School Shooting in Chardon, Ohio Leaves us With Only Questions

REUTERS/Aaron Josefczyk

School Shootings: Remembering Chardon 

By Jeff Bennington

Monday, Feb 27, 2012 

Just when you think school violence is slowing down, another killer comes along. T.J. Lane went on a shooting rampage in Chardon High School in Chardon, Ohio, killing two students and wounding three others. What is even more heartbreaking to me, is that this happened no more than thirty minutes from my hometown of Aurora, Ohio. I'm deeply saddened and sick about this. The way the events played out is absolutely frightening. The worst part is that this is just the beginning of this nightmare for the wounded, families, witnesses, the injured and the community in general.

According to Wikipedia, the first recorded incident of school violence occurred on July 26, 1764, in what is known as the Enoch Brown Massacre where a group of Indians retaliated against the community in what is now Franklin County, Pennsylvania. According to David Dixon ten students were scalped along with their teacher in a single-room schoolhouse. All died except one student who escaped(1).

The first recorded school shooting occurred in 1871 when Chauncey Barnes shot and killed Anna Dwight, who rejected him as a suitor(2). He then committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. Since that tragic day, there have been many more school shootings. I never heard of a school shooting until that horrific day on April 20th, 1999 when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 15 (including themselves) and injured 24 others in Littleton, Colorado. To me, that was a day that marked a turn in my world-view that has since been reinforced due to the many acts of violence that have followed.

School shootings didn’t start in Columbine and they haven’t stopped since. 

Did you know there have been more acts of school violence after the Columbine massacre than those that occurred the entire century before? That’s right, there have been over 100 acts of violence, including shootings, stabbings and other methods in American schools after Columbine. 
The worst attack in school shooting history occurred on a college campus in Islamabad, Pakistan in 2007 leaving 154 students dead and another 44 injured(3). Closer to home, there was the Virginia Tech shooting among others and a school shooting as recent as February 7, 2011 in Youngstown, Ohio where one student died and 11 were injured(4). And then on March 25, 2011, in my current home state, there was a school shooting in Martinsville, Indiana where a 15-year old shot another student(5). The most recently publicized shooting occurred in Rio de Janiero where 11 elementary students were gunned down(6). Of course there are many, many more that I didn’t mention.

The point is... school shootings are an ever-growing reality for us and for our children. They shoot fear into our hearts, but do they still shock us like they did in the 1999 Columbine shooting? Our society has grown numb to many things, but I hope we never become so calloused that we shrug off this disease that has infected the entire human race.

The death toll is staggering. The number of students who will live the rest of their lives with scars, ptsd, or in wheelchairs is frightfully unfathomable. School violence is an enormous problem and yet the solution is elusive because we cannot predict the future, and according to the U.S Secret Service, it’s just too hard to profile a school shooter; their profiles are too varied(7).

As a novelist, I feel a responsibility to include social issues like school shootings into my work, because the world needs to do less escaping and more watching. When it comes to our kids I believe we need to change in a few areas. Here are a few:

• Focus less on ourselves and pay attention to what’s going on around us. It’s not enough to hear the news that a school shooting occurred at your school and then suddenly become passionate about the cause. When that day comes, it could be too late. Your son or daughter could be the next victim, and so could mine, an absolutely frightening and unimaginable thought.

• Be aware that there are hurting children in every school system that are on the brink of losing it and they have learned that violence has become the attention-getter-of-choice. We need to find them, listen to them, discover the source of their pain and get them help. 

• Reject school bullying policies that are too lenient and ineffective. It's amazing how fast the government responds to a new flu strand and yet we can't seem to respond to the bullying epidemic that is spreading like wildfire.

• Understand that human nature cannot be put in a box and that students who are bullied are absolutely unpredictable; their frontal lobes are not fully developed, leaving them susceptible to reckless and impulsive decision making.

• Put an end to bullying now. I’m not just talking about teenage bullying; I’m talking about adult and workplace bullying as well. Children act according to the examples we set. I often sign my books by writing “Bullies Suck!” or “Life is short, don’t be a bully” but you know, bullies aren’t the only ones who suck. If I watch someone getting bullied or mistreated and do nothing about it, I’m just as guilty!

