TheTrenchcoat Chronicles

Category: School Violence

  • Louis Jourdain may be tried as an adult

    Louis Jourdain may be tried as an adult

    Feds Want To Try Jourdain As An Adult:

    For those of you who may not remember, Louis Jourdain was arrested in connection with the Red Lake shootings back in March. He is also the son of Red Lake Tribal Chairman Floyd Jourdain Jr.

    He is alleged to have been some kind of an accomplice to Jeff Weise.

    Not a lot of information has been released about his case because he is a juvenile.

    Since the federal government has jurisdiction over the Red Lake Reservation, he would be tried in federal court and the feds want to try him as an adult. If he were to be convicted as a juvenile, he’d be free at the age of 21. He is 17 now. If he were to be convicted as an adult, he would be facing life in prison. A hearing to determine his status is scheduled to take place this week.

    UPDATE: I found an interesting bit of information from this article from the Pioneer Press…

    Sources with knowledge of the federal investigation have said that Weise and Jourdain wrote e-mails back and forth in which they planned the shooting spree.

    Those sources have also said there were to be additional targets besides the school.

    (Log in Info)

  • McLaughlin found guilty

    McLaughlin found guilty

    McLaughlin Found Guilty In Rocori School Shootings:

    John Jason McLaughlin has been found guilty in the shooting deaths of Aaron Rollins and Seth Bartell, but it’s not over yet.

    According to Minnesota law, the second phase of the trial will determine whether or not McLaughlin was mentally ill at the time of the shootings.

    If he is found mentally ill, he could be found not guilty by reason of insanity but could be committed to the state mental hospital. If he is found to be competent, then he’s looking at life in prison without the possibility for parole.

    Minnesota does not have the death penalty.

  • Clueless in Michigan

    Clueless in Michigan

    Glenn R. Stutzky: State’s terror law is abused:

    According to the article, Glenn R. Stutzky is a clinical instructor at Michigan State University’s School of Social Work. The law he is referring to is the law that convicted would be school shooter Andrew Osantowski. He has some issues with Michigan’s terror law…

    The terrorism statute was designed to assist law enforcement in dealing with adults who threaten to commit acts of terrorism and not for use against school-aged children.

    So what you’re saying is that school-aged children, in this case, 17-years-old, are not capable of acts of terrorism? I think there are some people in Colorado and Minnesota who probably disagree with you.

    Here is the problem: The terrorism law does not distinguish between a student “making” a threat and actually “posing” a threat.

    Did Andrew Osantowski really “pose” a threat?

    That may not be the best question; a better one might be: “Where was he along the continuum between just blowing off steam and actually taking action?”

    Andrew Osantowski did, in fact, pose a threat. Or was having guns, ammo, and bomb-making instructions just blowing off steam?

    Mr. Stutzky also pushes some well-meaning but probably doesn’t apply in real life program…

    Oakland Schools has developed “Guidelines for Assessing Threatening Dangerous Behaviors in Schools”, a systematic and comprehensive process to assess threats made by students and a means to address dangerous behaviors through an integrated intervention plan.

    The intervention begins immediately and ultimately involves the student, family, school, and community. Every threat is taken serious and initiates a process that results in a determination of the level of concern that exists – strong, moderate, or minimal and has a clear threshold of when to contact and involve the police.

    Law enforcement benefits from GATDBS by not having to immediately come out to a school every time a threat is spoken, e-mailed, or written on a bathroom wall.

    Emphasis mine.

    That’s some good thinkin’ there, Glenn. If the police didn’t take every threat seriously, how many shootings do you think would have happened by now, including the one involving Andrew Osantowski? How many people do you think Andrew Osantowski would have killed if his threat was not taken seriously? Do you want that kind of blood on your hands? You probably wouldn’t care. You’d just blame it on something else. Like the oppressive legal system or some such other nonsense. And the fact that you consider yourself an educator is frightening.

  • Revenge of the Kentucky Zombies

    Revenge of the Kentucky Zombies

    Jury hands down Poole indictment:

    Remember William Poole? The kid who was arrested for making threats against his school, but he said he was just writing a story about zombies for his class?

    Then it turned out there were no zombies in the story, and it was not an assignment by any of his teachers, and he tried to recruit other students.

    Well, the grand jury handed down an indictment, but only for the misdemeanor charge of attempt to commit terroristic threatening.

    The police had charged him with second-degree terroristic threatening, which is a felony.

    If convicted, the maximum he could get is 12 months.

  • Premeditated?

    Premeditated?

