The Crime of Oakland Elementary

On September 26, 1988, one of the first school shootings in America was reported by Mace Foster, who called the Greenwood EMS station saying someone's shooting a gun. She called at the request of Kate Finkbeiner. Ms. Finkbeiner, who's an early riser, arrives at work 10 minutes early in a green T-shirt and white shorts, only after bringing her 2-year-old daughter Katie to daycare. She's been a PE teacher for only a few months at Oakland Elementary School, but she was born and raised in Greenwood and was known as a regular runner around her neighborhood. Every Monday and Thursday, she walks into the small, brick-laid, one-story building and walks past the nature-themed mural on the main hall to her office. She starts working on her lesson plans and the fundraising run to support the search for the lost 8-year-old in Greenwood County. She's a 17-year-old veteran in the public school system. She had taken a small break to sell insurance, but came back because she felt only the students' enthusiasm for life had matched her own. At 9, 10 a.m., she started her first class of the day with first graders using milk jugs to pick up tennis balls. She was a well-liked teacher and constantly came up with new games to play. Her second class ended around 10, 40 a.m., and she moved to the library, where she worked on a list of games. At 4 o'clock, she left to eat lunch, which was a simple hamburger, fries, and a cherry pie. Randomly, she had looked up from the teacher's table at the sound of screams, plates hitting the floor, kids dropping on her tables, and before she could think, she grabbed a small girl who was petrified as a fawn to shield her. She didn't know what was going on. But then, she heard a gun go off one, two, three, four times. Petrified as a scene unfolding before her, she watched as it hit her students, Beth Johnson, age 6, Gregory Brown, age 7, LaShonda Burt, age 6, and finally, her co-worker and friend, Ellie Hodge, age 23. The gun turned to point the little girl in her arms for only a brief moment before moving on. All at once, all the footsteps of the children faded from the cafeteria. The same burner ran after the nightmare of an elementary shooting, shouting for someone to call 911. While the gun was being loaded in the girl's bathroom, Kate, using her 5'5 and 120-pound frame, held herself against the bathroom door. Knowing she couldn't keep it that way forever, her only thought was, if only there was someone with me, we could hold the door shut for longer. A second later, the door was swung open, and she hit the ground hard. She turned from the ground to stand to the barrel of the gun, being pointed between her eyes. And just then, as everything went silent, she heard it. The story, the big pile of dirt being read in the classroom right next to her. She begged, We have little babies in there, they won't hurt you. But she found the footsteps once again turning away. She ran towards the crime, hearing a bullet hit the chalkboard. Kids ran out windows, a vase blew to pieces, In desperation, she yelled, Don't do that, give me the gun. Her reasoning got her shot in the mouth, creating a hole in her tongue and a broken jawbone. She heard the bullet, but didn't feel pain or see the blood. Kids were yelling, and the more noise that was made, the more bullets that were shot. Two had fatally wounded two children in the neck. Takayla Thomas had blood spilling from her chest as the teacher pulled her behind the desk. And as the gun was dropped, everything went silent. The deed was done, and at St. Bernard, with blood pouring from her mouth, slowly and silently picked up another little girl, Shaquilla Bradley. With her blood both dripping down the hallway, she walked with the girl in her arms to the small health room down the hall. Many children who ran away were already there, but her main focus was trying to remember the first aid she learned from Lantern College so many years ago. She told all her children to face the wall, trying to maintain composure. She applied dental pressure to the bullet wound in Shaquilla's neck and watched as her breathing slowed and finally left her small body. An EMT from Greenland County came to her side, trying to treat her, but she refused it. She stuffed dogs inside her mouth and rode silently to the Southern Memorial Hospital with all the other severely wounded children. That day, Kate lost three teeth and gained parts of a bullet lodged in her jaw. She was very open to giving her views to shed light on the incident. Her main focus was praising the kids by saying, the kids were calm and brave, and it reminds me of the Wizard of Oz, like the lions, who wanted to have more courage. As the children grew, we can only hope that they would have just as much courage as Kate St. Clair. The particular story that we just read follows the actions of the hero instead of the criminal that started the shooting, which is the opposite of what one would expect for true crime, usually. Throughout the story, we never mention a name, gender, or appearance of the criminal, simply because we wanted to change the focus entirely. When consuming this form of media, it's expected to follow the victim or criminal, mostly because there's not an obvious hero in the situation, so it's really hard to pick out a story where you can just focus on one. Although, we do have to get stories from somewhere, and it usually is not the criminal, so it's maybe a paramedic, a neighbor, or even the victim, who can be the hero of their own story. It's hard to get a story solely from a person who is helping, because they don't always have the full information, or were there for the full event. But, I feel like it can have