Few people have any way of knowing when a given person (even a close family member) is about to go sideways. Jealousy hardly seems like a worthy motive, but he might have justified it in his mind. And had there been anything overt, many law enforcement agencies require psychological screenings as part of their employment process.
I hope someday psychology will become an exact enough science that society will be able to diagnose potential freakout cases before they freak out, and get them the help they need.
Until then, Jesse's right; it might as well be a tornado.
Much of my psychological need to believe in an afterlife comes from a need to believe such victims are going to get a fair shake, and indeed so the perps will get the help they need [I think Hell is a "hospital" for sick souls, not a dungeon, for it is not God's will that any should perish.]
The fundies will probably say he was possessed by the Devil. Not that I'd put money on some malevolent noncorporeal entity being responsible, but truth be told, it makes as much sense as any other explanation one might propose. 
I assume that's a picture of the guy? It's disturbing that he looks so damn normal.
John D. its the normal looking ones that you have to worry the most about, they bottle up the tension and agression instead of letting it vent through aperance.
Since I'm in Wisconsin, let me say that this has really upset folks over here. It's been a serious bolt out of the blue.
This didn't happen in the Madison environs, but Crandon is over 200 miles from Milwaukee.
One of my students recently turned in a paper writing about how a jealous guy socked him in the jaw because he was talking--just talking nonchalantly--to his ex-girlfriend.
The student has since lost weight from the extent of his injury and has lost time from classwork.
This is still a fairly rural state. I've found that young white men around here get attached really early to women and girls, sometimes from junior high. They're married before you know it and popping kiddies. Sometimes, one or two is the first generation (out of a dairy, farming, or lumberjack family of up to 12) that has even considered going to college.
I know the sheriff is really tripping over the fact that this young idiot was given a gun from his department, and then he went completely off his rock within a week. They may have to institute some better safeguards, like a psychiatric report, in the future.
But cops have been known to go off on wives, sweethearts and girlfriends, even their children, *especially if they leave them.*
I feel sorry for these young people who were killed, and their families. One was a mere 14-year-old. All they were doing was having pizza and watching movies.
Lawd help the sheriff's deputy.
Just a typical day in Baghdad -- same shooter, different victims.
remember small town wisconson is a more holsom and safe enviroment to rasie children.
sorry, i get that line foisted on me by my cheesehead sister-in-law often. I was in the chicago suburbers and seh couldn't understand why we would chose to live tehre instead of small town wisconson. I started a little family drama when I explained my reasonings at a family gathering. we had better schools, lower drugs, binge drinking, teenage pregnancy rate then small town wisconson. The major empolyers for 18 - 30 year old females wasn't the two loacl strip clubs.
Look there is only two things to do in small town america for youths , get drunk/stoned/high and have sex. thats it. remember they are moer holsum cause they have a church on every other corner, kitty corner to the strip clubs.
Moonglum,
I hear ya. I hate it when some hayseed rattles on about how unsafe NYC is. However, you don't have kids with guns shooting up schools, and dumb shit like this happens with FAR less frequency. Add in the vast difference in population density and the contrast is shocking.
Jen: I allways love pointing out that her daughters HS graduating class and mine (we are only 5 years apart, my wife is 15 years younger then here nearist siblings, so my sister in law is almost my fathers age)had the exact same number of teenage mothers as mine. hers was a calss of 75, mine was a calss of 600. the difrence in RATE is mind bogiling.
I am not shocked that this happend in small town WI, small town america, women are still treated as porperty, and well at 17 - 18 just out of highschool they are expected to get married and start haveign kids. in fact i have heard stories from a lot of girls escapeing south central wi with stories of how there family/comunity is presuering them to settle down adn start a family at 18, or how they are treated as old maids, people feelig nsorry for them if they are no married by 24. The only other place i have seen this is utah.
Moonglum,
Spot on. I have lived in both environments that you speak of and the drug culture in small towns is pretty intense. They don't have the more expensive designer drugs but these are the communities were meth has run rampant over the past decade.
Small town people sometimes have a pretty big inferiority complex that clouds them from the reality that their community is no safer than anyone else's.
Moonglum, Jen:
Dead on. I went to school at Whitney Young Magnet in Chicago about 4 blocks from the Robert Taylor homes and right down the street from UI Circle. Folks from the neighborhood (Marquette Park) would shudder when the address was mentioned and suburbanites would go pale. Of course I had a lot more trouble in the neighborhood than at school and it's surroundings. Later when I lived in Rome, NY all the big tough wingnuts were convinced that you'd die instantly upon stepping foot in New York City. In the meantime Rome was ringed with prisons and the state had a policy of pushing ex-cons to settle in the area.