    Judge in murder trial to view McLaughlin video:

    Nothing of any earth-shattering importance about the Rocori trial from this article, except that the judge in the case is going to be reviewing the videotaped interview of John Jason McLaughlin that was taken while McLaughlin was in custody. The article says the interview took place 90 minutes after the shooting. There is one thing in the article I want to address…

    (Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Agent Ken) McDonald had only a few details about the shooting at the beginning of the interview, not knowing how many students had been shot. When informed that a student had died, McLaughlin reacted with surprise, according to previous court filings by (McLaughlin’s attorney, Dan) Eller. McLaughlin thought it must be Bartell who was dead, when in fact it was Rollins, Eller has argued.

    Eller has said the interview will be essential to convincing Kirk that McLaughlin didn’t premeditate murder. Kirk could have a verdict as early as Wednesday.

    He didn’t premeditate murder? He took a gun to school, took careful aim, and when the first shot missed, he ran after his intended target and shot him in the head.

    Sounds premeditated to me.

  • Strange Testimony in Rocori Trial

    Strange Testimony in Rocori Trial

    Attorneys differ over e-mails of Rocori suspect:

    Some strange testimony out of the Rocori trial…

    On the morning before the fatal shootings at Rocori High School, the accused gunman used a school computer to e-mail a farewell letter to another student.

    John Jason McLaughlin’s chilling e-mail address? “sharpestshot290@yahoo.com”

    The student who got that e-mail and others, Brittany Kelley, took the stand Friday as McLaughlin’s trial continued in St. Cloud.

    Kelley, 16, tearfully told of the increasingly bizarre messages she had received from McLaughlin’s e-mail address during the summer before the shootings of Seth Bartell, 14, and Aaron Rollins, 17.

    Two days before the shootings, an e-mail to Kelley from McLaughlin repeated the phrase “hi hi hi hi hi” for pages, before ending with “goodbye.”

    One day before the shootings, another e-mail repeated “ok ok ok ok” for pages with brief interruptions for the phrases “i’m good” and “steve says hi too” before continuing on with the repeated “ok ok ok ok.”

    Like that’s not enough, John Jason McLaughlin liked to write e-mails as a fictional girlfriend…

    Some of the e-mails were written under the name Soki Renoko, a fictional girlfriend created by McLaughlin. Those repeatedly described him as a cold, steely action figure who beat up people who offended him or his family — and said he claimed to be a sniper.

    Now, from the defense attorney…

    Eller said the prosecution will use the e-mails to prove that McLaughlin planned the shootings and meant to kill that day, which is critical in making the first-degree murder charge stick. But Eller said he sees the e-mails as evidence of McLaughlin’s mental illness.

    Yeah, he has a mental illness. He’s criminally insane. Isn’t it to be found not guilty by reason of insanity, don’t they have to prove that McLaughlin couldn’t tell the difference between right and wrong?

    And this is the best quote of all…

    Eller said McLaughlin believed he shot Bartell in the shoulder, not the forehead, and didn’t intend to kill anyone that day.

    How can you get confused between the shoulder and head, especially considering he shot Seth Bartell at an almost point-blank range? Is it a defense attorney’s job to insult people’s intelligence? This isn’t even a jury trial so he’s basically insulting the judge’s intelligence.

  • On video games and violence from an expert on both

    On video games and violence from an expert on both

    Violence in games is a GOOD thing:

    This is a great article, possibly the definitive article, about violence in video games. It was written by someone who knows what real violence is all about, Brooks Brown.

    For those of you who may not know, Brooks Brown was friends with the killers and the killed at Columbine. By his own words, he had previously reported Harris and Klebold to the police about threats made at him, and the police did nothing. So I’ll take this guy’s word about violence and video games. It was his closing statement that struck me as most poignant…

    Columbine was not caused by violent video games. Eric and Dylan (the shooters) were drawn to violent video games because they were violent, fucked up kids. I am drawn to these violen games becaue they offer more freedom. And, it may sound naive, but i believe the vast majority of gamers play these games for the same reason as me. Do you?

    Link via Joystiq.

  • Victim’s Father Testifies in Rocori Trial

    Victim’s Father Testifies in Rocori Trial

    Victim’s father testifies in Rocori shooting trial:

    The father of Rocori High School shooting victim Aaron Rollins, Tom Rollins, testified yesterday in the trail of shooter John Jason McLaughlin. Mr. Rollins works as a responder, which I guess is some kind of EMT or paramedic, and he was the first on the scene in his own son’s shooting. He basically watched his own son die…

    Tom Rollins became familiar with the look of death early in his 14 years as a Cold Spring first responder.
    A doctor had suffered a heart attack, and Rollins was one of the first on the scene to try to save the man. It was his first call as a responder, and his job was to “bag him,” slang for squeezing a device that keeps air flowing into a stricken person.

