Cho Seung-Hui — Mexican reaction to the incomprehensible

There have been something like 700 murders in Mexico this year, mostly related to the “drug war.”  Even the odd serial killer, like the “Mata vieja” (“Old lady killer”) of a few years ago made sense (the killer was a robber gaining access to little old ladies apartments by pretending to be from a visiting nurse from the Health Department) was a “logicial” killer.   The country has an alarmingly high murder rate, but murder in Mexico is overwhelmingly something we can understand… business (especially shady business, like narcotics trafficking and poltics) or disputes within the dysfunctional Mexican family.  

Even the Mayan cannibal a few years back only ate his mom and dad (he was too paranoid to go out to the market), not — like Jeff Dalhmer — chance acquaintances.    Suicides are extremely rare.  Most suicides have overwhelming financial problems and hang themselves.

As I’ve said before, in most ways I feel safer in Mexico than in the U.S. While I was once had rocks thrown at me by a crazed junkie, and there’s a good chance of being hit by a car in the city, I don’t expect to be shot by a stranger, or thown in front of a train.  Perhaps the Mexican lack of personal autonomy makes for a more pacific society. 

Mexican cannot understand the Virginia Tech massacre.  Neither can I, but Wilbert Torre, the New York Correspondent for El Universal, tries. 

NEW YORK.- Serial killers, massacres, casual crimes, snipers and knifings are frequent across the entire United States. . Those acts attract the world’s attention when they happen at a school or university – like the recent slaughter at the Virginia Technical University – but others happen every day, in cinemas, restaurants, on the metro, in the street and in parks.

Experts in the field are as concerned with the proliferation of firearms and the ease of buying them as another issue: public policies regarding mental health problems in the United States.

In this country, the most common method of committing suicide is with a firearm. 60 percent of those who take their own life use a gun. 80% of all suicides are committed by white men, according to a study by the National Alliance for Mental Illness in the United States.

In the middle of the 90s, a study undertaken by this organization determined that suicide was the ninth leading cause of death in the country. In 1995, 31,384 persons committed suicide.

A high percentage of these deaths occurred in universities and other centers of higher learning. Hundreds of students commit suicide and others commit homicides or massacres without either the governmental or school authorities having the capacity to detect or treat mental problems which are only recognized after the fact from studying the clinical histories or daily conduct of these people

Cho Seung-Hui, the young South Korean who killed 32 persons at the Virginia Tech also committed suicide. Before the massacre, Seung-Hui had written disturbing short stories. His associates and teachers describe him NOW as a solitary and very strange. In his record appear compalints by classmates, who apparently were bothered by Seung-Hui. But before the slaughter, no one thought to look into his conduct in any detail.

Eugene O´Donell, a retired New York policeman, and expert in criminology, has studied these types of crimes for years. He concludes that the problem is a lack of public policy to deal with persons suffering from mental illnesses. He mentioned that in the past, the government locked up disturbed persons, but under deplorable conditions. Now, may of the mentally ill wander the streets. Most are peaceful, but some in their madness slaughter people.

“We need to get below the surface in the Virginia massacre and not stop at simple arms contro”, said Bailey Childers, leader of the Progressive Majority organization. “It is necessary to start a debate about mental health care in the United States. He insists that the stigma against seeking treatment is keeping people from requesting assistance.

The New York Times reports that Cho Seung-Hui shares most of the characteristics and behaviors noted in a 2000 study of people who perpetrate these kinds of massacres.

The analysis of 102 rampage killings indicate that most are committed during the day by educated white men. Seven of the 102 were committed by Asians, and about a third of the killers commit suicide.

In New York, in places as different from one another as a park, the subway, a home, a tourist passage and a discoteque, there were massacres like that at Virginia Tech.

In February 2002, Ronald J. Popadich, an unemployed man living with his mother in a quiet New Jersey suburb, shot a neighbor, hailed a taxi, killed the driver, stole a car, ran down 19 people, fled, and returned the next day to run down another seven. In a final rampage, Popadich dilled four people.

“I wanted to kill as many people as I could,” Popadich declared when arrested.

In March 1990, Julio González, an unemployed Cuban, got into an argument with his date at the Happy Land Discoteque in the Bronx. After exchanging words with the bouncer, he left the club, walked to a gas station, convinced the attendant to sell him a can of gas, returned to the disco and set it on fire: 17 people died.

In 1999, a mental patient who stopped taking his medication, pushed aspiring writer Kendra Webdale in front of a train. On another occasion, a homeless man, Jesse Nettles, stabbed five people in Times Square, including a man pushing a carriage with two babies. More recently, late last summer, Kenny Alexis attacked five people with a knife, stabbing one of them in the aorta, on the edge of Central Park.

But these things don’t only happen in New York. In 1966, Charles Withman [sic] killed his mother and his wife. House later, he climbed the observation tower at the University of Texas and opened fire. He killed 14 people before being killed by the police.

The latest chapter in the the story of murders in the United States happened three days after the Virginia massacre. In Queens, Jimmy Lee Dawkins, a 20 year old with a history of mental disturbances killed his mother, his nurse girlfriend and then himself with a pistol. His mother had made complaints to the police about her son several times, but he had never been arrested.