03-30-2014, 11:01 PM
(03-30-2014, 10:05 PM)ZEROSPHERES Wrote: How many times his actions spoke of what he was capable of doing and no action was taken to prevent a double homicide. It's frightening to think that these people walk among us just waiting to go off.
The family once had a pet chicken, but the suspect shot it several times with a BB gun. He also once stabbed a pencil through Jonathan's jaw, (his younger brother) Anthony Samuel told The Spokesman-Review.
"We all knew he was not exactly right, but we'd never think that this would happen," Anthony Samuel added. "He was never sane," the killer teen's stepbrother, Anthony Samuel, told The Spokesman-Review.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/id...-1.1736709
It's sad and maddening to me.
What should be done with kids like this when they're clearly "off"?
They can go to juvenile incarceration if they commit crimes, but only for so long, and some people feel that being around other delinquents only worsens their problems.
They can't be institutionalized if a psychiatrist doesn't deem them mentally ill, dangerous, and not a candidate for outpatient treatment.
And, even when they do get treatment, it sometimes doesn't stop them from killing. Adam Lanza had several outpatient psychiatric counselors and ongoing treatment; still, reportedly none of the professionals nor his family foresaw him becoming violent -- much less committing mass murder of little children, his mother, and then suicide.
I think sometimes it's impossible to know what people will do until they do it. In any case, adults providing these troubled unpredictable kids access to guns and other weapons in the home makes the adults insane (in a non-clinical sense), IMO. Denying such access might not stop all of the murders committed by troubled minors, but it would certainly stave off some of the emotionally-driven crimes of opportunity. More state psychiatric hospital beds and easier precautionary admittance might help, too.
I wonder how many of the families of these kids brushed off major red flags outta denial? I don't know, but suspect, that parental denial often enables and empowers these individuals and contributes to the societal problem.