Another shooting, this one in Washington

[CaptainChewbacca]

ANOTHER ONE!

GRAHAM, Wash. — A father apparently shot to death five of his children, ages 7 to 16, at their mobile home and then killed himself near a casino miles away, police said Saturday.

Ed Troyer, a spokesman for the Pierce County Sheriff, called it a domestic violence situation and a murder-suicide.

"We believe they all died of gunshot wounds," Troyer said.

Police found the father's body early Saturday in his still-running car near the Muckleshoot Casino in Auburn, about 30 miles south of Seattle. He had apparently killed himself with a rifle, although no note was left in the car, Auburn Police Sgt. Scott Near said.

Later in the day, a relative stopped by the mobile home and called authorities after seeing a child lying motionless on a bed through a window. Pierce County deputies checked the mobile home, which is about 20 miles southeast of the casino, and found four of the children dead in their beds and the fifth in the bathroom.

Troyer said investigators believe the husband and the wife, who was not home, were not estranged.

The mother's aunt, Penny Flansburg, was at a loss to explain the crime.

"They were pleasant together," Flansburg said. "We can't even figure out why."

Flansburg identified the couple as Angela and James Harrison and the children as Maxine, Samantha, Heather, Jamie and James. The father worked as a diesel mechanic, and the mother works at Wal-Mart, Flansburg said.

Ryan Peden, a classmate of the eldest daughter, said she told him Friday night that her parents had gotten into a fight and her mother had left. The father followed the mother and tried to get her to return, said Peden, 16.

Neighbors in the Deer Run mobile home park, a neat, well-kept community nestled among towering evergreens, were shocked and weeping at the news.

"How could something like this happen?" asked Mary Ripplinger, whose kids were playmates of the slain children. "Everyone's asking: Why did he do it? It's not right."

Pierce County Sheriff Paul Pastor described the crime as a "horrible thing."

"This was not a tragedy. It was a rotten murder," Pastor said. "This appears to be the terrible work of the biological father. If that doesn't break your heart, I don't know what does."

Another neighbor, Dale Lund, told The Seattle Times the 7-year-old boy who was killed played at times with his grandson and the boys shared the same school bus stop and attended the same elementary school together.

He said the dead boy played in his own yard most of the time.

"They pretty much kept to themselves over there," Lund said.

Dozens of investigators were on the scene trying to reconstruct the crime and discover a motive.

What the hell is going on? That's like... four in two weeks.

[Broomstick]

Hard times, my friend, hard times.

While the exact trigger may not be the same in all cases, and there is no question this is statistically an aberration as few parents kill their children, the more pressure families are under the more likely this is to happen. I'm certain the rate of just plain suicides is up, as is drinking, gambling, and other forms of self-destructive escapist behavior.

[Big Orange]

The sensationalist media reportings of these petulant spree killings do not help things by possibly inspiring other lonely, unbalanced people into going out and doing mass shootings of their own to gain infamy.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I read a scifi short-story somewhere that in the future, anyone who did something like this (killing for infamy) would have their name erased and only be remembered as an index number.

[Mayabird]

This isn't a spree killing. It's a family annihilator. A lot of people die in both cases but the psychology is a bit different. Family annihilators tend to be selfish and have possessive personalities; when they say their family is "theirs" they mean it in an ownership way. There are two patterns to these family killings. The first is "saving the family from suffering," like if the Man of the House (capitalized so you get the idea of the personality) loses his job and instead of asking for help or thinking that the kids might want to live, he kills them all. Andrea Yeats is another example of this, since she drowned her kids to save them from Satan, or something.

The second derives from the possessive personality. You know how petty people will break other people's stuff to get back at them? Here the stuff consists of people. That's what it looks like here. To get back at his wife for leaving, he killed all their kids. I suppose since he killed himself afterward there was some remorse or perhaps second thoughts, way too late.

If you're wondering, I found a book about the psychology of family annihilators.