Washington – In his long-winded video diatribe, Seung-Hui Cho referred to the Columbine school killers as martyrs, and his crime inevitably has been compared with theirs.
Now, experts fear, other vulnerable, angry boys may try to copy or surpass Cho’s massacre. As of Friday, the FBI counted 35 to 40 mostly school- based threats, with everything from bombs to guns to mere words, some leading to arrests.
“This is serious business. This is not a time for jokes, and it needs to stop,” said FBI Special Agent Richard Kolko, who said all must be investigated. “These threats are abhorrent and those that make them are subject to prosecution and serious prison time.”
There have been times in recent history when shooting sprees seem to occur in clusters. It’s a copycat or contagion effect, experts said.
“After there’s one, we see a couple more,” said Marisa Randazzo, the former chief psychology researcher for the U.S. Secret Service and co-author of a major federal study examining the common threads of 37 school shootings.
For example, when gunman Duane Morrison killed 16-year-old student Emily Keyes and himself in September at Platte Canyon High School in Bailey, it was the first report of a school shooting in three years. After the Colorado slaying, there was the mass shooting a month later at an Amish school in Nickel Mines, Pa.; a student killing another student at a high school in Tacoma, Wash., in January; and now the Virginia Tech massacre.
Experts say the first such shooting doesn’t create a killer. But it can push an already-troubled person over the edge.
Loren Coleman, a psychiatric social worker in Maine who wrote “The Copycat Effect,” said “celebrity school shootings actually increase the suicide rate and increase the violence rate for a short period of time.”
Most of the copycats considering suicide or homicide feel “desperation, despair and often hopelessness,” said University of South Florida professor Randy Borum, another co-author of the federal study of school shootings. “Now, look at the images and presentation of Cho in the media. … It is difficult to think of how one might create a more powerful image. If that is what others who may be feeling desperate and out of control are identifying with, I am concerned about that.”
Experts are troubled by references to the Virginia Tech massacre as setting a record for the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history. Since then, some of the threats have mentioned attempts to shatter the Virginia Tech mark.
