"I said, 'Calm down, it's over.' He said, 'Arlen Specter made me do this.' I said, 'What?' "
Principal Norina Bentzel, recounting the attack on North Hopewell-Winterstown Elementary School in February 2001
He might have preferred a gun, but he failed a background check.
So William Michael Stankewicz barged into North Hopewell-Winterstown Elementary School wielding a machete instead. Once inside, he attacked Principal Norina Bentzel, 2 teachers and 11 small children.
Later he would tell Judge Sheryl Ann Dorney a rambling, disconnected tale about the mail-order bride who had dumped him, his 2 years spent in jail for threatening Federal immigration officials and the multiple medications he was taking for various mental disorders.
Still dangerous and still mentally ill, he was sentenced to over 100 years in prison.
Five months later and half a world away, Mamoru Takuma charged into Ikeda Elementary School in Osaka, Japan, armed with a kitchen knife. In ten minutes he hacked 8 first-graders to death and seriously wounded 15 other children and 2 teachers.
Takuma was also mentally ill, also struggling through a divorce. Like Stankewicz, he said the attack "relieved my stress."
Tim Larimer wrote this about the Osaka attack in Time Magazine:
It lasted just 10 terrifying minutes, during which the intruder killed eight
children, injured 15 other pupils and two teachers and further eroded Japan's
confidence that it is immune to the violence that it associates with the U.S. It
is the worst mass killing of schoolchildren in Japan's history, but it is only
the latest in a series of knifing crimes (gun ownership is outlawed in Japan).
"Schools were always regarded as sacred zones," says Yo Yoshino, a teacher who
lives near the Ikeda school.
Since 2010 there has been a series of fatal knife attacks in Chinese schools as well:
No motive was given for the stabbings, which echo a string of similar assaults against schoolchildren in 2010 that killed nearly 20 and wounded more than 50. The most recent such attack took place in August, when a knife-wielding man broke into a middle school in the southern city of Nanchang and stabbed two students before fleeing.
Most of the attackers have been mentally disturbed men involved in personal disputes or unable to adjust to the rapid pace of social change in China, underscoring grave weaknesses in the antiquated Chinese medical system's ability to diagnose and treat psychiatric illness.
Thus far, the Chinese government's response to the attacks has been to post armed guards at schools and force citizens to register when buying knives.
What will happen when a would-be attacker is rejected for a knife permit? How many other potential weapons will require a permit in the name of keeping our children safe?
When the "permit-only" list gets too long, maybe we'll finally look at untreated and undertreated mental illness.
Comments