Another sexual predator arrest in Connecticut. It’s officially the MySpace predator capital of the world…
BRIDGEPORT, Conn. — A city man has been arrested on a sexual assault charge, accused of raping a 12-year-old girl he met on the Internet site, Myspace.com.
Bienvenido Garcia, 19, was arrested Wednesday by members of the U.S. Marshals Violent Crime Fugitive Task Force.
A task force member said that while police knocked on his door, task force members caught Garcia climbing out his back window in his underwear.
Police said the alleged victim’s mother had turned over to police 16 pages of computer correspondence between her daughter and Garcia from the Web site.
The girl said on a number of occasions Garcia had come into her room, pinned her on her bed and raped her, police said.
MONTREAL — On a scary website, Kimveer Gill describes himself as a potential killer and admits that his favourite video game is Super Columbine Massacre.
For those of you just joining us, Super Columbine Massacre RPG (or SCMRPG for short) is a homemade video game put out by amateur game designer Danny Ledonne that puts you in the shoes of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.
I’ve previously called it something along the lines of a sick tribute to one of the most horrific mass murders of all time, or something like that. For some of my previous takes on the game, you can go here or here.
I’ve emailed Mr. Ledonne asking for his comment about it, but as of this posting, I have yet to hear back from him.
I did a phone interview with The Globe and Mail last night about the Dawson College shooting. It was done before we knew anything concrete about the situation. I’m not making excuses, just setting the time frame because I still stand behind what I said…
Trench Reynolds, the pseudonym of a Charlotte, N.C., man who runs a website devoted to school shootings, concluded from early reports that the Dawson rampage was another in a long line of copycat incidents that have followed the 1999 shooting at Columbine in which two students killed 12 fellow students and a teacher.
“To me, it sounds like a copycat almost to a T,” he said.
At the time, I meant the media reports reminded me of Columbine with the unconfirmed reports going out. However, knowing what we know now, I still stand behind my statement that Kimveer Gill was emulating Columbine in someway. The experts disagree…
But analysts say it would be a mistake to draw conclusions based on the gunman’s appearance.
“When you see something like a mohawk or a piercing, that is not a predictive behaviour of anything violent,” said Michael Hoechsmann, a McGill University educational psychologist. “I think it’s a dubious proposition to draw too many parallels to something that is unfolding right now.”
University of Toronto education professor Kathy Bickmore agreed. “It’s easy to jump to the conclusion that there’s a parallel in particular to Columbine,” she said, referring to the gunman’s trench coat. “But it’s not uncommon enough clothing for me to say that has anything to do with it.”
O RLY?..ahem…I mean, oh, really? I’m not basing this on a particular article of clothing but more of a subculture. For the most part, since Columbine, school shooters and would be shooters have been considered at some point goth, metal, punk, etc. They feel excluded because of their choice of music and dress. They sympathize with the Columbine shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold over their mythical status of being heroes to the outcasts and bullied, even though Harris and Klebold were neither, in my opinion.
“There is no real type,” said James Sheptycki, a criminologist at York University in Toronto. “Any psychological profile that people could come up with would identify too many individuals to actually be useful and wouldn’t necessarily fit all potential perpetrators. There simply isn’t a profile that works.”
Maybe not all perpetrators, but I think there’s a profile for most of them. Now I’m not saying all goths, punks, and metalheads, are potential school shooters. Just the ones that have a fascination or obsession with a certain Colorado school shooting.
The Dawson College gunman, Kimveer Gill, seems to fit a familiar profile…
Late last night, Montreal police searched the Laval family home of Gill, whose black Pontiac Sunfire was found parked near the school.
The Star found a website last night for a 25-year-old Goth freak who identified by the single name “Kimveer” in which he muses — shadows of the Columbine high school shootings — with banal disaffectedness.
“Work sucks … school sucks … life sucks … what else can I say?
“Metal and Goth kick ass. Life is a video game, you’ve got to die sometime.”