a positive impact when people cover the good, or focus on it in some degree. As we've grown in mass media, and are much more exposed to continuous news, I find myself more surprised at a good story coming onto the news than a negative one, and I'm sure you can understand the same. The reason many news outlets and other medias cover more grim stories, is because they have been known to get more views, and can contribute to the feeling of downward social comparison. At least that's what I could find, and that's to make people feel better about themselves. The research I found was from Psychology Bulletin, and it covers the basic idea of what downward social comparison is. This is where a person compares themselves either to victims, saying, at least I'm not as bad off as they are, and I should be thankful for what I have, which can be a normal human response. The other side of it can be comparing themselves to criminals, where they feel better about themselves, saying, at least I'm not as bad as that person for doing this thing. And, it goes, this particular one covers much deeper subjects, like, you know, choice for others for social comparison, so like, why do I choose to compare myself to this person? It goes into scapegoating too, so blaming society for the reason they are who they are. Overall, it shows that true crime stories come into play regarding these subjects, and it's easier to project, et cetera, using these stories, because people automatically want to say, I'm better. That's just a human response and a reaction, and it's a reaction that media influencers have studied and have taken full advantage of, because these get views and reactions, while hero stories like this one are harder for people to digest, it seems, psychologically, because it can make a person feel worse about themselves because they haven't done a similar act. There's no longer a way to look down on anyone in a situation, because a story like this creates a mood where sympathy can be used for the criminal as well. For example, Kate says to the shooter, Jamie Wilson, that's his name, it's okay, they're not going to hurt you. And she said this because she could see that he was scared. This leads into questioning, why was he scared? And he was scared because he had diagnosed schizophrenia, and it was acting up, so he could hear his childhood peers mocking him, which is why he was shooting at any kind of noise. For a very long time, he was in the hospital to treat it until his father's medical insurance ran out, so he had to leave, and he had to be left at home alone, because his family had to go make money to take care of him, and it's a cycle that goes on and on. The point is that when hero stories like these are told, it makes a person wonder if they would act that way in a situation and try to help. It is something that, is it something, really, I should ask, is it something that should be expected of a person to help and protect the children? And as a society, should we have allowed that sick person, Jamie, to go from the hospital when they were trying to get better? When stories are focused like this, it can bring out more thoughts of how do we change society for the better, but there are so many hurdles to make things better. It's much easier to focus on the bad version and saying our society did what it could. The press covering the crime was the state for this one specifically, and I think it did a very good job of covering the story, because in the articles, it shows a timeline of the day from multiple perspectives, much like In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. It's just without the emotions behind it, but it shows a lot of the people, what they were going through, what was happening, and it's over multiple, multiple articles. This PDF is around 20 pages long, each with separate articles, and it just shows each side of the story in a very neutral way. Asking these questions of what can society do, what can we do, I guess that would be the best question. It's always a good start to look at the source, and a lot of that would start with why the crime happened, which they did cover, and we would have to follow Jamie Wilson, the shooter. There was a lot of factors, such as his mental issues, his medication not having the desired effect, which as much as I tried, I could not wrap my head around why it didn't get more attention, considering how widely the drug was being used. In the 22-page long PDF attachment to this podcast, there's a lot of articles that cover his journey, and an article titling, Suspects Drug Usually Have Calming Effect, that can word it much better than I can, and just how odd it was. On the same page, a person can also find what most believe is the catalyst for the crime, and it is him continuously reading a crime about a school shooting in Winnetka? I hope I'm saying that right. There was an article published in People's Magazine following Lauren Dan's crime of a school shooting, and Jamie said he related to her a lot after reading the article every single day for months, and I feel like it was because they were both described as a recluse. Her story is extremely shocking, with so many events leading up to hers, so many public events, and her story is really interesting. But what it really raises is the question of, should we have allowed this article to be in this boy's hands? Information is absolutely everywhere, and no one can stop these stories from going out, but shouldn't his consumption be monitored, considering he was diagnosed? I'm not saying by the state, because that would get into phone tracking, and government, and during households. I do know that Australia has just started banning social media for