Omaha Mall Shooting
Nine dead in a shooting inside the Omaha mall. I think it's the nicest mall in Omaha? If not, at least I do know that it's the one I like to go to, good stores, nice part of town, easy to get to. Actually... the only one I really know how to get to without consulting a map.
It hits too close to home. Not only was it in that mall, but in Von Maur, the store I found my mom's dress for my wedding at last year. It's a very classy store. Many of the accounts from people who were there start off with them saying they heard a couple booms but basically shrugged it off thinking someone was doing construction work upstairs, it wasn't until they heard the next ones that they realized someone had a gun.
The profile of this kid, the kid who finally got the attention he wanted, rings familiar to me. Parents divorced when he was young, in and out of foster homes, back to his dad's home and then nine months later back to foster or shelter care. In and out of some shelter facilities and then finally basically let out on his own, everyone agreed that it was about all they could do.
I volunteer for a board that reviews foster care cases in a smallish county in Iowa. We have teens who we review a lot. Sometimes they don't have family anymore, or what they do have barely counts as family. Some have been in the system for years. In and out of foster homes, or, more often, in and out of group homes that range from simply shelter to therapeutic homes. Many of them simply age out of the system, some after failing every group care system they went through (they're supposed to reach a certain level of functioning and behavior before they're able to leave, but if they never improve they eventually have to move on to somewhere else).
It's easy to say the system fails them, but I don't think that's the case. I truly believe the system is doing what it can. It's their parents that failed them.
My point is that while this whole incident is scary and sad, what is more scary and sad is that there are so many kids like this out there, everywhere. It could happen anywhere. I don't know how we stop it except by somehow making the media stop glorifying these killers - no names, no faces - just the facts. Then maybe, maybe, other kids won't get the same idea from watching the news.
posted by yellowgirl @ 9:34 PM
5 Comments:
i wonder if it is the attention they are looking for. because i would think if that's what he wanted he would not have killed himself in the end. i think it's anger and bitterness, because he's looking to punish everyone around him. but i am not a psychologist, i don't know any better. what i do wonder and this is far fetched, but i wonder why churches don't get involved more in the lives of these kinds of kids. i know that i have been having a lot of go at church, when i am part of it myself and i take the blame myself because i am confortably living in my boundries. but to me it feels like church has become a lovely social club for sunday morning for all of us who feel good about ourselves. church is such a powerful organisation and it is the mission of the church to look out for the widows and the orphans - where is it doing it? yes, there are a few small exceptions here and there but it's supposed to be the norm - that IS what God wants from us. i am getting more and more grossed out by what the church is and is not doing. i am a christian and i do follow Jesus but i think that we, the church leadership and the church goers, have totally missed it somewhere along the lines. we are not doing it the way we are supposed to be doing it.
I agree with you Rochelle. I believe the media sensationalizes this far too much, and I believe the real responsibility lies with the parents. Now, I understand that sometimes, no matter how good the parents are, there may still be a bad seed. However, I believe that those cases would be far and few between if the parents in today’s society really knew how to be parents, and cared about parenting. This is why I also get frustrated when people try to blame tragedies like this on things like TV, music, and video games. Anyway, that’s my piece.
Ags, you haven't heard all the stories probably but it's clear that he wanted the attention, as he said so in his suicide note - that he would 'be famous'.
So we go and give him what he wanted, and he's famous. Done. The next kid that has the idea looks at VA Tech and Columbine and this and goes 'hey, if I did that... I'd be famous too.' And guess what, they do, and they are. And how do we stop it? I don't know... because the only thing I DO know is that THIS tv news station isn't going to give up ratings by not giving all the information out there.
We just talked about this in school, the kid was a sociopath as many of the kids who do these things are. They are delusional and hallucinate and get pushed ove the edge. Omaha recently shut down the majority of the mental facilities where this kid needed to be, i read that he was turned away from a couple of mental facilities because he didn't have insurance. It's not the parents or the community, it is the kid who has the problem. He had many mental issues that were ignored and untreated and in extreme stress situations this is what happens.
Even though I'm in the "media," this is one of those things I think we do wrong. Obviously you have to report it and you have to say who he is. But this morning watching CNN and Fox and MSNBC all show the video and photos and play the 911 calls, I was thinking "Why do I need to see this?" Tonight I talked with a reporter at work about it and we both agreed it doesn't help viewers/readers better understand what happen. It doesn't "advance the story." But we run them because we can, which is ridiculous. I think when these things happen, we should say "Eight people were killed in mall shooting ... The people killed were..." And then talk in-depth about the victims, because let's be honest, who cares about the killer? And then give the info about the person who did it. Instead we focus on the bad guy, which is stupid.
I do think churches try to get involved with troubled kids, but I also think some of these kids are at church every Sunday and don't make it known they need help.
That said, parents are the first line of defense, and parents don't seem to be as involved in kids' lives anymore.
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