Let’s stop there for a second. Before everyone starts jumping to conclusions, metal, goth, and video games did not cause this shooting.
I listen to metal, I’ve dated some goth girls in my life, and I play video games. These are not triggers to a shooting, no matter how many people try to tell you it is. I’m not some kid, either. I’ve been listening to metal and playing video games for over 20 years, and I lead a nice little, boring suburban life with the wife and 2.5 kids and a decent job.
Mr. Gill obviously had mental issues that go well beyond metal, goth, and video games.
Bystanders, over and over, described seeing a man wearing a Goth-style overcoat, combat boots, with a Mohawk haircut, studded with body-piercings — walking purposefully toward the school as students milled about outside, carrying what seemed to be an automatic rifle, and abruptly opening fire before continuing, barely breaking stride, into the second-floor atrium cafeteria, ordering those inside to get down on the floor, and then shooting upon them without mercy.
He had, La Presse reports, parked his car close to the college, opened the trunk and removed: a 9-mm semi-automatic rifle, a .45 pistol and a bag containing a 12-calibre gun that can shoot four bullets per shot.
What happened next was so eerily reminiscent of that shocking episode in Montreal 17 years ago when 14 women were slaughtered at L’École Polytechnique by Marc Lépine, who then turned the gun on himself. If this assailant intended the same thing, to take his own life after the horrific deed, it seems he never got the chance — brought down, witnesses say, even as he wielded his weapon and shouted at cops with guns drawn to stay back, stay away.
Yelling at them, according to student witness Nikola Guidi, as reported by the Montreal Gazette: “Get the fuck away from here!”
It is not definitive, and won’t be until an autopsy and forensic tests are conducted, that an officer’s gun extinguished the murderer’s life. But it was this body that was later dragged from the building, leaving a trail of blood. From across the road, office workers reported a limp man, dressed in black, being pulled across the pavement. Police slapped handcuffs on him, but the man never moved. A yellow tarp was later thrown over the body and it remained there for a long time.
There does not appear to be any connecting thread, any common denominator among those shot, save for their fateful presence at a sprawling downtown post-secondary school when a man — purportedly young and cold-faced — with motives as yet unknown, decided to embark on a rampage. There is no evidence, authorities were quick to emphasize, that the shootings were racially or ethnically inspired. The act bore no terrorist imprint.
One man with an undetermined rage and three lethal weapons. He never reloaded.
“Based on current information, the suspect was killed by the police,” said Delorme, who would provide no further details, including whether the shooter was a student at the school, although it was palpably obvious police knew precious little themselves.
“I can confirm that there are no other suspects,” another police spokesperson told reporters in late afternoon. “We don’t know anything about the motive of the suspect.”
I’m not quite ready to throw the “M” word out yet, but it’s getting pretty close.
I’m at work, so I can’t post any links to his Vampirefreaks profile or anything like that, so if anyone has the links feel free to post them in the comments.
We finally have some definite details from the Dawson College shooting…
The 25-year-old man used legally registered guns for the rampage at Dawson College.
As horrific as it was, the attack could have been much worse. Police arrived on site within three minutes of the gunman’s opening fire and, in their words, “neutralized” the shooter a short time later.
The gunman was not immediately identified, although police said he was born in the province of Quebec and lived in Montreal’s North Shore. Witnesses described him as very tall, with spiky hair and multiple piercings. He carried a rifle and a bag with at least two other weapons, a shotgun and a 9 mm pistol.
Several published reports identified the gunman as Kimveer Gill, 25, of Laval, north of Montreal. Several newspapers published a photograph of Mr. Gill dressed in a long black trenchcoat and holding a long-barrelled gun. Police would not confirm the reports.
An on-line image gallery on Mr. Gill’s blog contains more than 50 photos depicting the young man in various poses holding a Baretta CX4 Storm semi-automatic rifle and donning a long black trenchcoat and combat boots. “His name is Trench. you will come to know him as the Angel of Death,” he wrote on his vampirefreaks.com profile.
