Category: School Violence

A killer’s dark mind:

Kimveer Gill’s high school classmates paint a different picture of him than the one we know…

Former high school classmates described him as normal — “nothing out of the ordinary, just a regular high school kid,” said Anthony Proce, who, like Gill, graduated from Rosemere High School in 1998.

Friends said he never dated in high school.

Mr. Proce and others said, far from the impression the six-foot tall Gill left on his Web site, he wasn’t the victim of bullying.

“He wasn’t a guy that got picked on, not at all — who picks on a tall, big guy who could kick your ass if you picked on him?” said Dennis Pavia, another classmate who now plays drums for heavy metal band Diecast.

“He didn’t dress like a rapper or a Goth or anything like that, more like jeans, T-shirts and sneakers,” said Mr. Pavia, who said he usually saw Gill every day at school but wasn’t close to him. “I remember Kimveer just being a friendly guy, always smiling. However he came to do something like [the shootings at Dawson] I wouldn’t say is because of high school.”

Alex Hullar, another former classmate, said he was shocked when he heard Gill’s name on the radio yesterday.

“He was a pretty calm, relaxed guy,” he remembered. “He had at least eight close friends and they always hung around together in high school. They were all very good students, very good grades.”

He said Gill dressed normally, “never a trench coat and all that kind of stuff. I don’t know where that came about.”

He said he had not been in touch with Gill since graduation.”It’s going to be one hell of a high school reunion, I can imagine,” he added.

Gill left few other marks. His graduation yearbook had a blank entry beside his photo.

So he wasn’t bullied in high school. If he was bullied after that, it’s because he allowed it to happen. How many more nails in the coffin does the bullying myth need?

Thanks to CC for the link.

Blogs reveal a deteriorating mind, police say:

This article states that not only did Kimveer Gill keep a written journal, but he also scouted Dawson College prior to the shooting. But first, let me get this out of the way…

But his online musings do not refer specifically to Dawson or his violent plans. However, he repeatedly emphasized that people planning a crime would be stupid to outline their agenda on the Internet.

The comments, made on a Livejournal site called The Trenchcoat over a number of months, included references to various school shootings in the United States and caused him to be banned from writing on the site.

In one, he defends the young people who were charged after a school shooting plot in Riverton, Kan.

“They wern’t [sic] going to do it for real,” Gill wrote. “They’re just kids having a little fun. If they were really going to do this, they would not be posting messages on MySpace and telling people in their school about it.”

You can see what they’re talking about here. I do crosspost at LiveJournal, but all comments are only on this site. Now back to the matter at hand…

Kimveer Gill did not restrict his violent thoughts to the blog he kept on VampireFreaks.com. He posted disturbing comments on other Web sites and allegedly jotted them down in a diary, where the entries indicate his mind was deteriorating.

Police investigators found the journal either at the scene of the shooting at Dawson College on Wednesday or while executing a search warrant at his parent’s home in the Fabreville district of Laval.

“From what he wrote, you could tell that he basically hated humanity as a whole. He hated everybody. He hated black people, white people, rich people. He hated everybody,” a police source said.

“It was very obvious his state of mind was deteriorating greatly over the last three weeks.”

But the documents reportedly offer no indication as to why Gill chose to carry out a shooting rampage at Dawson College, killing 18-year-old student Anastasia DeSousa and wounding several other victims.

TVA reported last night that security cameras on the nearby Alexis Nihon Plaza captured Gill scouting out the scene of his attack on Aug. 10, a month before his rampage. Police are viewing the tapes.

So it seems that he did not “snap” like so many people are saying.

When someone snaps, the reaction is immediate. Gill was nothing more than a cold-blooded, calculating killer.

Police confirm gunman took his own life after being shot in the arm:

I’m not surprised…

MONTREAL — Kimveer Gill’s lethal rampage at Dawson College ended when he shot himself, provincial police confirmed Thursday.

A preliminary autopsy indicates Gill, 25, was wounded in the arm, “likely by a police bullet,” but then shot himself to death, said Const. Chantal Mackels.

Investigators have turned up no links between Gill, who was unemployed, and the school.

“To my knowledge he was not a student (at Dawson) and had not been in the past. We don’t know yet why he did this at Dawson. That has to be answered,” said Lieut. Francois Dore of the Quebec provincial police, which is handling only the part of the investigation that involves Gill’s death. (By law, a police force in Quebec is not permitted to investigate a fatality that has occurred during one of its own operations.)

