Tag: Anastasia De Sousa

  • Blame only one

    Kimveer Gill — perhaps he was just evil:

    Kimveer Gill is not society’s victim:

    The first article is from a right-wing Canadian website. Wait, there are right-wingers in Canada? Just kidding Canucks. And the second article is from Kimveer Gill’s high school English teacher. Both articles are along the same lines.

    First from the right-wing article. While I don’t agree necessarily with how they got their point across I do agree with their point…

    More importantly, Kimveer Gill will never be blamed for the actions of Kimveer Gill. The notion that Gill was just an evil man and that he and not the gun registry, violent video games and the Goth culture were responsible for the carnage will be rejected by the masses as being too simplistic; too George Bush-like. In a society where many people can’t recognize the evil of Islamofascism, it is too much to expect people to recognize the evil of what was once Kimveer Gill.

    In the end, all that was responsible for the actions of Kimveer Gill was Kimveer Gill.

    And now the article from Gill’s teacher, one Ms. Freda Lewkowicz…

    But the litany of blame omitted someone, and there’s only one person who should be blamed for Kimveer Gill’s school rampage on Sept. 14.

    Only one angel of death can dance on the head of this pin of sorrow and that is Kimveer Gill.

    He is responsible for shooting 20 students and killing 18-year-old Anastasia De Sousa. He should not be permitted to become a victim.

    It’s great to see that some people still actually believe in personal responsibility.

  • Forces of evil in a bozo nightmare

    Gun control won’t protect us from the losers:

    This is actually an article about Canadian gun control but I couldn’t resist these quotes…

    Here he is again, the loser with a grudge and a gun slithering up from the basement of a middle-class home where he fermented his immaturity, anger and resentments to full and deadly potency “interacting” with like creatures on the Internet.

    His mom says he was “a good son.”

    The neighbours’ comments — the banality of this would be screamingly funny were it not for the horror of the event — amount to this: He was quiet and kept to himself.

    Aren’t they always.

    His resentment and anger are perfectly understandable.

    He’s a loser and losers spend their lives being angry and resentful.

    It’s one of the reasons they’re losers. Life is something that happens to them. They aren’t something that happens to life.

    They aren’t achievers.

    Worst of all, he knows he’s a loser, but failing the courage or will to do something about it and actually change, he decides to write his name in the pages of our times with gunfire, and paint a final statement with the innocent blood of students — young people working toward successful futures.

    His victims are everything he is not.

    The ultimate proof he’s a loser: His final statement, his final moments in life are desperately unoriginal. Just another loser in a long list of losers. The perpetrators of Columbine and Taber and all the others.

    He was 25 years old.

    Who among us is still so much an angry adolescent at 25?

    He’s a loser baby, and somebody killed him.

    Don’t be a loser.

  • Kimveer Gill’s former classmates speak

    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.

  • A view inside Gill’s mind

    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 that Kimveer Gill took the coward’s way out

    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.

  • More expert opinions

    Blog reveals ‘poster boy’ for school shooters:

    One more expert that 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.

  • Another expert opinion

    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.

  • Vampirefreaks community reacts

    Vampirefreaks.com pulls gunman’s profile:

    The Vampirefreaks community has reacted to the fact that Kimveer Gill was among their membership…

    Kimveer Gill, also known as Trench, pictured on the vampirefreaks.com website. Administrators pulled his profile from the site this afternoon.

    Users of the website Vamperfreaks.com are defending the site following the shooting rampage at a Montreal college by a frequent visitor to the site.

    “Yeah, there’s been a couple incidents before with people on the site but the site itself did not make those people do the things they have done,” says a message board contributor identified as Michelley. “ This site does not condone murder or suicide. Blame the man at fault here. The shooter. Not the site. The site did not put the gun in his hand and say ‘go kill people at school.’”

    “I offer my condolences to the victims and their families, it really is a tragic event,” writes Jet. “However, we do not condone or influence this type of behavior in any way. Just because someone goes around shooting people and happens to be a member of vampirefreaks, doesn’t mean that this website has influenced him to do such a horrible thing. The goth scene is a very friendly, nurturing, non-violent community and we are very supportive of our users and do not condone any illegal activities.”

    An adherent of Goth culture, he had a profile on Vampirefreaks.com under the name Trench.

    After his identity became known, his website was inundated with angry comments from other Goth followers, such as: “I hope you’re burning in hell, you sick f—.” Website administrators deleted his profile early this afternoon.

  • SCMRPG creator comments on Kimveer Gill

    Yesterday I said that I had e-mailed Super Columbine Massacre RPG creator Danny Ledonne looking for a comment on the fact that Dawson College shooter Kimveer Gill played his game. This was his response…

    I’ve been fielding press on this one all day. Interesting to note that while Kimveer listed dozens of games as favorites, “SCMRPG” is the one listed in the press. On some level, they are proving my point for me: video games are readily-made scapegoats for violent behavior… this guy was 25 years old and probably needed some serious help.

    My one regret is that he never contacted me so I could suggest a different course of action.

  • What would we do without experts?

    School shooters resist telltale patterns:

    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. I can give you names, Jeff Weise (Red Lake), Johnny Casas (Quartz Hill), Joe Nee (Marshfield), and the list goes on.

    “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.

    Again thanks to Harding for the article.