No relation.
Shortly after the rampage began, the gunman was killed by police during an intense gun battle inside the school. (Because the man died at the hands of Montreal police, the death is now being investigated by the Sûreté du Quebec provincial police.)
There have been conflicting reports about how the gunman was shot and killed. Chief Delorme said that officers killed the gunman. However, witnesses told La Presse he shot himself in the head after police a bullet struck him in the leg. Officers then dragged him outside, where he died on the street.
The incident was, for all intents and purposes, over by 1:10 p.m.
Montreal police officers are now trained – as a result of other fatal school shootings – to immediately pursue gunmen in such circumstances, rather than just sealing off the area and waiting for a SWAT team.
Police said the new procedures saved lives Wednesday.
And also news on the victim that died…
An 18-year-old woman died at the scene. Five others were in critical condition with severe wounds to the head, abdomen, chest, arms and legs, but were expected to live.
The dead student was identified by family members as Anastasia DeSousa, 18, of Montreal. “She was full of life, she was the perfect little niece,” her uncle Real Hevy told Montreal Gazette.
Outside Montreal General Hospital, Natalia Hevey was frantically trying to get help locating her niece, 18-year-old Anastasia De Sousa.
The first-year Dawson student was apparently shot in the arm while fleeing the gunman, was taken away in an ambulance but could not be found. Ms. Hevey said her niece was last seen being lifted into the ambulance in television news reports.
And comments from Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper…
Prime Minister Stephen Harper condemned what he called “a cowardly and senseless act of violence,” adding that his “thoughts and prayers are with the injured and their loved ones.”
It seems that Dateline NBC had another one of their “To Catch A Predator” episodes tonight. I missed it because I wasn’t home. However, a reader by the name of Big Boss tipped me off to one of the guys they exposed…
Another man who despite seeing our previous broadcasts is willing to take the risk of showing up at a stranger’s house to possibly have sex with a minor.
He’s 22-year-old Matthew Cogburn- yesterday was his birthday. He’s here to meet a decoy pretending to be a 14-year-old.
This clean cut all-American looking man has a MySpace page where he says “Jesus rocks” and lists god as his number one hero. But when he goes into a Yahoo chat room, he seems like another person. His chat with a girl he thinks is 14 is so graphic, much of it can’t be shown. He does ask the decoy if her house is secluded so if they use the jacuzzi, “you can moan and squeal all you want.”
Matthew Cogburn (hidden camera footage): Nice house.
Decoy: Thank you. Did you have a hard time getting here?
Cogburn: Well the road that I was looking for didn’t show up.
Hansen: Why don’t you have a seat there, and get comfortable for a minute
Cogburn: I had a feeling this was going to happenHansen: You had a feeling what was going to happen?
Cogburn: Is this the national news thing. The national news all that stuff?
Hansen: NBC? You mean like Dateline NBC?
Cogburn: Yeah.
Hansen: What was your plan here today?
Cogburn: I don’t. I can’t answer that as I want to because I’ve been in a struggle with myself on what I want, ’cause I’m still a virgin and a just, and it’s stupid that I did this.
Hansen: How old are you?
Cogburn: 22
Hansen: And how old was the girl you were chatting with on line?
Cogburn: The girl said she was 13 or 14.
Hansen: 13 or 14? And you thought that it would be okay to come over here and visit a young girl home alone?
Cogburn: I wanted it, I wanted to think it was okay, but I guess (he shrugs his shoulders)
Hansen: Now, I’m looking at this chat log here. Sixteen minutes into this discussion you ask if she can do ‘deep throat’. Explain that to me.
Cogburn: No reason to explain it.
Hansen: No reason to explain it. (reading from chat) “How do you feel about sex?” “You on birth control?” or “Are you sticking with condoms?” “you got toys”?
