Yesterday my kid called me with the news that a former high school classmate, now 19 and attending Cornell, had shot and killed his father in their suburban tract house. The boy’s mother told the 911 dispatcher that the boy was defending himself from the father when he shot his dad multiple times with a shotgun. After the shooting, the boy and mother waited on the snowy driveway of the house for the sheriff’s deputies to arrive.
I only knew this young man as a boy who played in the band with my kid. He was friends with some of my kid’s group of friends, but I don’t think he had ever been in our house.Neighbors say that he was always polite and helpful.
There had been a number of domestic violence calls to the home. Late yesterday, the boy’s attorney told the press that there had been “decades” of domestic violence and abuse perpetrated by the father on the children. The parents are first- or second-generation Asian immigrants–I don’t know enough about their culture or their family situation to know why nobody asked for more help.
I don’t know if the gun was the father’s or the son’s. All I know is that it was there in a terrible situation and now someone is dead. This is the second time in a couple of years that a gun plus a volatile domestic situation has led to death in a generally peaceful little suburb.
Manyakitty
Shit. That’s tragic in every possible way.
CarolDuhart2
Horrible. Nothing to say.
WereBear
It’s a pattern of patriarchy that has nothing to do with ethnicity. Just as all abusers use the same methods.
The father, just as Rand Paul declares, owns people. They are extensions of the father’s ego. If they do not “obey” they will be controlled.
The best case scenario is the family member gets away without killing someone and spends years in therapy. This is closure of another sort.
I’m not advocating murder. But I do believe in self-defense.
Botsplainer
I’m always sorry to hear this sort of thing. It is utterly avoidable with appropriate early intervention from astute peace officers. Caught quickly enough, the family can emerge intact and stronger.
Betty Cracker
It’s horrible. Maybe the son was 100% justified. It’s even possible having a gun saved him, if the dad was coming at him with a knife or something. We just don’t know. But what we DO know — because data! — is that the presence of a gun in the home amplifies risk for everyone who lives there. Guns turn fistfights into homicides and passing bouts of despair into suicides.
I mentioned to y’all the other day that an intruder scared the shit out of me by suddenly appearing in my backyard. Since then, I’ve learned that several young guys (ages 16-18) were busted for burglarizing local houses. The dude in my backyard was likely sizing up my house for a break-in.
My redneck neighbors (all of them, Katie) teased me about arming myself with a skillet during the incident and gloatingly observed that I sure was wishing I had a gun then, by golly! Nope. Not even close.
OzarkHillbilly
My sons lived in a similar environment for years as their step-father abused their mother. I can’t say why it was, I can’t even explain how powerless I was to do anything about it. The law is the law. The day finally came when he went after my oldest who was protecting his mother. My son called me and I went and got him (after much arguing with his mother) and his brother.
As Bob was packing some clothes he looked at his mother, pointed at his shotgun at the foot of his bed and said, “It’s loaded if you need it.” She just nodded her head with this look of….something I could not quite identify on her face, but it wasn’t shock or anger or shame or any of the normal emotions one should have when they learn that their children feel the need to sleep with a loaded gun in their room. She just acted like, “yeah, sure, this is normal,”
And I wanted to grab her by the throat and choke the life right out of her for the 172,383rd time in a decade.
Memphisj
I’ve recently become good friends within someone who was a victim of domestic violence for more than 20 years. They lived in a nice quiet suburb with 2 beautiful daughters (now grown) where her kids went to an exclusive private school. And she got the shit beat out of her on a regular basis. And she grew up in a home where her mother beat the kids (all girls btw) regularly.
I recount this to remind everyone (and myself) that domestic violence crosses so many demographics, that the control freak abusers exist in all segments of our society. I was shocked when I found this out, she escaped but her ex continues to try and exert control in her life. It’s a complicated and awful thing and the guy should be in jail but isn’t. Even 3 years after the divorce and much counseling she still deals with extreme insecurity and fear. She continues to do better and is learning to trust, but I fear this is a more common than we all want to believe.
rikyrah
This is so sad
ruemara
I’m now working with Chinese-Americans closer than I have in a while. It seems the cruel streak in the culture is real and it’s finally being recognized as being toxic, both here and back in China.
MazeDancer
As many have noted, almost no one asks for help while they are being abused. Especially as a child.
Frequently, the threat of “if you tell anyone” is that more harm will fall to the victim, the siblings, the family pet, or the other parent. This is not an ethnic or cultural thing, this is abuse pathology and abusers controlling victims.
Children come to believe there is no help. One parent abuses. The other tolerates it. Where would they turn? Finding a gun and stopping it is, yes, tragic. But finding a gun – or something, usually drugs or alcohol – and killing oneself is a more common way of “stopping it”.
There is a reason there are many support groups for children abused by their Pastor Parents. The smiliest, nicest people could be perpetrating the next generation of abuse.
