.

·  Peter Odighizuwa had no history of firearm use but bought a gun and began training six months before his attack.

·  Two months before his rampage, Seung Hui Cho became a first-time gun owner and went to a target range.

·  Valery Fabrikant told university colleagues he had applied for a permit to carry a concealed weapon. Two months later he attacked.

How should friends, colleagues, or relatives respond when people who are unstable and bitterly angry toward their schools become first-time gun owners? They should report their concerns to school administrators or law enforcement officials.

* * *

Preventing violence is difficult. Students may make threats or display warning signs without any intention to commit violence. Any one behavior does not prove that an attack is imminent. The behaviors cited here do not necessarily predict impending violence. They are signals, however, that there may be a risk and that investigation is necessary.

SCHOOL EMPLOYEES

Three of the shooters in my sample were school employees, including two professors—Valery Fabrikant and Amy Bishop. Despite their disturbing behavior and threats, no preventive actions were taken. Why? Perhaps what John Cowan referred to as the “tolerance for eccentricity” in academia inhibited people from taking action.^[18] For example, when an administrator voiced reservations about Fabrikant’s recommended promotion due to his problematic behavior, the chair of the department commented, “I was always under the impression that we took decisions on promotions, reappointments, and salary . . . increases purely on the basis of scholarly achievements and academic excellence rather than on the individual’s behavior. . . . I hope my understanding is still valid.”^[19]

Cowan’s report about Fabrikant noted that the concept of academic freedom may be mistakenly interpreted to mean the total absence of restraints on faculty behavior. He commented, however, “One extension of the concept I have yet to come to terms with,” which “is the ‘academic freedom’ to be brutish and miserable to colleagues and students. . . . There is no academic freedom to harass. There is no academic freedom to be disruptive. There is no academic freedom to intimidate.”^[20]

Cowan also commented on the inhibitory effect of university hierarchies, administrators’ lack of clarity about their authority, and hesitation in using it. “When faced with the challenge of a ‘bad’ colleague, whose behavior is disruptive, threatening, or merely unethical,” he writes, “they do not in general know what their powers are, and are massively risk-averse when it comes to exercising those powers, even when they are aware of them.”^[21]

Cowan wrote this in 1994. Since then, multiple campus shootings, particularly the massacre at Virginia Tech, have made campus safety a much greater priority. Institutions of higher education are presumably more responsive to threats of violence than they were twenty years ago. Nonetheless, Amy Bishop’s attack in 2010 shows that even in the face of disturbing and threatening behavior a university can still fail to respond effectively.

In addition, Edward Allaway was a university employee who went on a rampage. Though he did not exhibit the same warning signs as Fabrikant and Bishop, his case further highlights the need for colleges and universities to respond to concerns about potentially dangerous employees by referring them to their threat assessment or behavioral intervention teams. Unfortunately, as noted by Gregory Eells, “Many campuses have teams that focus only on student behavior and do not include a more comprehensive approach to campus safety that includes a review of troubling behavior from faculty and staff.”^[22]

ABERRANT ATTACKS

Preventing aberrant attacks is particularly difficult because schools are unaware that the perpetrators exist. In these cases, the burden of prevention falls more heavily on the potential shooters’ family and friends. These are the cases in which physical security measures take on the greatest importance. Even if the attacks cannot be foreseen and prevented, solid safety procedures and prompt emergency response may minimize casualties.

Schools are not completely helpless to prevent violence from outsiders. Alert systems that notify school officials whenever the name of their school appears online may catch leakage on the Internet, particularly when accompanied by other content that indicates potential danger. Dr. Brian Van Brunt notes that “One new trend being used in threat assessment is the process of data mining, or knowledge discovery, on social media sites and the Internet. They search for key words or phrases that indicate a communicated threat to an individual or location.”^[23]

Also, some aberrant adult shooters spent time at or around the schools they eventually attacked. For example, less than two weeks before his rampage at Cleveland Elementary School, Patrick Purdy was seen sitting in his car behind the school. A few days later, he talked with a janitor inside a middle school and was seen walking back and forth between the middle school and high school. Two days later, he was again spotted.^[24]

Purdy was not the only aberrant adult shooter to scope out the venue for his attack:

·  Marc Lépine was captured on video at the École Polytechnique at least seven times in the two months before his attack.^[25]

·  Kimveer Gill was captured on video near Dawson College a month prior to his rampage.^[26]

·  Bruco Eastwood entered Deer Creek Middle School, chatted with teachers, left the building, and began shooting students as they exited the school.^[27]

These examples show that it is crucial for school personnel to watch for people who have no business at the school. This is particularly relevant for primary and secondary schools. The openness and size of colleges and universities may make it difficult to identify someone who does not belong on campus. Nonetheless, anyone who causes suspicion should be reported to the administration, security, or the police.