Cogburn: is there any ah
Hansen: Well I want you to square that with what’s on your MySpace Website where you talk about “Jesus rocks.”
You’ll hear more about this man’s inner struggle after he’s in police custody.
And thanks to Big Boss we have Cogburn’s MySpace. His MySpace username is “crazyforchristcoggy”. It seems he’s crazier for underage girls.
What’s known so far is that there was one gunman. He’s now dead. It’s unknown if he died by police or his own hands. He was a 25-year-old man from Quebec. His identity has not been released as of yet, and there’s still no motive.
Police have not identified the shooter, but a spokesman said he was armed with three weapons, likely including a semi-automatic rifle. He was also described as “a young man, of Canadian origin.”
The victim who died was a female in her late teens to early 20s who died from her wounds after being rushed to the hospital.
My thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their friends and families.
Now Montreal police are saying that there was only one gunman at the Dawson College shooting but are still being tight-lipped with other details…
MONTREAL (CP) – An armed man dressed in black and sporting a Mohawk haircut entered a Montreal college on Wednesday and went on a shooting rampage, wounding 20 people and causing widespread panic.
Montreal police Chief Yvan Delorme said the gunman died and that the 20 injured included three people in serious condition. Police said there was only one gunman. Earlier unconfirmed reports indicated there may have been several suspects.
“For now, I am limiting it to one suspect who died after a police intervention on site,” Delorme told a news conference.
He did not say whether the man killed himself or was shot by police.
Asked whether all the victims were female, Delorme said he did not know the gender of the victims.
He also dismissed suggestions that race or terrorism played a role.
“There’s no information that leads us to believe that it’s something other than what happened at the scene.”
I assume the Canadian reporters were asking about the gender of the victims because of what every article has mentioned so far, the shooting spree of Marc Lepine at École Polytechnique.
Shortly after 5 p.m., Lépine entered the École Polytechnique, an engineering school affiliated with the Université de Montréal. He had applied for admission into the engineering school but was rejected. He blamed it on affirmative action which kept him out in place of a woman. He first went into a mechanical engineering class, separated the men from the women, forced out the men at gunpoint, began to scream about how he hated feminists, and then opened fire. Lépine continued his rampage in other parts of the building, opening fire on other women he encountered. He killed 14 women (13 students and one employee of the university) and injured thirteen others before committing suicide.
I don’t think this is a copycat of that. Just something deep in my soul tells me this is a Columbine copycat.
MONTREAL — Up to three gunmen dressed in black army fatigues opened fire at a downtown Montreal college today and four people are reported dead, including two of the gunmen.
Police said in mid-afternoon that although many people had been injured, 12 were admitted to hospital and six are listed as critical. The others had been treated and discharged.
The French-language RDI Television network reported that one gunman had turned his weapon on himself and committed suicide, while a second had been shot and killed by police.
This could not be confirmed.
“A suspect has been neutralized, which means he is not shooting any more,” said Ian LaFreniere, a police spokesman.
Montreal police said they believed there were between one and three suspects. A police SWAT team was going floor-by-floor through the college building.
This is eerily similar to the conflicting reports that came out of Columbine as it was unfolding.
Two gunmen who opened fire in a downtown Montreal college Wednesday afternoon are dead, and police are hunting for a third suspect.
Montreal General Hospital officials say 12 people have been admitted, six of them in critical condition, two in serious condition and the rest in stable condition.
Montreal police confirmed that at least one suspect was “neutralized,” but did not provide details on how the gunman died.
“Whether he did it to himself or not, I can’t yet say,” said spokesman Yan Lafrenière.
Television images showed police officers dragging a bloody body out of the main doors of the building.
Eyewitnesses say they saw a tall skinny man, wearing a black trench coat and a Mohawk haircut, walk into the cafeteria carrying a large gun. He apparently fired several shots.
Other reports are saying that the alleged second gunman was in camouflage. More on this as details become available.