Even now, I had to point out L.A. City Hall to a friend and lifelong SoCal resident.
Another point:
As someone who grew up in RURAL USA, in my experience, rural folks with obvious mental illness are typcially given a pass. It's written of as "Well, they're just an asshole," or "it's ok, it's how they are."
But rural folks tend to have higher rates of isolation, depression, alchoholism (sp?), substance abuse, and so forth. Through in an old and strong "gun culture" and all sorts of bad things will happen.
Very sad indeed.
I live in Philly, where someone is getting bumped off nearly every day, usually but not always in the rough impoverished neighborhoods. But, is it just me, or does it seem like these mass murders nearly always occur out in the boondocks? Of course, to me, the suburbs are the boondocks.
The man is a hero. A person, nay, a god can do no wrong in uniform. Law enforcers are heros, end of discussion.
Baby Jeebus:
You think you're funny, but you're not. Go away.
It's no different than a sudden storm, a freak tornado coming up without warning.
Was with you until it came out that he discharged 30 rounds from an AR-15. Probably not a full automatic, but still w/ a 30 round magazine. While bad breaks can lead to someone flipping out, a semi-automatic rifle with a 30 round clip makes for a much worse disaster than a Louisville slugger, or even arguably a Glock. Misfortune favors the prepared lunatic to take liberties w/ Pasteur.
Oh I'm all for gun control.
I'm saying, people shouldn't live their lives in fear that these tragedies are going to happen to them and theirs.
That way lies a police state.
I just came off of travel and I learned just today that Steve Gilliard had passed several months ago. To those of you who knew him I pass on my belated condolences.
Mideast Vet over and out.
Thanks, MV.
Mideast Vet -
On everyone's behalf, thank you.
Jen, his co-blogger, while no longer blogging herself, reads and comments here from time to time.
I'll make certain she receives your kind words.
MV,
Thank you--Jesse was good on his word and let me know you were here.
It's not the same without him.
Rural Wisconsin can be a pretty fucked up place. This diary at Daily Kos made me ashamed to be from Wisconsin.
Though when you think of Wisconsin, you should think of it as culturally being divided into two regions. The eastern third of the state south of Green Bay (if you think of the state as a mitten, Green Bay is located where the thumb joins the hand) is the industrialized part of the state and has more in common with the rust belt states of Ohio and Michigan. One of the main reasons our industry has not fallen into the disuse that the industry of other states has is because so much of our industry is paper-making and consquently also printing. There's still plenty of demand for those things, and exporting those jobs probably wouldn't help the vaunted "bottom line" very much. The rest of the state except for Madison is "farm country" and has more in common with Minnesota and Iowa.
I have lived in Green Bay for the last 25 or so years. Previous to that, I lived in the UP of Michigan, Denver and Chicago.
Have to tell ya, the further north you go, the weirder it gets. There are a lot of jokes about southern inbreeding, but the great white north is the place where I have actually seen it.
There was another cop-run-amok story in the news here lately, though not as dramatic. There was a Wausau cop that was driving with his wife in a neighboring county. He decided that he would kill her by car accident. He did not "succeed", but came close.
Regarding the Crandon horror, one item that has not been discussed as yet is the fact that this kid was never given a psychological evaluation of any kind before being hired as a sheriff deputy. In Wisconsin, they don't make that a requirement for hire as a peace officer. I wonder if the Wausau cop was given any kind of psych evaluation?
That's the real crime. Jesse talks about this as being as predictable as a natural disaster for the victims, and I agree. However, you need keep in mind that larger police agencies, such as in Milwaukee, Madison and Green Bay, have that requirement.
Why this hasn't been a state requirement is beyond me. A psychologist can't spot every problem, but is much more likely to spot a possesive, jealous and dangerous guy and recommend against hiring that individual. A Sheriff does not have the training to properly evaluate a potential hire.
I am sure that we'll hear about this for quite a while and then the state legislature will finally pass a law that should have been passed years ago. I hope that they make it meaningful by making these psych evaluations a periodic requirement, not just a one-shot pre-amployment thing.
Pity that won't bring these people back.
It's no different than a sudden storm, a freak tornado coming up without warning.
I'm sure the gun had nothing to do with it! Sure, it happens all the time, jealous boyfriends come by and slay six just by giving them a real "hard look"! Not to mention drive by stabbings, and what a person could do with an assagi or knoberri!
You gun nuts think guns are more important than people.
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