Page One Today / School Shootings (1997-2008)

A gunman has killed 10 people at a college in the town of Kauhajoki in Finland before shooting himself and later dying in hospital.

Media reports named the gunman as Matti Juhani Saari, 22, a trainee chef at the vocational college.

The suspect posted a video of himself on the internet last week firing a gun.

As a result of this, police interviewed him on Monday but decided they did not have enough evidence to revoke his licence, the interior minister said.

The minister, Anne Holmlund, said an investigation would now try to determine whether mistakes were made.

Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen said this was a “tragic day” for Finland.

The attack echoed a shooting spree at a Finnish school last year which left nine dead, including the gunman, who had also posted an internet video.
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April 16, 2008: An excerpt from an editorial in The Roanoke Times:

Today we remember lives lost at Tech
Tomorrow we look to a future in which remembering is less painful.

It’s spring, the season of new beginnings, a time to look forward. Warmer days, budding daffodils and chirping birds all herald a rapidly approaching summer.

This spring, however, we look back. One year ago, it was cold. On April 16, flurries fell on the Virginia Tech campus. A troubled young man killed 32 students and faculty, then himself. It was a day of endings, not beginnings.

Today the Tech community, Blacksburg, Southwest Virginia and the nation remember the lives lost. We mourn again. We comfort the families of the dead. We support the injured. We mark the occasion on the Drillfield where a permanent memorial stands as constant, silent reminder.

Today the pain is less than a year ago. The wounds have begun to heal.

(See also: Poynter’s Links to the News page,
“Va. Tech Shootings.”)
_________________________________________________

• Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois (February 14, 2008)
  
  
  February 15, 2008: An excerpt from a story in the DeKalb County, Illinois newspaper, the Daily Chronicle:

  Campus Horror
  Former student kills 5 students, then himself at NIU

  By KEVIN P. CRAVER and BENJI FELDHEIM

  DeKALB – Northern Illinois University students and staff are shocked and looking for answers after a lone gunman killed five students and wounded 16 others Thursday before shooting himself.

  Shortly after 3 p.m., a man dressed in black entered an auditorium in Cole Hall and began firing a shotgun at students toward the end of a geology class, according to university officials and eyewitness accounts.

  Three victims and the gunman died at the scene, and two others later died: one at Kishwaukee Community Hospital in DeKalb and the other at OSF Saint Anthony Medical Center in Rockford, NIU President John Peters said.

  Peters did not reveal the identities of the victims late Thursday, pending notification of families, but said four of the victims were women.

  One of the dead has been identified as Dan Parmenter, a sophomore from Westchester and a staff member of the NIU school newspaper, an adviser for the paper said Thursday night.

  “He was a wonderful young man, just very nice, very easy to work with. (He was) somebody who was part of our family,” said Maria Krull, business adviser for the Northern Star newspaper.

  What is known about the gunman late Thursday is that he was an NIU sociology graduate student in spring 2007, said Peters, who added that the gunman apparently has no police record and there was no known motive for the shootings as of Thursday evening. Peters also said the gunman was currently enrolled at another school.
  ____________________________________________________

  February 15, 2008: An excerpt from an editorial in the Northern Illinois University school newspaper, the Northern Star:

  NIU has lost members of family

  By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

  On Thursday afternoon NIU was attacked by a gunman who selfishly killed himself after reaping the kind of terror we could only have hoped we would never know.

  But now we do know that terror, and the pain and questions wrought from it are as perplexing as trying to figure out how or why someone could ever do such a thing in the first place. The range of emotions the NIU community will experience and will continue to cycle through is difficult to control, but a few come to mind before anything else.

  Anger, pain, fear, frustration and disbelief were all in abundance among the NIU family on Thursday as news of the tragedy spread. As the police took control of the situation, students, faculty members, parents and spouses were left to begin the overwhelming process of coping with this attack on our community, on our family.

  (See also: “Covering a Tragedy: NIU.”
  Fresh Cut video magazine, Feb. 17, 2008.)
  ____________________________________________________

  February 15, 2008: An excerpt from a story in the Chicago Sun-Times:

  Wounded prof tells his story

  BY ANDREW HERRMANN

  Northern Illinois University grad student Joseph Peterson was about ten minutes from finishing a geology class he was teaching, lecturing from a stage. Suddenly, a tall white man dressed in dark clothing appeared about 40 feet away from him.

  And “just started firing away,” Peterson told the Chicago Sun-Times.

  The man had pulled out what appeared to be a shotgun and fired from the stage at about 150 students, Peterson said Thursday from a hospital, where he was being treated for a shoulder wound.

