The School Shooting Lie—no warning signs This is the 22nd school shooting in the U.S. this year where someone was killed or injured. (Since Columbine, 128 dead.) The shooting is then followed by a spokesman stating (as the Texas Governor did in Sante Fe), “There were no warning signs.” When someone starts wearing Nazi medals, isn’t that a bit of a warning sign? Or when someone posts “Born to Kill” on their Facebook page days earlier. Or when someone who was once a good student is now struggling and he starts wearing a Columbine-style trench coat to school, regardless of the weather. I just listened to an analyst on CNN state, “Not every angry and rebellious teenager is going to be a school shooter.” That is true. He might be a sex offender. (60% of all of the sex offenses committed in the U.S. and in Minnesota are committed by high school dropouts.) Or maybe he’ll kill someone driving high or drunk. We do know that angry and rebellious teenagers are in trouble and need help. So instead of making excuses for not doing anything about it, how about addressing the problem? How many school shootings is enough? Every single victim’s life means something. I’ve presented on this very issue at the state corrections conference, the MN Psychological Association convention and the state social work conference this year. Social Workers, Therapists and Corrections Agents understand, but we need funding to help troubled students and we need programs that are going to be accountable by demonstrating success. The 1st question people ask will be: How do you measure success? Easy. Run a criminal history check on every student who has dropped out of your school in the last 5 years. 5 years from the time the new intervention is implemented, those numbers better be down or your program is cut. At CORE we’ve developed programs that address learning how to handle frustration, learning responsible sexual behavior, developing a career, and both understanding values and living by them. As long as they keep saying “There were no warnings signs,” we can pretend that it isn’t our problem. The adult offenders we provide services to at CORE consistently say, “If I would have had this intervention when I was 15, I wouldn’t have committed my crime.” I guarantee you that if you talk to teachers in the schools of the shooters, there were warning signs. There was simply no process in place to address them. When these students struggle, counseling is suggested, but the parents typically don’t follow through or the student drops out. How about implementing a mandatory program with staff that will stop at home to make sure issues are honestly being addressed? We certainly have programs that can monitor their internet use. This is a problem with a solution. It’s a matter of implementing it. I am sending this email to every congressman and senator in Minnesota. I am open to helping develop a solution. Monster of the Andes (This is the summary of the life of a terrible person. Would we allow 110 children to be killed in the U.S. without doing anything?) Pedro Alonso López (born October 8, 1948) is a Colombian serial killer, who was sentenced for killing 110 girls across Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador. López became known as the "Monster of the Andes" in 1980, when he led police to 53 graves in Ecuador, the victims all girls around nine to twelve years old. In 1983, he was found guilty of the murder of 110 girls in Ecuador. He further confessed to an additional 240 murders in Peru and Colombia. An A&E Biography documentary reports that he was released from an Ecuadorian prison on August 31, 1994, then rearrested an hour later as an illegal immigrant and handed over to Colombian authorities, who charged him with a 20-year-old murder. He was declared insane and held in the psychiatric wing of a Bogotá hospital. In 1998, he was declared sane and released on $50 bail, subject to certain conditions. He later absconded. The same documentary says that Interpol released an advisory for his re-arrest by Colombian authorities over a fresh murder in 2002. As of 2018 his whereabouts are unclear. Currently there is mixed information of his whereabouts; one citation says he is in prison but does not state when and where he is incarcerated. Other articles referenced in the source/citations said his whereabouts are unknown (2018). Early Life Pedro López's father, Midardo Reyes, was a member of the Colombian Conservative Party during La Violencia, Colombia's civil war. Reyes cheated on his wife with a prostitute named Benilda López De Casteneda, who became pregnant by Reyes. On April 4, 1948, when Benilda was three months pregnant with López, Reyes was killed from a gunshot wound while defending a grocery store from a rebellious mob. Six months later, Pedro was born in Santa Isabel as the seventh of thirteen children. According to Pedro López, witnessing acts of prostitution while growing up had disturbing effects on his psyche. Lopez sexually abused his younger sister in 1957, when he was eight years old, and his mother kicked him out of the family home. Following this, Pedro Lopez ran off to Bogotá, Colombia's capital city. He was picked up by a man, taken to a deserted house and repeatedly sodomized. At age twelve, he was taken in by an American family and enrolled in a school for orphans. He ran away after two years because he was allegedly molested by a male teacher. Lopez was one of the homeless children known as “gamines.” He joined a gang and smoked basuco, an impure form of cocaine. At 18, he stole cars for a living and sold the cars to local chop shops, which ultimately resulted in his incarceration. Arrest During his incarceration, he reported that he was brutally gang-raped by at least two men and in retaliation killed his attackers with a makeshift knife. It doesn’t appear that he received any extra time for the murders. López said that after his jail term, he started murdering young girls in Peru. He claimed that, by 1978, he had killed over 100 of them. Lopez was caught by the Ayachucos, a community in Peru, when he attempted to kidnap