So sorry for the hard times of this young man and his family.
patrick II
I was in a conversation once with two other guys at work. We worked at a software house and one guy I knew pretty well and was like me, an analyst, and the other guy, I will call him Don, was a programmer whom I knew less well. So we were talking and Don starts talking about his boys and how he raised them. He was very strict, and while physical abuse wasn’t a large part of the equation, mental abuse was. He bragged about giving them impossible jobs to do and when they couldn’t complete them punish them. Once they were too loud in the car he made them get out and walk home seven miles partly through a dangerous neighborhood.
Anyhow, after the conversation was over, I told my analyst friend I was going to call child services. My friend talked me out of it. He said he only treated the kids that way from love.
One day I went to work and Don the programmer had not shown up. The office was in shock. Don’s oldest boy, about 16, had taken a knife and killed his brothers, his mother and his father, Don.
I think of the phone call I did not make often. One never knows about actions not taken, whether it might have turned out differently. But maybe.
I have never had personal knowledge of another situation as bad since, but I know if I did, I would stop minding my own business and make a call. So should anyone.
WaterGirl
@patrick II: I’m so sorry.
esc
My husband used to work with a woman who is now in jail for murdering her boyfriend. She lost a baby “falling” down the stairs, among other things, but no one did anything. Some years later, she stabbed the boyfriend to death, but apparently her crappy public defender told her to just plead guilty. And of course, according to his family commenting all over the news accounts, he was just an angel.
Edmund Dantes
I had a classmate that killed his abusive stepfather. It was junior year of high school in rural Maine. Apparently the step father was going after the mother for the thousandth time (amount of a anuse came out after) classmate would step in her place to take the abuse, eventually got his hands on an aluminum bat, and beat the step father’s head in.
Surprising it wasn’t a gun involved situation considering how big of a hunting family they were. I’ve always thought he went with the bat to try to inflict some of the pain back onto the step dad.
I didn’t hang in his crowd so I never had any ideas or rumors of the abuse. All I now is something has to be pretty bad to get up close and personal with a bat versus using a gun.
Julia Grey
Wow. Depressing.
Manyakitty
@patrick II: Wow. Perspective. Very good point.
trollhattan
Horrible. I hope the legal system finds a reasonable path to tread in handling them, and more lives aren’t ruined.
My first experience losing a friend was a Chinese kid who committed suicide because he couldn’t take his mom. 11th grade. Those family pressures are brutal sometimes.
shortstop
@ruemara:Hmmm. Can you elaborate?
speedbumped
I work(ed) fairly closely with a man who had always appeared to be an amiable slob, but whose mugshot made national headlines about 16 months ago. After years of domestic disturbances in his household that none of his co-workers were aware of, one Sunday he and his son were watching football at a bar. My co-worker proceeded to get exceedingly drunk, and they had a fight about whether to stay out after the game or go home. After the son prevailed and got him home, they continued to fight, and it turned physical (again, as we would find out later). The son went upstairs to his room and was joined by his pregnant girlfriend. At that point, my co-worker, falling-down drunk, retrieved his handgun, went into his son’s room, and shot his son a half-dozen times. He has since attempted a preemptive attack defense, in which he claims that he believed his son was going to shoot everyone in the house, including his girlfriend and unborn child, so he was really just protecting everybody.
Oh yeah, and one of the reasons they were at the bar in the first place? No beer at home, and this state still does not allow the sale of alcohol on Sundays.
Most of the headlines, while rightfully disgusted by this sequence of events, ignored the most tragic and infuriating aspects of the story in favor of snarky “Man shoots son over football argument” clickbait. And, truth be told, it’s the kind of story I myself would have sneered at in the past, had I not seen this man at his desk, not too far from mine, day after day for several years. Even the most tenuous connection to a story like this humanizes it to a degree that my usual headshake and mutter of “what a shame” is exposed for the totally inadequate response to something so profoundly sad that it truly is.
I wish that the one time I got the musical reference in a BJ post’s title it was about something happier.
wenchacha
This shooting is about 3 years to the day after the death of one of my son’s best friends. Argument with former housemate, who pulls out his shotgun and shoots our friend in the back as he tries to leave. He was phoning 911 at the time, the killing is hear on the audio.
That shooter, a 24 yr old with some sort of personality disorder (at least) claimed self-defense against intruder, and walks around free today. I would hope that a son defending himself/his mother from an abuser would receive as much leniency from a jury.
Fuck guns. (I say this as someone who enjoys venison.)
rk
My mother -in-law put up with her emotionally abusive husband for 40 years. There was never any physical abuse. My sister-in-law would say life would be so much easier if he was drunk, or if he beat them, at least that way someone would understand their problems. He wasn’t even verbally abusive. If anyone met him and talked to him they’d say he was the nicest guy in the world. I find it very difficult to explain to people how he was such an awful person and he totally destroyed my mother-in- laws life.
