CA Killing

One young woman who was in the path of the gunman's line of fire on Friday, May 23, was clearly shook up.  She described the scene:  she was alone on the street, no one else was around, it was quiet, and the gunman spoke to her first.  Then he started firing, and as she put it, she hadn't even started running yet.  Somehow the bullets missed her completely.  She wasn't even grazed.

In something that took no more than a couple of seconds, her life will never be the same.  She will begin asking questions that in her young life weren't necessary as she walked on that street in a California college town.

Why not me?
Why did the bullets miss?
Why did he want to shoot me?
Why was I all alone?
What is my purpose in life?

In other words, she will question everything because of what happened in those few seconds, when his hatred and her bewilderment collided.  She will especially ask these questions because six other people didn't get that chance.  Their lives ended in a hail of gunfire without warning and without reason.

She will never want to be out on a street alone for a long, long time.  She will wake up at night in a sweat from terrible dreams.  She will cry at the least little thing.  She will cry very hard at the memorial services for the six because she has no idea why she wasn't one of them.

The gunman, whom everyone is trying to ignore as much as possible so as not to give him the attention he so clearly wanted, certainly had problems from a young age.  He describes himself as being consumed with envy and jealousy and hated going to movies because he would see couples and get angry because he didn't have a girlfriend.

His brother who escaped death himself because the gunman saved him from drowning in the family pool was on his list of targets.  His roommates were also on the list and he was successful in wiping them out.

The police came to the house in April, I think they said, because his parents asked them to check on the young man.  The guns and ammunition were a scant few steps away from the officers as they questioned him. 

They say he was a sociopath and that he was incapable of feeling for others, for having empathy.  He never thought that he belonged and in the end he took his own life.

I don't have an ending for this blog other than to say that as a society we are moving farther away from one another rather than closer.  Young people are especially affected by this, because of the media, computers, phones.

It does give one pause, doesn't it?