Laffyš³ āThe #Virginia teacher who was shot by a 6-year-old student repeatedly asked administrators for help with the boy but officials downplayed educatorsā warnings about his behavior, including dismissing his threat to light a teacher on fire and watch her die, according to messages from teachers obtained by The Washington Post.ā #shooting #news
Antone Johnson@GottaLaff The "light on fire" threat is deeply disturbing. Psychopathy from early childhood is a real thing. This Atlantic piece from a few years back is hard to read, but I found it a real eye-opener: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/when-your-child-is-a-psychopath/524502/ #shooting #psych
@GottaLaff Couldn't unsee:
Starting at 6, Samantha began drawing pictures of murder weapons: a knife, a bow and arrow, chemicals for poisoningā¦. She tells me that she pretended to kill her stuffed animalsā¦.
"How did you feel when you were doing that to your stuffed animals?"
"Happy."
"Why did it make you feel happy?"
"Because I thought that someday I was going to end up doing it on somebody."
āDid you ever try?ā
Silence.
āI choked my little brother.ā
@antone Imagine how the parents felt too.
@antone Pay wall but yes, itās real. I never doubted that. Very upsetting.
@GottaLaff Sorry about that. They're probably doing you (and all of us) a favor by paywalling, as it's a sobering (though informative) 7,000 word deep dive. Reinforces your point that as terrible as the child gun access problem is, there was also obvious failure to take warning signs seriously (probably all too common). š