Tree With Water
@patrick II: I worked alongside a child molester (his own grandson) for a few years without knowing it. You could have knocked me over with the proverbial feather when told. Turned out that some who had worked with him longer (and more closely than myself) did suspect him of molestation by virtue of his own big mouth, which prompted him to drop hints about his inclinations. One of my colleagues later told me that he even went home one night resolved to call the police, but was dissuade by his wife. Her point was that barring definitive proof- proof he did not have- it was too heavy an accusation to hurl at anyone. The sick SOB wasn’t busted until the grandchild spoke up after years of abuse, yet who can blame the guy who didn’t drop a dime? Not me. But maybe he should have.
Cermet
@patrick II: You cannot blame yourself in any way; still, very sorry
constitutional mistermix
@speedbumped:
My kid was upset because people were saying that this boy looked like he was smirking in his mug shot – calling him a remorseless killer – on Facebook. I guess those people never understood the sentiments behind the song. It sounds like, sadly, that door was a portal to hell.
patrick II
@Tree With Water:
If they suspected they should have talked to a professional about precisely what they heard. They may not have wanted to call the police but certainly should have talked to child services or some other social agency., Appraising an ambiguous situation is part of what they are trained to do.
satby
Horrible story repeated too often in this country.
Tree With Water
@patrick II: That makes good sense. Knowing what I do today, I would certainly reach out to one agency or the other- not necessarily the cops. Even then, however, I’d think long and hard before doing it.
notusingmynymfor this
I’ve never told anybody this story.
I grew up in a badly abusive family. My father was the stereotypical authoritarian guy-very violent and absolutely sure of his right to his children as possessions. I knew from a very young age that I wanted to go to college and I also knew that I wasn’t going to get any help from him. So I figured out what to do and how to do it, got really good test scores and grades, and applied to a school and for scholarships to pay for it. That really made him angry-how dare I have an opinion about what I want for my life?! He wanted me to go into the Army. Now, I wasn’t opposed to the Army, but I wanted to try for college first. The Armed Services were my back-up plan. I told him this, over and over again, but since it wasn’t what he wanted to hear he didn’t hear it.
Fast forward to winter break of my senior year. I was waiting to hear back from the college I had applied to and also waiting to hear back about the scholarships I had applied for. My dad wanted me to commit to the Army right then, even though I didn’t turn 18 until August. I told him, again, that the Army was my backup plan, I would be happy to go talk to the recruiter but I wasn’t committing to anything until I knew how the scholarships would shake out. He said he was ok with that so I talked to the recruiter, who wanted me to sign a commitment. I told him no, not yet. He had me sign what he termed a letter of interest-I read it and it had no language absolutely committing me to joining, so I signed it. No big deal, right? Except the recruiter lied to my dad and told him I had committed to joining, and my dad was furious when I told him I was not done waiting to hear back from the scholarship people and the college.
I was driving home from work-he was in the passenger side-and he started hitting me. While I was driving. Keep in mind, I am 17 ½ at this time, I’ve only been driving for about 18 months, it’s the middle of winter in Iowa-dark and icy-and I’m on the main road in town, going about 35mph. Everything in my head went slow motion and I had a silent conversation with myself: “You can end all of this, right here. You’re going 35 mph, right next to the center lane, he’s hitting you-stop fighting to stay in control of the car. Let go of the wheel. He isn’t wearing a seatbelt.”
It was tempting. I managed to maintain control of the car-it was really icy that night, I’m still not sure how I did it-but there were several times later that year (especially when he was trying to ‘make a man’ out of my younger brother) that I really regretted not listening to that little voice in my head. It would have been nice to make sure he would never be able to hurt anybody else, ever again.
And now you know how it feels. Wishing somebody would die because that is the only way they will stop hurting you-that isn’t a pleasant feeling. It’s probably a good thing there wasn’t a gun in that house. I like to think I wouldn’t have used it, but the closer I got to 18 and freedom the worse my dad and stepmother got. It would have been a lifetime in jail for me but it would have meant freedom for my little brothers and sisters.
rk
@notusingmynymfor this:
It’s so painful to read this. I’m so glad that you did not do it. I hope you and your siblings are free from your horrible parents and have had good lives.
wontusemineeither
@notusingmynymfor this: I understand.
I had a rotten abusive stepfather. I had a similar, not likely to be blamed, opportunity to do him harm. I decided not to.
I think we both did the right thing because Not Harming is a good general policy. It sets us apart from those who do harm.
And also because we cannot know for certain that the consequences of our actions are going to turn out the way we expect. We might think it would be a good outcome in some way, but such things have a way of twisting out of control.
I made my decision out of principle, as you did, but I’m doubly glad because what if it didn’t unfold the way we thought? You could have wound up terribly injured.
In each case, our contemplated actions could have resulted in even more harm than we thought we were preventing.
Best not to let the abyss stare into us.