Little Shooters

No, not talking about shots of tequila, although in this dry county today, that might be nice with a little salt and lime.

Instead, this is about something that is one of those events in a person's life where you know exactly what you were doing when it happened. March of 1998, I was sitting at the computer in the local quilt shop, surfing the web, because I didn't have internet service at home yet. (Imagine that.) The talk radio was on, and I was mostly ignoring it because I am not a fan of Rush Limburger. Suddenly there was something that was breaking news, and Rush announced that there had been a shooting at a school...in Jonesboro, Arkansas.

I immediately pulled up the local ABC affiliate's website, and there it was, breaking news that someone had fired shots into a crowd of students outside the Westside Middle School. Police had two suspects in custody. Ambulances were on the way to the scene. This town, our lives, would never be the same. Talk about the end of the innocence, this was it.

We were all stunned, sitting in silence where moments before there had been the cacophony of the modern day quilting bee. We tuned to a local station, and the details began to flesh out the horror. Five dead, many wounded. Four young girls and a teacher. A fire alarm had been pulled, and the entire school had filed outside according to the protocol, and two shooters with deer rifles had picked them off as they came outside. Then the most chilling part of all: the shooters were students at the same school, one 11 and one 13, using rifles stolen from the 11 year old mastermind's grandfather's hunting rifle locker. They had stolen a van, and were going to flee in it, but were apprehended in the woods near the school.

Eleven year old Andrew Golden and thirteen year old Mitchell Johnson had sneaked away from home and gotten the weapons and the van, hid in a nearby wooded area, and waited for the time. Golden ran into the building just after lunch and pulled the fire alarm. He rejoined Johnson, and the two of them began firing at the unsuspecting students and teachers.

I've often wondered what went through the minds of these young boys as they were firing and killing people. Did they think this was sport? Was it just a "video game" to them? Did they have no idea that death is permanent? That you can't say GAME OVER and nothing is the worse for wear? What possessed them to even consider doing this?

Ok, why am I thinking about this now? Because yesterday, Mitchell Johnson turned twenty-one and he was released from prison. State laws cannot hold someone convicted of a crime as a juvenile past their twenty-first birthday. The law was actually amended because of this case from no detention past eighteen. So, today, Mitchell Johnson is a "free" MAN, no longer the weeping thirteen year old who asked for his mama in jail. No one knows if he has truly been released, or where he is headed. It is safe to say that he will not return to this neck of the woods.

Andrew Golden will be released in 2007 when he turns twenty-one.

I just wonder if this is a good thing that they get a clean slate and a fresh start. One part of me says maybe it is because of the Christian concept of forgiveness. But more of me tends to think about the five lives cut short by their callous and calculated juvenile "mischief". Once a sociopath...?

~~~

Not much is being said locally about all this. Hopefully it manages to get past the media circus that surrounded this town. For weeks, there were cable news crews and satellite trucks invading us. A year later, on the anniversary, they were back camped on the town steps. Somehow, a reporter from CNN found his way to the quilt shop where I was trying to piece together some quilt blocks to send to the victims of yet another shooting. He interviewed me while I was sewing. Fortunately (for most), my "news feature on CNN" was pre-empted by the news that the US had invaded Bosnia. Ted Koppel himself did a live town meeting from here. He ambushed the families of the victims, by bringing the mother of one of the shooters in through the back door and putting her on the spot in front of them. Yellow journalism, anyone?

All I could do then, was tie a white ribbon on my mailbox. I thought about putting another one out, but it would not do any more good than it did then.

My thoughts are with the families of the victims, and those who recovered from the physical wounds of the event. My prayers are that these two individuals will truly be "reformed" in mind and spirit, and that the remainder of their lives will be put to some good use, since they were spared further incarceration. Heaven help them.