THE UNPREDICTABILITY OF VICTIM SELECTION

Threat assessment procedures dictate that specific people who are threatened should be notified and kept safe from the potential perpetrator. School shooters, however, sometimes fantasized about killing—or threatened to kill—one person but ended up choosing other victims instead.

For instance, Charles Whitman made a comment about killing his father, whom he reportedly hated. He did not, however, kill his father but instead murdered his wife and mother, both of whom he allegedly loved. He then went on a rampage, shooting random people. Robert Poulin and Andrew Wurst both thought about killing their parents. Neither one did so; they killed other people. Kip Kinkel fantasized about killing a boy who starred on the football team and dated the girl he had a crush on. Kinkel made no effort to kill him but instead shot his parents and random students.

The night before his attack, Jamie Rouse told a friend “he was going to kill a girl at school, the principal, a coach, and a state trooper who had given him two speeding tickets.”^[28] Rouse, however, targeted none of these people. Instead, he shot teachers he had no reason to dislike. Eric Harris wrote about killing and torturing specific people but then tried to blow up the school and kill as many people as possible.

Simply keeping the apparent intended victim safe does not mean that danger has been averted; people with enough rage to kill may lash out in unexpected directions.

IMMEDIATE AFTERMATH

When prevention efforts failed and attacks occurred, how did they end? What situations confronted school personnel and first responders? The scenarios have been remarkably varied.

Most commonly, the shooter committed suicide at the school. This was not always straightforward, however. Though many shooters turned their guns on themselves, about 30 percent of those who killed themselves at the school first exchanged gunfire with security or police. Though several shooters may have wanted to be killed by police—“suicide by cop”—only Charles Whitman died in this manner. Jason Hoffman reportedly sought suicide by cop; he was hit by gunfire but survived. He later took his life in jail.

Many shooters, however, had no desire to die. In fact, several took hostages. Eric Houston, Barry Loukaitis, and Gary Scott Pennington appeared to plan this in advance. Whereas Houston and Pennington surrendered, Loukaitis’s gun was ripped from his grasp and he was apprehended. Valery Fabrikant also took hostages, but it is unknown whether this was part of his original plan. He, too, was overpowered and apprehended.

Two shooters called the police to turn themselves in. Wayne Lo did this while still on campus; Edward Allaway fled campus and called the police from a nearby hotel. Both shooters surrendered peacefully to the police. Other shooters, such as Amy Bishop and T. J. Lane, fled the scene and were arrested nearby, offering no resistance. Andrew Golden and Mitchell Johnson attempted to flee but were intercepted and apprehended by police. Luke Woodham also attempted to escape, but his car got stuck in mud and he was apprehended at gunpoint by the assistant principal.

Two shooters escaped from the schools they attacked and eluded the police long enough to do further damage. Laurie Dann drove off, eventually leaving her car and fleeing on foot. She entered a house, held the residents hostage, and shot and wounded one of them. When officers surrounded the house, Dann killed herself. Tim Kretschmer was on the run for three hours; he hijacked a vehicle, forcing a man to drive as he continued to shoot people. Kretschmer was wounded twice by police before he ended his life.

Not only do first responders need to be prepared for any course of action on the part of the perpetrators, they also need to be prepared for the challenges presented by different shooters and their chosen weapons. Although the term school shooters may conjure up images of teenagers, one cannot assume the perpetrator is a student. At Dunblane Primary School, Sandy Hook Elementary School, and the Amish schoolhouse in West Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, the victims were young children, but the perpetrators were adults. In fact, some shooters have been ex-military marksmen. First responders might encounter well-trained gunmen with high-powered weapons.

School shooters were sometimes armed with more than guns. A dangerous situation occurred when Kip Kinkel was at the police station after his arrest. Kinkel’s guns had been confiscated, but he had a knife hidden on his person. When the detective left the room briefly and then returned, Kinkel lunged at him with his knife. Though in this instance the detective subdued Kinkel with mace, the failure to fully search and disarm a perpetrator could have deadly consequences.

Some shooters were also arsonists—Laurie Dann, Pekka-Eric Auvinen, and Matti Saari—so first responders need to be prepared to encounter fires. Though not an arsonist, Sebastian Bosse—a German shooter not covered in this book—set off smoke grenades in the school; sixteen police officers were treated for smoke inhalation.

