Sheriff: La. 8th-grader planned school shooting

LAROSE, La. (AP) - A Louisiana middle school student who stormed into a classroom Monday and fired a gunshot over a teacher’s head, then shot himself in a bathroom had detailed plans for a rampage in a journal and suicide note, authorities said.

The 15-year-old student, whose name was not released, fired once around 9 a.m. inside a classroom at Larose-Cut Off Middle School, then shot himself in the head, said Lafourche Parish Sheriff Craig Webre. He was in critical but stable condition. The teacher had never taught the teen.

Webre said investigators found a note describing the boy’s plans to “gear up” before his spree, along with a drawing of how he’d dress. Although he apparently was intent on killing people, he was armed with only four bullets for the .25-caliber, semiautomatic pistol he had taken from his father’s home during the weekend. The boy’s mother noticed he seemed nervous before school, but he said he was just worried about seeing his standardized test results, which were released Monday, Webre said.

About 500 sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders attend the school in a rural community of about 7,000 people, some 45 miles southwest of New Orleans. Webre said the boy had no disciplinary problems at school and hadn’t been in trouble with the law. The teen had no reason to be in the classroom, he said.

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Sheriff: La. 8th-grader planned school shooting

I am NOT trying to defend this little IDIOT, not in any way, but I am seriously of the opinion that what we have here is a case of *Monkey see, monkey do*, in other words, a copycat. This is a kid making some kind of desperate plea for attention.

For one thing, in REAL life, a .25 automatic hardly qualifies you as *geared up*, a .25 automatic is a lot more likely to either jam up on you, or just plain old fashioned piss off whoever you happen to point it at or shoot with it if it does work.

Webre said the boy arrived at the school in uniform - white shirt, khaki pants - but changed into camouflage pants shown in his drawing. In an expletive-laced note, he wrote, “First, I will tell my art class teacher that I had to go to the bathroom. Then I would go to the last stall and ‘gear up.’”

If this weren’t so serious, I would be rolling here. I can only guess, but apparently, this genius believed that having camouflage pants makes him *Billy Bad-Ass* in the flesh. The next thing you know, the anti-gun crowd will be screaming to have camouflage clothing banned from the civilian market.

Coley Gaspard, 14, said he was in his seventh-grade English and reading class when the boy came in. The teen yelled for everyone to get down, cursing at the class.

Nobody moved. Gaspard knew the boy, whom he described as quiet and nice, and thought it was a dramatic enactment for some sort of lesson. Then, he said, the boy walked over and pointed the gun at the teacher, ordering her to say, “Hail Marilyn Manson,” referring to the shock-rock icon, Gaspard said.

I have been forced to use this phrase a few times lately, and once again I believe it to be rather appropriate, I think that boy’s cheese has slid OFF of his cracker. If this kid lives, he needs some serious psychological help. He really IS a threat, to himself, and to others, and IF he gets another opportunity at some point in the future, he may well use this as a learning experience.

The school was scheduled to reopen Tuesday with enhanced security and several counselors on hand.

I understand the additional counselors, and there is a need for increased security as well. In the 1st part of this post I said, *monkey see, monkey do*, and that was NOT merely a flippant remark. Someone from that school may have access to real guns, not just a POS .25 auto, and those persons may be thinking, “You know, I can do a LOT more damage than ol’ so-and-so did”.

That is an all too common mindset it seems, death doesn’t appear to bother some of these kids. After all, since they were 1st able to comprehend anything, they have watched TV shows and movies where hundreds of people are killed, quite violently, and then there’s video games. Most of those are geared to reward the player with the highest number of *kills*. You hit the re-set button and everyone is back to the land of the living and it’s game ON!!

It all comes down to this, personal responsibility, and how far a parent is willing to go to convince their children that what they see on the TV, in movies and on video games is NOT real life, they are only seeing make believe. Kids have got to know, ALL of that MEDIA stuff is fake, violent death is not a game, guns are not for games, and in the REAL world, under most circumstances, you don’t get a do-over after you pull the trigger.