Gill had no criminal record and had never been found to have a mental health problem, police say.

A coward and a loser until the end.

Blog reveals ‘poster boy’ for school shooters:

One more expert who agrees with me that Kimveer Gill was a cookie-cutter school shooter…

Kimveer Gill’s death-obsessed, rage-filled blog reveals a man that psychologists say was the “the poster boy” and “absolute prototype” for a school shooter.

Robin Kowalski, a psychologist who co-wrote a comprehensive study on school shooters, said the 25-year-old Mr. Gill fits every pattern her colleagues uncovered.

“When I read his blog material, it was almost like I was running down a checklist,” Ms. Kowalski said from her office at Wake Forest University in North Carolina.

“You hate to say that this was waiting to happen, but the foundation for this violent act was clearly laid out long before it took place.”

And here’s the last item on the checklist…

In another entry, posted on Jan. 18, Mr. Gill wrote about his hatred for jocks and “preps” — convictions that are eerily similar to those held by infamous Columbine High School shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.

“I’m so sick of hearing about jocks and preps making life hard for the goths and others who look different, or are different … Why does society applaude (sic) jocks? I don’t understand. They are the worse kind of people on earth,” he wrote.

“And the preps are no better, they think they’re better than others … We will never be like them. NEVER.”

He’s at least 7 years out of high school, and he’s still complaining about jocks and preps? I wonder if he even had a real job.

If you’re out of high school and still obsessing about its cliques, then there is something wrong with you, and you should seek help.

Mr. Gill’s case features the five prevailing factors established by Ms. Kowalski’s research, a study of 15 high-profile school shootings between 1995 and 2001: obsession with guns and death, feelings of ongoing rejection (either bullying, social isolation or romantic rejection), psychological problems such as sociopathic tendencies and depression and “acute rejection” — a final event that pushes a shooter over the edge.

“Just like the Columbine shooters in 1999, the jocks and preps must have been the ones that Gill felt bullied him,” Ms. Kowalski said. “He writes that guns are the great equalizer. For all those who rejected him and made him feel like nothing, he was trying to show those people that he was something — that he had power.”

Do you want to have real power? Then don’t let the people who bullied you win by obsessing over it the rest of your life. Like I keep saying, it’s just high school. It’s a very small part of your overall life if you’re smart about it.

Ms. Kowalski, also the associate editor of the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, said she believes the final catalyst for Mr. Gill’s alleged shooting spree may have been a failed romance or unrequited love. In his blog, Mr. Gill discusses meeting a like-minded woman through vampirefreaks.com. On at least two occasions, he discusses a general longing for, or loss of, love, once asking “Where is my Juliet?” In another entry on Feb. 21 he states, “They make you fall in love with them and then they run away.”

There’s no woman (or man) out there that’s worth killing people or yourself over. If you think there is, you’re very immature and need to do a lot of growing up.

While Mr. Gill may be a “poster child” for school shooters, Ms. Kowalski said it’s important not to paint all goths or counter-culture youths with the same brush.

“There are plenty of people who have a fascination with death and guns who would never do something like this,” she said. “All the factors we discovered may be present, but it’s the specific way those factors intertwine, often coupled with an inherent lack of empathy for others, that determine whether someone is going to become a shooter.”

That’s for the rest of you out there that like to stereotype.

Dave Marcus, author of What It Takes to Pull Me Through, a book about dealing with angry, disaffected youth, said there is one key difference between Mr. Gill and typical shooters.

“The surprising thing to me was his age, often people sort of outgrow this alienated phase,” Mr. Marcus said. “This shooter was 25, indicating an adolescence that never ended — he was still working out its terrible kinks in his twenties and that produced tragic results.”

See.

Taber Expert Speculates On Montreal Shootings:

At least one expert agrees with me…

CALGARY/AM770CHQR – The man who led the crisis response team following the Taber school shooting in 1999 is offering some possible insights into what might have driven the suspect in yesterday’s dawson college shooting.

Kevin Cameron, director of the Canadian Center for Threat Assessment and Trauma Response, says the gunman was likely inspired by the Columbine high school shooting. Cameron says the gunman’s mode of dress, the weapon used, and the style of attack all seem to be imitating the Columbine massacre.

Cameron says the fact Gill had a website where he talked about killing was a sign that he was a trouble person, and needed help. He says it’s unfortunate those signs went unheeded.

But you can’t help people who don’t want help.