Passivity is killing us.
I’m not an expert on school violence and bullying, but I do know that people enjoy their personal space—their comfort zones. I do too. The problem is, when we live passively, life begins to get turbulent around us and we get caught off guard when reality smacks us in the face. We have to proactively investigate our children’s friends and the particulars of our kid’s social life. We have to have open lines of communication. We have to listen, and we have to find ways of helping instead of cowering to fears, ignoring the red flags and silent expressions of distress.

Ultimately, every school shooter, every bully and every victim has a story to tell. There is almost always a trail of warning signs, patterns and cries for help that were somehow overlooked. Unfortunately, knowing the stories after the violence occurs doesn’t do anyone any good. The dying spirit of a young person will only leave so many breadcrumbs on their trail to destruction before they implode and decide to take matters into their own hands. 

According to the current trends, there will be more school shootings this month and more this year than ever. Before we let another massacre hit the news, will you do something to create change? I’m not exactly sure what that is, but we have to talk about it. We have to call out the bullies. We have to reach out to the lost ones. We have to do something! What we’ve been doing isn’t working.

I believe we need to ask if this is a spiritual matter or if this is simply a matter of policy? In my opinion, the human condition is too complicated to fix by tweaking the numbers. We can’t leave this to government and bureaucratic red-tapers. Hearts and souls are not logarithmic or statutory; they’re tender and hardened and everything in between. This is a matter of personal contact and interaction, a matter of the soul, literally in our own backyards.

As a writer, I’m trying to do my part. I’m creating the impetus for a discussion and I've written a book that I hope will bring an awareness to the many issues that surround bullying and school shootings. 


What about you? Will you continue the conversation? Will you Twitter this article or share it on Facebook or forward it in an email? Will you talk about this with your children? Or will the next February 27 become just another day? We’ve had twelve tears since the Columbine massacre to think and act and change? How are we different? 

Remember Chardon, and pray it never happens again.

Written by Jeff Bennington, the author of Reunion, a supernatural thriller that addresses school shootings, bullying and the long-term effects of post-traumatic stress disorder. 

 

<sub>For more information about the shooting in Chardon, go here.


1</sub>Dixon, David(2005). Never Come to Peace Again: Pontiac's Uprising and the Fate of the British Empire in North America. University of Oklahoma Press)

₂New York Times. Retrieved 2011-03-12.

₃BBC News. 2007-07-19. Retrieved 2008-05-13.

₄ABC.News. February 7, 2011.

₅Indystar.com. March 25, 2011.

₆Associated Press and Salon. April 7, 2011.

₇THE FINAL REPORT AND FINDINGS OF THE SAFE SCHOOL INITIATIVE: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE PREVENTION OF SCHOOL ATTACKS  IN THE UNITED STATES, June 2004.

The Story Behind the Teen Killer

I remember watching the news on April 20, 1999 and the days and weeks that followed, disturbed and shell-shocked at what had happened in Littleton, Colorado. 

I stared at my television, absolutely distraught, watching helicopters flying overhead and the terrorized faces of the students as they wandered outside seeking and offering comfort. Do you remember that? Do you remember how you felt?

Do you remember that cold, heavy feeling that fell from your chest, into your gut, weighing you down like you were carrying the universe on your shoulders?

I do.

I felt sick.

And that’s where the idea of my latest novel, Reunion, came to life. I started to think about the survivors and what their lives would be like ten or twenty years later. I wondered what the long-term consequences would be. I wondered if they’d be able to cope, to live normal lives, to have normal relationships. I often thought about the immediate break, for lack of a better word, that they must have experienced as their lives, young and forward looking, changed in an instant—literally in a flash.

Those wonderings haunted me for years, reminding me again and again, after the other shootings that followed, including those in my home states of Indiana and Ohio. Columbine wasn’t the first and there have been over a hundred since then, in the United States alone. Still, I don’t think we’ve grown numb to these atrocities and I hope we never do.

Fast forward to 2007.
The Virginia Tech shooting reminded me of that dark feeling once again, nurturing my questions, feeding my muse. Then in 2009, my questions finally began to take root. David Ray, the killer and troubled teen in Reunion started to develop in my mind. From there, the story began to unfold and the other characters took on their own personalities.