  “He must have come from a back door,” said the shaken, 26-year-old Peterson. “He was right there on stage.”

  Some students “ran and screamed” from Cole Hall, others crawled out on their bellies while still others ducked for cover, he said.

  The gunman “just shot randomly,” said Peterson. Students said the shooter said nothing as he opened fire.

  Then, in what seemed like a matter of seconds, the horror got worse: the gunman turned his attention on Peterson.

  Apparently out of ammunition in his shotgun, the gunman “pulled out a handgun and began shooting at me,” said Peterson.
  
  

•  Jokela High School, Tuusula, Finland (November 7, 2007)
  
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  November 8, 2007: The Helsinki, Finland newspaper, Iltalehti, reports on the school shooting at Jokela High School. Here is an excerpt from a story on the BBC Web site:

  Finland mourns shooting victims

  A national day of mourning is being held in Finland after an 18-year-old man went on a gun rampage at his school and killed seven pupils and a teacher.

  The gunman, reportedly identified as Pekka-Eric Auvinen, shot himself in the head and later died in hospital.

  The shooting happened in Tuusula, some 50km (30 miles) north of Helsinki, and officials have set up a crisis centre to help those affected by the tragedy.

  The gunman gave a warning of the attack in a video posted on the internet.

  The home-made film called “Jokela High School massacre 11/7/2007” shows a young man pointing a gun and declaring himself a “social Darwinist” who would “eliminate all who I see unfit”.

  Correspondents say the video is similar to the one made by Cho Seung Hui, who sent a recording of himself to the US NBC television network before killing 32 students at Virginia Tech University in April.

  Announcing a national day of mourning on Thursday, Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen described Wednesday’s shooting in Tuusula as a “great tragedy”.

• SuccessTech Academy, Cleveland, Ohio (October 10, 2007)

  Google News Search
  http://news.google.com/

  Technorati Weblog Search
  http://www.technorati.com/

  October 11, 2007: An excerpt from a story in the Cleveland, Ohio newspaper, The Plain Dealer:

  Four shot at school, gunman kills himself
  Students and staff ran, hid in restrooms, closets

  By MICHAEL O’MALLEY and GABRIEL BAIRD

  SuccessTech Academy, one of Cleveland’s best public high schools with a 94 percent graduation rate, seemed a highly unlikely place for a Columbine-type outburst of gun violence.

  But, suddenly, that all changed Wednesday when a student with black-painted fingernails and wearing a Marilyn Manson T-shirt opened fire in the downtown high school, injuring two teachers and three students. Police said he appeared to be targeting both teachers.

  Asa Coon, 14, who had been suspended from school for a fight on Monday, then turned the gun on himself, unloading a fatal shot.

  Students Michael Peek, 15, and Darnell Rodgers, 18, and teachers David Kachadourian, 57, and Michael Grassie, 42, were taken to hospitals with gunshot wounds.

  Trinnetta McGrady, 14, injured her knee and back falling down a staircase and was trampled by other students fleeing the gunfire.

  She was hospitalized, but was expected to be released late Wednesday.
  

• Virginia Tech University (April 16, 2007)

  Coverage of the Virginia Tech Shootings (April 16, 2007)
  By Pat Walters and Ellyn Angelotti, Poynter Online
  http://livex.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=121499

  Virginia Campus Shootings: Coverage Resources (April 16, 2007)
  Poynter Online and NewsU
  http://livex.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=121505

  Front Pages about Virginia Tech Shootings (April 17, 2007)
  Page One Today, Poynter Online
  http://poynter.org/column.asp?id=49&aid=121556

  Massacre on a Managing Editor’s First Day (May 22, 2007)
  By Joe Grimm, Poynter Online
  http://poynter.org/column.asp?id=101&aid=123404

  April 20, 2007:The Roanoke Times:

  Virginia Tech Shooting Victims
  By JOHN CRAMER

  A Holocaust survivor. A Christian teenager.

  Engineers and artists, animal lovers and bookworms.

  Quiet scholars and quirky class clowns.

  American natives and foreign nationals.

  The victims of the massacre at Virginia Tech were a cross-section of the human condition.

  They were as different as the school’s two trademarks — the gaudy maroon and orange that flash across the gridiron each autumn and the dignified Hokie limestone that has formed the bedrock of the school for more than a century.

  But they were alike, too — all going about their lives on what started as another ordinary Monday, alike in their fate to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when a gunman came along.

  They were teenagers away from home for the first time, professors in the twilight of their careers.

