By Brad Dickerson
Highlands Today
Avon Park Police Chief Matt Doughney was going into military service in 1984 around the same time James Huberty walked into a San Ysidro, Calif., McDonald’s and opened fire.
Huberty kept on shooting for 77 minutes before a police sniper on a nearby rooftop put a bullet through the assailant’s head. The final figures from that July 18, 1984 attack were staggering.
Twenty-one victims that included grandmothers, an infant, children on bicycles and teenage McDonald’s employees were dead. Nineteen others were wounded.
“You hear the term shock the conscious,” Doughney said. “That right there was the catalyst for law enforcement at any time, any place. It was the Columbine of its day.”
Another small community - the town of Bridgeville, Pa. - was rocked Tuesday night when 48-year-old George Sodini reportedly entered an LA Fitness Club and fatally shot three women during their exercise class before turning the gun on himself.
As if the murders themselves weren’t shocking enough, Sodini kept a 4,610-word Web diary that was a nine-month account of his plan to shoot up the gym, thus exacting revenge against women who ignored him.
Sodini wrote that he hadn’t had a girlfriend since 1984 and hadn’t slept with a woman in 19 years.
“Women just don’t like me. There are 30 million desirable women in the U.S. (my estimate) and I cannot find one. Not one of them finds me attractive,” wrote the systems analyst for a Pittsburgh law firm.
Clues before the madness?
It was still unclear Thursday when the Web diary was posted and if it had been updated regularly since November or just recently posted in its entirety.
Doughney said that if the diary was regularly updated and someone saw it but chose not to call the police, they will have to live with that decision forever.
Sodini also reportedly lacked social skills, a trait he shares with other mass murderers like Columbine High School shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold and Virginia Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho.
Their anti-social behavior may have isolated them from certain sectors of society, but it may not have included signs of the tragedies to come.
“It’s not a crime to be a shy, withdrawn person (and) to not have a lot of friends,” Doughney said.
Any signs, no matter how small, might not even strike someone until after a violent episode occurs, according to Lake Placid Police Det. James Fansler.
“I don’t know if there’s any true tell-tale signs,” he said. “The term hindsight comes into play a lot. It always happens after something like that.”
Doughney added that after a tragedy like the Pennsylvania shooting, people can often go back, look and find something broken that could have been fixed.
“It’s like the anatomy of a train wreck,” he said.
Help before it’s too late
San Ysidro, Columbine and Bridgeville prove that mass shootings are not just a big city problem.
Highlands County has had its share of violent crimes over the past several years, including the murders of Samuel Tiller, Bryan “Red” Fanning and FHP Sgt. Nicholas Sottile, but nothing on the scale of these communities.
Fansler said a lot of people are hesitant to get involved in situations that may have a tragic outcome because of fear of retaliation.
He reminds residents that if they see a person acting in such a way that could make them a threat to themselves or others to make an anonymous report to a local law enforcement agency.
Copyright 2009 Highlands Today