Society may be creating a generation of massmurderers
It almost happened again. Blood was almost spilled on anotherAmerican campus. Another Columbine-like scenario was stopped justhours before the plan was to be carried out. Only this time it camevery close to hittinghome, literally.
This revolting plan was to take place just 25 minutes away from myfolks’ house at De Anza Junior College which I seriously consideredattending. The only reason I didn’t was because of a rumor aboutPlayboy Magazine voting the campus I eventually went to as havingsome of the best-looking women in the country.
According to police, the plan was to plant bombs all over theCupertino campus and detonate them at lunch time, beginning with thecafeteria and library.
According to the San Jose police department, it was an elaborateplan for mass murder.
It’s a plan that has me dumbfounded. It makes me ask what is wrongwith our youth?
Police arrested the 19-year-old hours before they believed he wasgoing to execute his plan. When they searched his house, which heshares with his parents, they found what they called a”bone-chilling” plan to massacre students. I don’t know if”bone-chilling” can even begin to describe it.
Police found a large amount of ammunition, 30 pipe bombs, some ofwhich were booby-trapped with detonators that would go off if anybodyhandled them, 20 Molotov cocktails, two rifles, a sawed-off shotgun,a sawed-off rifle, a map of the campus marked with locations of wherebombs were to be placed, and a tape recorder that outlined the planand apologized to the press, his family and his friends for what hewas about to do.
Police say he planned to explode bombs packed with nails andshrapnel. San Jose Police spokesman said the bombs were meant to killor maim the maximum amount of people.
Police also found a Web site where he wrote things like “The onlyway to live is to live knowing that nothing is real, nothing is true,and this world we see in front of us is a lie. Kill everything,nothing should survive,” and instructions on how to build a “big ass,lo-tech bomb that will kill at least 100 people.”
He pled not guilty to all 122 felony counts he now faces. Hisattorney says he was indulging in an innocent fantasy and that hedidn’t intend to hurt anybody. That’s a pretty sick fantasy. I havefantasies too, but they don’t involve bombs and weapons and massmurder. They usually involve things like hot tubs, bikinis and thegirls from Alpha Phi.
When I first began doing my research for this article I wasoutraged. I was pissed, and I wanted answers. But the moreinformation I gathered, and the more familiar I became, the morethose feelings dissipated.
Feelings of sorrow, of sadness, depression and betrayal overcameme. I can’t explain why I felt this way or why things like thishappen. Maybe there are no answers as to why. What I do know is thatsomething is wrong and something needs to be done about it. What isour generation after? What can put an end to this madness? Betterparenting, stronger role models, wiser leaders and a piece of mindcan definitely help generations to follow.
–Jesse Weidenfeld is a journalism senior. Send e-mail todaletter2000@hotmail.com.
–This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of TheDaily Aztec.