  Some were Facebook devotees who shared their lives on the Internet; others were devoted Bible readers whose inner thoughts were known best by God.

  By God’s grace and their own academic interests, they came from across the world and from across town to attend Virginia Tech.

  Some came to spend four years getting a degree, others came to spend their entire careers.

  In the end, they shared a common fate: Lives cut short on a spring morning when a cold wind filled with snowflakes and tree blossoms formed the backdrop for the deadliest shooting rampage in the nation’s history.
  ____________________________________________________

  April 19, 2007: An excerpt from a story in Newsday:

  Va. Tech stunned by images of gunman

  By JOHN RILEY

  Virginia Tech mass killer Seung-Hui Cho reached out from his grave to lament that “this didn’t have to happen” and warned that “I will no longer run” in a bizarre multimedia package received by NBC News Wednesday that he apparently mailed in the two-hour interval between two sets of slayings that took 32 lives and his own on the college campus Monday.

  “When the time came, I did it. I had to,” said an angry, sneering Cho, who railed about the “debaucheries” of the rich and described the two Columbine High School killers as “martyrs.”

  He also compared himself to Jesus and flaunted two handguns in a variety of bad-dude poses in a package that included an 1,800-word manifesto, 28 video and audio clips, and 43 still pictures.

  The words and images stunned Virginia Tech students.
  ____________________________________________________

  
  April 18, 2007: An excerpt from a story in The Virginian-Pilot:

  Tech victims remembered at local and state vigils

  By JOHN-HENRY DOUCETTE and AARON APPLEGATE

  BLACKSBURG — Thousands of Virginia Tech students stood in the center of campus Tuesday evening holding candles in outstretched hands, bathing Drill field in a light that grew stronger as dusk turned to night.

  After a half-hour vigil organized by student leaders, they had been told they were free to go home, but the mourners stood silent and still.

  After about 10 minutes, the students began to chant, “Let’s go Hokies!” reaching a roar that echoed across the campus.

  “Hokie Nation is an attitude and a mentality and this put a face to it, several thousand actually,” Kacey Morasch, a 27-year-old graduate student, said.

  During the vigil, two buglers on opposite sides of Drill field did a call-and-response version of Taps in a moving tribute to the 32 victims of Monday’s shootings.

  Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and several university officials attended the event.

  “I want America and the world to see this outpouring on the Virginia Tech Drill field this evening,” Zenobia Hikes, vice president for student affairs at Tech, told the students. “This is love. We will move on from this but it will take the strength of each other to do it.”
  _________________________________________________

  April 17, 2007: An excerpt from a story in Virginia Tech’s newspaper, the Collegiate Times:

  Our Sorrow, Our Resolve

  Surreal.

  For an event that has touched so many lives and will define the year 2007 for generations, there are only a handful of individuals who were able to directly influence yesterday’s tragedy.

  For most students, whether isolated off campus or huddled in their residence halls, responding to worried parents and concerned friends came in futile sound bites.

  As numbers continued to rise, totals became more and more unbelievable to everyone around the country: The whole situation was especially exasperating to all those here at Virginia Tech.
  ________________________________________________

  
  April 17, 2007: An excerpt from a story in The Roanoke Times:

  Panic, chaos grip campus
  Police are searching for a link between two shooting incidents at Tech that left 33 dead.

  By DONNA ALVIS-BANKS

  Time stopped in Blacksburg Monday.

  For two Virginia Tech students, it stopped shortly before 7:15 a.m. in the West Ambler Johnston dormitory, one of the largest halls on campus with 895 residents. The unidentified students — one male and one female — were shot and killed by an unidentified gunman.

  As events of the day unfolded, time stood still for students and professors, for school administrators and school janitors, for police officers and rescue personnel, for parents far from Blacksburg and for ordinary residents close to home.

  In disbelief and horror, people around the nation learned of the worst mass shooting in U.S. history as the national media spread the news and descended on the small college town.

  
  (See also: Poynter’s Links to the News page,
  “Va. Tech Shootings.”)

• Amish School, Lancaster County Pennsylvania (October 2, 2006)

  MSNBC
  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15105305/
  CNN
  http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/10/02/amish.shooting/index.html
  BBC
  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5401418.stm
  USA Today
  http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-10-02-amish-shooting_x.htm
  Washington Post
  http://www.washingtonpost.com/
  wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/03/AR2006100300229.html

   
  October 3, 2006: An excerpt from a story in the Lancaster, Pennsylvania newspaper, the Intelligencer Journal:

  Amish pupil heard gun being loaded
   
  By COLBY ITKOWITZ
   
  LANCASTER COUNTY, PA — A stranger entered a one-room Amish schoolhouse Monday morning where 24 students ages 6 to 13 had settled in their desks for a German lesson.
   