kids under 16, so we do get to see how that will turn out in the coming years. But for America, it is for the parents to decide what each person can see at a certain age, because Jamie Wilson was 19, and he was my age, and I could not imagine having a lot of restrictions now. But he talked about this article for months, and others similar to it the mother admitted later on, and when these mental hallucinations had been confirmed, maybe we should have had made the guardian take classes on what it meant he could consume, like what could feed these, just to make him feel better and safer as well. The media we have is kind of like who we hang out around, and we see things in perspective closer to what we are consuming. We do have barriers to separate real life and our behind-the-screen selves when reading, but that barrier becomes smaller and smaller with less social interaction, which he was known to have very limited of. You know, we get caught up in what we see on TV or hear on social media, and many times the things that ground us is looking at what's in front of you with friends and work, which he didn't have. My mom personally is very big into conspiracy theories, and I have had to consistently ask her, have you seen it yourself? And I ask that just to ground us and bring us back to what are we allowing to fill our minds with, because let's flip it. Would he have wanted to be a hero if he was reading an article over and over about a person saving a child, and the person was similar to him, much like how he felt this girl was similar to him? And I know, to play devil's advocate, well, someone has to be a villain for there to be a hero, well, I know, but I mean, maybe it was an article about saving someone from an accident like a car crash. What it's really doing is putting into a person's mind what good can we do for society, because a person can be recognized for their good deeds, much like how this girl was recognized. I'm a huge advocate personally for positive reinforcement, and the more he reads and the more we read about people receiving awards, perhaps we would have wanted to do the good to get that attention like he would have. Many police chiefs have said that school shooters want the fame that comes with the coverage, and he has asked to keep it a minimum, like the Chicago chief of police regarding Lauren's case, when he heard of Jamie being copycat, he really wanted to keep it to a minimum to stop these copycats from happening. So, you know, are we showing a positive reinforcement in the media? Because I found Cat receiving a Heroes Award in Greenwood County local newspaper, but I didn't find it on anything larger. Many times when a person is getting an award, it is not the headline, so it's harder to find. I guess that can be psychological as well. Because it's easier to bring another person down than to celebrate a person's success. But let's look at it another way. For example, bullying seminars is kind of a smaller scale. As a kid, we go into these talks and all we hear about is what not to do or what bad things have happened because of bullying. It feels like it would have been better to reward good behavior at these events, and, you know, Katie helped Lily by getting her notes, et cetera. For good doers, they are only recognized once a year, maybe, while bad kids get attention all year round. And they have to get a form of attention because something might be off, they're acting wrong. But maybe having more positive reinforcements will make sure the good kids stay good and maybe the bad would want the positive attention for a change. So this is how, you know, we're not looking – we're looking for attention, but we don't want to find it in the bad way of doing crimes. We don't want to make our name for ourselves that way. You know, how could we do this as we grow up as well, like we would have done for him? He's 19, so college and high school students are still developing. How can we recognize these people for the good that they do, and use those forms of reinforcement as they grow to give them more motivation to become a good person, to see that it's worth becoming a good person because people see that and they like it more than doing bad deeds to them? As soon as we're not trying to push the idea that everyone needs to be a hero or anything like that, it's just that looking at recognition and how that affects a society, well, we choose to recognize matters a lot. Certain things that blow up on certain social media turn into movements, and in such a large country, we rely on journalists to tell us the truth on what's happening in California versus New York, and that affects on how we vote on laws. Is focusing so much on the criminals to satisfy our curiosity in human nature what we should be doing? Or should we be holding ourselves to a higher standard and recognize the heroics of people? Accountability is not just for the crimes, but accountability is also for the people who did nothing, which is never covered. A lot of this is really just looking out of how do we make good people? Is it through positive reinforcement? Is it through recognition? And what we put in people's minds really affects them. You are who you hang out around, and you are what you consume. And I'll leave you with a question on how do you think we should move forward in our media? Do we need more positive stories, or should we keep the trend going as is? What do you feel like is best? That's all I have, but I would really recommend reading this article. I think this crime specifically was covered very well before so many mass shootings had started, so it was still very new and very neutral. The PDF will be linked, and thank you so much for listening.