Tag: Anastasia De Sousa

  • SCMRPG creator comments on Kimveer Gill

    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?

    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.

    “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.

  • More on the Dawson College shooting

    More on the Dawson College shooting

    Carnage at Montreal campus:

    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.”

    My sentiments exactly.