    That duty put him in close proximity to the doctor’s head, and he’ll never forget what he saw in that doctor’s eyes.

    It’s the same thing he saw in his son’s eyes Sept. 24, 2003. Rollins was one of the first rescue workers to reach his son, Aaron, in a basement hallway at Rocori High School.

    “Looking into his eyes, it was like his eyes would stare right through the back of my head, like he was looking into outer space,” Rollins said of that doctor’s eyes years ago.

    What did that tell him, asked prosecutor Bill Klumpp, about what he saw when he looked into his son’s eyes?

    “Aaron had the same look,” Rollins said. “Aaron was dead.”

    There was also testimony from police on the shooter himself…

    Two police officers and a school counselor testified Thursday afternoon that McLaughlin said nothing in the minutes after the shooting. McLaughlin was in the office of counselor Craig Lieser for about 15 minutes after the crimes, until a police officer led McLaughlin out of the school in handcuffs. McLaughlin stared at a wall and said nothing, Lieser said.

    Cold Spring Police Chief Phil Jones and school liaison officer Kevin Hagen gave similar accounts of McLaughlin’s behavior after he was disarmed by a teacher and led to Lieser’s office.

    Jones said he asked McLaughlin three times whether he had acted alone in the shooting before he could get a “yes” answer.

    Jones then was asked to describe McLaughlin’s demeanor.

    “I don’t know if I have right words to describe it,” Jones said before taking a noticeable pause. “Basically sitting in a chair, quiet. During the time I was asking questions and he wasn’t answering me, I interpreted it to be cocky.”

    So now we have the shooter with a smirk on his face, using a two-handed grip, and being cocky towards police, and we’re supposed to believe that some mysterious mental illness caused him to kill.

    Again, I don’t think so.

  • Rocori Testimony 7/7/05

    Rocori Testimony 7/7/05

    ‘Help me, I’m shot,’ Rocori student pleaded:

    More testimony in the trial of John Jason McLaughlin, who shot and killed two classmates at Rocori High in Cold Spring, Minn. This article focuses mainly on Aaron Rollins, who was not McLaughlin’s intended target…

    It was gym teacher Mary Kelsey whose voice comforted Rocori High School senior Aaron Rollins as the life bled out of him in the school basement Sept. 24, 2003.

    She could hardly bear to recall her frantic efforts to help Rollins and comfort the popular 17-year-old, whose shirt was soaked with blood and whose gaze was distant and fixed.

    “I told (him) help was coming, just to hang in there. What a great kid he was,” Kelsey said as she broke into tears.

    “I knew he was dying. I was telling him things I’d want my girls to hear … how much he was loved….”

    Kelsey said she partially caught Rollins as he spun after being hit.

    ”He looked at me and said, ‘Help me, I’m hurt. Help me, I’m shot.’ ”

    Kelsey laid him down on the basement floor, and Rollins tried to get up once before falling back. ”He never spoke to me again,” she said.

    And he was not the intended target.

  • More Rocori Testimony

    More Rocori Testimony

    Witnesses describe smirk, careful aim by McLaughlin:

    (Log in info)
    More testimony from Tuesday on the Rocori High School shooting…

    Jade Schmitt, a freshman at the Cold Spring high school at the time of the shootings in 2003, testified that McLaughlin walked out of the locker room for gym class that day a few steps behind Bartell. Schmitt said he saw McLaughlin pull a .22-caliber pistol from his gym bag and raise it in a two-handed grip, then heard a shot and saw Bartell grab his side.

    Another witness, reading instructor Louise Hopfer, said she also saw McLaughlin clasping the gun. Hopfer said he was aiming carefully, though she couldn’t see his target.

    “I could see the smirk on his face – I knew he knew what he was going for,” Hopfer said.

    Ross Kasparek, then a freshman, testified that he was walking up stairs to the gym ahead of Bartell. He saw McLaughlin walk toward Bartell with the gun, raising his arm as he approached.

    Without saying anything, McLaughlin held the barrel of the gun a couple of inches from Bartell’s forehead and fired, Kasparek said.

    A smirk on his face and a two-handed grip. And somehow we’re supposed to feel sorry for this kid. I don’t think so.