a nine year old. His captors submitted him to tribal law which proposed burying him alive. A western missionary convinced tribe members to turn Lopez over to the Peruvian police, who promptly deported him to Colombia without truly considering the crimes inflicted upon natives and the danger he posed to society. He was released and made his way to Ecuador, where scores of girls began to go missing as well. He bragged of killing about three girls a week in Ecuador. López said, "I like the girls in Ecuador, they are more gentle and trusting, more innocent.” Families tried to find the missing girls on their own. In the Ambato region in 1980, vendor Carlina Ramon and a group of her peers caught him in Ecuador when he attempted to lure Ramon’s daughter from a busy market. Pedro Lopez targeted girls between the ages of 8 and 12 in Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. I think it’s important to show pictures of victims to appreciate them, far more than the terrible person and the terrible justice system that dealt with him. Most of his victims were of indigenous heritage. López’s crimes came to light in the 1980 after a landslide in Ecuador exposed the bodies of some of López’s earlier victims. The discovery prompted an investigation and search for more bodies by authorities. López preyed on the kindness of the young girls by pretending to be a salesman who needed directions. Once Lopez was in police custody, he initially refused to cooperate with authorities until investigator Pastor Cordova Gudino went undercover as a fellow inmate. Gaining Lopez’s trust, Gudino was able to get a confession from Lopez as well as details about sites where the victims were buried. He confessed to over three hundred murders. The police only believed him when a flash flood uncovered a mass grave containing many of his victims. He was arrested in 1980, but was freed by the government in Ecuador at the end of 1994. On July 31, 1981, 33-year-old Lopez pled guilty to the murders of 57 girls and was imprisoned in Ambato, Ecuador. Because of Ecuador’s laws, Lopez only received a maximum sentence of sixteen years, much to the public’s enormous outrage. (Ecuador would later change its maximum prison sentence to 25 years.). In an interview from his prison cell, López described himself as "the man of the century" and said he was being released for "good behavior." On August 31, 1994, Lopez was released from Garcia Moreno Prison after serving fourteen years, having been released two years early for good behavior. He was summarily deported to Colombia, where authorities there attempted to convict him of a two-decades-old murder. But instead Lopez was declared insane and, in 1995, institutionalized in a psychiatric facility. In February 1998, he was declared sane and released under $50 bail with additional stipulations. He visited his elderly mother, who said that he asked for his inheritance and then, upon being informed of her poverty, sold her sole bed and chair to people on the street. Lopez then vanished, with concerns having risen about his possible connection to a 2002 murder. His whereabouts are unknown. When you read about this travesty of justice, consider that they know Lopez killed 110 children, and South America just let him go. We know 128 children have been killed in the United States in school shootings, and we are still not doing anything about it. We can’t just let it go, and think we handle threats to children better. Time for some good news! My nephew, Scotty Stocco, won the Minced competition hosted by Sprout in Little Falls last week. Minced is advertised as “the finer version of Chopped.” Scotty is entertaining, and a great guy! He’s the Chef at the Iron Range Eatery in Crosby and I encourage you to check his skills out. At Sprout the chefs were required to include three mystery ingredients into the timed appetizer, entree and dessert rounds -- ingredients sourced from Mi Pueblito Market and Restaurant in Long Prairie, as part of the event’s celebration of Latin cuisine. In the end, Scotty came out on top in both the entrée and the final dessert round with his winning dessert combination of dragon fruit custard and purple hominy brittle topped with toasted coconut and pork crackling. And in even better news… Branden and Nicolette Deal had a baby daughter, Andrea. They are joined at home with their daughter Kaycee now. Thank you God, for another wonderful gift! Quotes: (More Mitch Hedberg) I read last year that MTV's Real World got 40,000 applications. That's amazing, man... such an even number. If a drink was really ice cold, it would be impossible to drink. I did a radio interview. The DJs first question was "Who are you?" I had to think, "Is this guy really deep or did I drive to the wrong station?" You know there's a fishing show on TV? They catch the fish, but then let it go. They apparently don't want to eat the fish, but they do want to make it late for something. I walked by a dry cleaner at 3am, and the sign said "Sorry we're closed." You don't have to be sorry; it's 3am and you're a dry cleaner. It would be ridiculous for me to expect you to be open. I'm not gonna walk in at 10am and say "Hey, I walked by at 3, you guys were closed. Somebody owes me an apology." Thanks for listening, Frank In the 1960’s some believed that the year 2000 would bring a new understanding of love, light and respect for humanity. As the song says, “Harmony and understanding. Sympathy and Trust Abounding.” If you can get through the first couple minutes of the song I love the ending with horns and amazing bass line.
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AuthorFrank F. Weber is a forensic psychologist specializing in homicide and sexual and physical assault cases. He uses his unique understanding of how predator’s think, knowledge of victim trauma, actual court cases, and passion for writing true crime thrillers. His Award Winning books include "Murder Book" (2017) "The I-94 Murders" (2018) "Last Call" (2019) and "Lying Close" (September 2020). Archives
April 2024
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