Bosse also had three bombs strapped to his body, five in his backpack, and four in his car. Similarly, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold used bombs in the school and set explosives in their cars to go off after their attacks. Kip Kinkel left behind a house full of explosives. The neighborhood had to be evacuated while a bomb squad cleared the home. Police have to proceed with caution in handling the body of the perpetrator, as well as the perpetrator’s vehicle and other possessions, due to the possibility of explosives.

First responders need to be prepared for all potential outcomes. They might be faced with a hostage situation, a military-trained sniper, raging fires, or explosives. Perpetrators might surrender peacefully or shoot at the police. They may fight to the death or attempt to escape. Once on the run, some might turn themselves in, and others may continue their rampage. School shooters exhibit remarkable diversity; their behavior when confronted by law enforcement cannot be predicted.

1.

Matthew Lysiak, Newtown: An American Tragedy (New York: Gallery, 2013).

2.

Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, “Columbine Documents: JC-001-025923 through JC-001-026859” (Jefferson County, CO: Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, n.d.), 26,317, 26,323, 26,331, 26,325, available online at http://www.schoolshooters.info.

3.

Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, “Eric Harris’s Diversion Documents,” n.d., 55, available online at http://www.schoolshooters.info.

4.

Brian Van Brunt, Ending Campus Violence: New Approaches to Prevention (New York: Routledge, 2012), xiv.

5.

Dewey Cornell and Peter Sheras, Guidelines for Responding to Student Threats of Violence (Boston: Sopris West, 2006), 13–15.

6.

Van Brunt, Ending Campus Violence, 54–55.

7.

Mary Ellen O’Toole, “The School Shooter: A Threat Assessment Perspective” (Quantico, VA: FBI Academy, 2000), 32, http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/school-shooter.

8.

James Alan Fox and Harvey Burstein, Violence and Security on Campus: From Preschool Through College (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2010), 68.

9.

Jim Adams and James Malone, “Outsider’s Destructive Behavior Spiraled into Violence, Courier-Journal (Louisville), March 18, 1999, 17A.

10.

Katherine Newman, Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings (New York: Basic Books, 2004), 159.

11.

Nadya Labi, “The Hunter and the Choirboy,” Time Magazine, April 6, 1998, available online at http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,138881,00.html.

12.

Joseph A. Lieberman, School Shootings (New York: Citadel, 2008), 94–5.

13.

Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, “Columbine Documents: 10,001–10,937,” 10,468.

14.

Newman, Rampage, 94.

15.

Newman, Rampage, 94.

16.

Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, “Columbine Documents: 10,001–10,937,” 10,415.

17.

David Charter, “Finnish Gunman Matti Saari Burnt Bodies after Massacre, TimesOnline (UK), September 24, 2008, available online at http://archive.today/KLTAH.

18.

John Scott Cowan, “Lessons from the Fabrikant File: A Report to the Board of Governors of Concordia University” (Montreal, Can. January 6, 1994), 5, available online at http://archives.concordia.ca/sites/default/files/uploaded-documents/pages/2011/07/26/Cowan_report.pdf.

19.

Morris Wolfe, “Dr. Fabrikant’s Solution,” Essays: New and Selected, n.d., http://www.grubstreetbooks.ca/essays/fabrikant.html.

20.

Cowan, “Lessons from the Fabrikant File,” 7.

21.

Cowan, “Lessons from the Fabrikant File,” 5.

22.

Van Brunt, Ending Campus Violence, 175.

23.

Van Brunt, Ending Campus Violence, 285.

24.

Nelson Kempsky, Gary A. Binkerd, Phil Yee, Allen Benitez, and Richard Yarvis, “A Report to Attorney General John K. Van de Kamp on Patrick Edward Purdy and the Cleveland School Killings” (California: Department of Justice, 1989), 6, available online at http://www.schoolshooters.info.

25.

Monique Lépine and Harold Gagné, Aftermath: The Mother of Marc Lépine Tells the Story of Her Life before and after the Montreal Massacre, trans. Diana Halfpenny (Toronto: Viking, 2008), 191.

26.

“Gill Bought Guns from Club Linked to Fabrikant,” Toronto Star, September 15, 2006.

27.

Catherine Tsai and P. Solomon Banda, “Police: Colorado Gunman Entered the School Earlier,” Associated Press, February 25, 2010, available online at http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2010/feb/25/police-colorado-gunman-entered-school-earlier/.

28.

Richard Meyer, “When the Shooting Stops,” Los Angeles Times, April 22, 2000, http://articles.latimes.com/2000/apr/22/news/ss-24169.