  The man wore glasses, a baseball cap and jeans, probably blue.
   
  He asked a question, but Aaron Esh, 13, can’t remember what it was.
   
  The man then left.
   
  Aaron, sitting at his desk, saw the man walk to a truck backed up to the front of West Nickel Mines School, a small, beige building protected by a white picket fence.
   
  Aaron could hear the man outside loading a gun. He knew then, he said, something was terribly wrong.
   
  About five minutes later, a man identified by police as 32-year-old Charles Carl Roberts IV stormed the classroom brandishing the gun and demanding all the students lie down in the back of the classroom, Aaron said.
  _________________________________________________
   
  October 3, 2006: An excerpt from a story in the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania newspaper, The Patriot-News:
   
  AMISH SCHOOL SHOOTINGS
  ‘ANGRY AT GOD’
   
  By CHRIS A. COUROGEN
  BART – Charles Carl Roberts IV was angry and armed to the teeth when he arrived at the West Nickel Mines Amish School yesterday morning, intent on avenging a wrong that state police said dated back 20 years.
   
  He took out that anger by shooting girls execution-style after binding their legs and lining them up in front of a chalkboard in the front of the one-room school in rural Lancaster County.
   
  Two girls died at the scene, one in the arms of a state trooper. A third was dead on arrival at Lancaster General Hospital.
   
  Three girls were admitted to Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, four to Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia and one to Christiana Hospital in Delaware, state police said.

• Platte Canyon High School, Colorado (September 27, 2006)

  CNN
  http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/09/27/school.shooting/index.html
  BBC
  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5387062.stm
  USA Today
  http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-09-29-colorado_x.htm
  Washington Post
  http://www.washingtonpost.com

  September 28, 2006: An excerpt from a story in Denver’s Rocky Mountain News:
   
  Community reeling after siege at school
  Gunman kills girl, himself as police raid room; some hostages were sexually assaulted
   
  By JAMES B. MEADOW
   
  BAILEY — A gunman invaded Platte Canyon High School on Wednesday, killing one student and taking his own life as SWAT officers used an explosive to breach a classroom door and end the siege.
  Emily Keyes, 16, died from a gunshot wound in the head at 4:32 p.m. at Denver’s St. Anthony Central Hospital, after a desperate transfer on a Flight For Life helicopter.
   
  The gunman remained unidentified Wednesday night but was said to be a former Bailey-area resident who was living in the Denver area. He was described as bearded, wearing a hooded sweat shirt and carrying a backpack.
  __________________________________________________
   
  September 28, 2006: An excerpt from a story in The Denver Post:
   
  Students recount hostage crisis
   
  By JOHN INGOLD
   
  Bailey — Sean Hagen was sitting in his English class Wednesday at Platte Canyon High School when a voice boomed over the loudspeaker.
   
  “Code white! Code white!”
   
  The students in his class looked befuddled, not knowing what the term meant. But, Hagen said, the teachers sprang into action, recognizing the term school officials use for an urgent lockdown.
   
  His teacher tried to move the students in the classroom away from the door.
   
  Moments later, he said, he heard a gunshot.
   
  Students from the room where the shot was fired, which Hagen said was next door, ran to his room and knocked on the door.
   
  “They told us there’s a guy in there shooting at the wall and that he’s yelling these things like ‘Get up against the wall or I’ll shoot,”‘ Hagen said.
• Dawson College, Montreal, Canada (September 13, 2006)

  CNN
  http://www.cnn.com
  BBC
  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5343714.stm
  USA Today
  http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-09-13-montreal-shooting_x.htm
  Washington Post
  http://www.washingtonpost.com

  September 15, 2006:
  The Quebec City newspaper, Le Soleil, reported on the gunman who went on a shooting spree at Montreal’s Dawson College, killing an 18-year-old female student and wounding 19 others.

• Red Lake High School, Minnesota (March 21, 2005)
  
  Washington Post
  http://www.washingtonpost.com/
  CBS
  http://www.cbsnews.com
  NPR
  http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4555788
  Minnesota Star-Tribune
  http://www.startribune.com/stories/156/
  USA Today
  http://www.usatoday.com
  An Insider on the Inside
  Jodi R. Rave, Poynter Online (April 18, 2005)
  Looking Like a Local, But Being an Outsider
  Mark Edwin Boswell, Poynter Online (March 30, 2005)