My wonderings started to stir the character stew boiling inside my head. Who were David’s victims? Why did he do it? What was his state of mind? Was he bullied? Who bullied him? What were the students doing the morning of the shooting? What were they thinking the day their lives turned upside down? How did their futures deviate from that moment forward? 

Jared Cano, Teen arrested for suspected bomb threat.

Just this week, Tampa police arrested expelled student, Jared Cano, for threatening to detonate an explosive devise at Freedom High School. Can you imagine the horrific nightmare that would've played out if Jared had succeeded?

Thank God he didn't!
Thank God he's locked up and facing many, many years in prison.

Jared is unfathomably similar to David Ray, the young killer in Reunion, and I can't imagine the damage someone like David could do in real life.

After learning about Jared's plot, I've returned to my wonderings and I'm convinced more than ever that  the topic of school shootings, bullying and school violence in general must be addressed not only in our daily lives but in literature as well.

But creating a realistic and powerful novel that addresses so many issues isn't easy.

I researched PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) and the public lives of some of the survivors so I could understand, as best I could, how they've suffered. I filled my black book with notes and names and timelines and general goals for each chapter, but then I let the twists and turns happen in their own way as the characters lived out the tale according to their design and the complexities that are inherent with PTSD.

Reunion is not only a novel about the dark, supernatural side of humanity; it’s a story about finding hope in horrific circumstances that appear hopeless. It's a story about retracing your life when it veers off course. Reunion is my second born as far as novels go. I would practically die for her. She’s tender. She’s dark. She’s horrific. She's romantic. She’s full of hope and beauty, and frightening at the same time.

And isn't that what life is like? Thank God it's not always tragic and that some nightmares never come to fruition.

If you read Reunion and recover from the triumphantly chilling experience, I hope you walk away with more than a good read. I didn't write it simply to entertain. I wrote Reunion to create a better understanding of school violence and bullying and to offer hope—hope that this life is not all there is, and to leave you grateful for the precious few moments we are given.

Thanks for reading.

Why not get your copy of Reunion at Amazon, Barnes & Noble or anywhere books are sold online? 

- Jeff Bennington

School Shootings: Remembering Columbine.

School Shootings: Remembering Columbine 

By Jeff Bennington author of Reunion

According to Wikipedia, the first recorded incident of school violence occurred on July 26, 1764, in what is known as the Enoch Brown Massacre where a group of Indians retaliated against the community in what is now Franklin County, Pennsylvania. According to David Dixon ten students were scalped along with their teacher in a single-room schoolhouse. All died except one student who escaped(1).

The first recorded school shooting occurred in 1871 when Chauncey Barnes shot and killed Anna Dwight, who rejected him as a suitor(2). He then committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. Since that tragic day, there have been many more school shootings. I never heard of a school shooting until that horrific day on April 20th, 1999 when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 15 (including themselves) and injured 24 others in Littleton, Colorado. To me, that was a day that marked a turn in my world-view that has since been reinforced due to the many acts of violence that have followed.

School shootings didn’t start in Columbine and they haven’t stopped since. 

Did you know there have been more acts of school violence after the Columbine massacre than those that occurred the entire century before? That’s right, there have been over 100 acts of violence, including shootings, stabbings and other methods in American schools after Columbine. 


The worst attack in school shooting history occurred on a college campus in Islamabad, Pakistan in 2007 leaving 154 students dead and another 44 injured(3). Closer to home, there was the Virginia Tech shooting among others and a school shooting as recent as February 7, 2011 in Youngstown, Ohio where one student died and 11 were injured(4). And then on March 25, 2011, in my home state, there was a school shooting in Martinsville, Indiana where a 15-year old shot another student(5). The most recently publicized shooting occurred in Rio de Janiero where 11 elementary students were gunned down(6). Of course there are many, many more that I didn’t mention.

The point is... school shootings are an ever-growing reality for us and for our children. They shoot fear into our hearts, but do they still shock us like they did in 1999? Our society has grown numb to many things, but I hope we never become so calloused that we shrug off this disease that has infected the entire human race.

The death toll is staggering. The number of students who will live the rest of their lives with scars or in wheelchairs is frightfully unfathomable. School violence is an enormous problem and yet the solution is elusive because we cannot predict the future, and according to the U.S Secret Service, it’s just too hard to profile a school shooter; their profiles are too varied(7).

As a novelist, I feel a responsibility to include social issues like school shootings into my work, because the world needs to do less escaping and more watching. When it comes to our kids I believe we need to change in a few areas. Here are a few:

• Focus less on ourselves and pay attention to what’s going on around us. It’s not enough to hear the news that a school shooting occurred at your school and then suddenly become passionate about the cause. When that day comes, it could be too late. Your son or daughter could be the next victim, and so could mine, an absolutely frightening and unimaginable thought.

• Be aware that there are hurting children in every school system that are on the brink of losing it and they have learned that violence has become the attention-getter-of-choice. We need to find them, listen to them, discover the source of their pain and get them help. 

• Reject school bullying policies that are too lenient and ineffective. It's amazing how fast the government responds to a new flu strand and yet we can't seem to respond to the bullying epidemic that is spreading like wildfire.

• Understand that human nature cannot be put in a box and that students who are bullied are absolutely unpredictable; their frontal lobes are not fully developed, leaving them susceptible to reckless and impulsive decision making.

• Put an end to bullying now. I’m not just talking about teenage bullying; I’m talking about adult and workplace bullying as well. Children act according to the examples we set. I often sign my books by writing “Bullies Suck!” or “Life is short, don’t be a bully” but you know, bullies aren’t the only ones who suck. If I watch someone getting bullied or mistreated and do nothing about it, I’m just as guilty!

Passivity is killing us.
I’m not an expert on school violence and bullying, but I do know that people enjoy their personal space—their comfort zones. I do too. The problem is, when we live passively, life begins to get turbulent around us and we get caught off guard when reality smacks us in the face. We have to proactively investigate our children’s friends and the particulars of our kid’s social life. We have to have open lines of communication. We have to listen, and we have to find ways of helping instead of cowering to fears, ignoring the red flags and silent expressions of distress.

Ultimately, every school shooter, every bully and every victim has a story to tell. There is almost always a trail of warning signs, patterns and cries for help that were somehow overlooked. Unfortunately, knowing the stories after the violence occurs doesn’t do anyone any good. The dying spirit of a young person will only leave so many breadcrumbs on their trail to destruction before they implode and decide to take matters into their own hands. 

According to the current trends, there will be more school shootings this month and more this year than ever. Before we let another massacre hit the news, will you do something to create change? I’m not exactly sure what that is, but we have to talk about it. We have to call out the bullies. We have to reach out to the lost ones. We have to do something! What we’ve been doing isn’t working.

I believe we need to ask if this is a spiritual matter or if this is simply a matter of policy? In my opinion, the human condition is too complicated to fix by tweaking the numbers. We can’t leave this to government and bureaucratic red-tapers. Hearts and souls are not logarithmic or statutory; they’re tender and hardened and everything in between. This is a matter of personal contact and interaction, a matter of the soul, literally in our own backyards.

As a writer, I’m trying to do my part. I’m creating the impetus for a discussion and I've written a book that I hope will bring an awareness to the many issues that surround bullying and school shootings. What about you? Will you continue the conversation? Will you Twitter this article or share it on Facebook or forward it in an email? Will you talk about this with your children? Or will April 20th, become just another day awaiting the next murderous headline? We’ve had twelve tears since the Columbine massacre to think and act and change? How are we different?  How are you different?

Remember Columbine, and pray it never happens again.

Written by Jeff Bennington, the author of REUNION, a supernatural thriller that addresses school shootings, bullying and the long-term effects of trauma. Available wherever books are sold online and in stores.

₁Dixon, David(2005). Never Come to Peace Again: Pontiac's Uprising and the Fate of the British Empire in North America. University of Oklahoma Press)

₂New York Times. Retrieved 2011-03-12.

₃BBC News. 2007-07-19. Retrieved 2008-05-13.

₄ABC.News. February 7, 2011.

₅Indystar.com. March 25, 2011.

₆Associated Press and Salon. April 7, 2011.

₇THE FINAL REPORT AND FINDINGS OF THE SAFE SCHOOL INITIATIVE: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE PREVENTION OF SCHOOL ATTACKS  IN THE UNITED STATES, June 2004.