Ghosts of Jonesboro
March 13, 2017 2:05 PM   Subscribe

March 24, 2017 marks the 19th anniversary of the Westside Middle School Shooting in Jonesboro, Arkansas. BuzzFeed interviewed several survivors and their families in anticipation of the 15th anniversary, and it's a haunting read.
posted by PearlRose (12 comments total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
 
The Buzzfeed article mentions an important aspect of the shooting that is often unremarked upon:
In the days after the rampage, stories circulated that Johnson was angry at some girls who he’d either briefly dated or who had spurned his romantic advances. In fact, 14 of the 15 who were shot [and all 5 who were killed] were female.
...
McDaniel was able to depose Johnson after his 2007 arrest. During the deposition, Johnson dismissed the idea that he was targeting specific girls he had a vendetta against, but offered no more substantial theory in its stead.
The apparent pattern was commented on in a NYT letter to the editor published two days after the massacre:
Arkansas officials and others seem to take comfort in the notion that the Jonesboro murders are beyond our comprehension (front page, March 26). But is it a coincidence that all five victims killed by a ''random'' spraying of bullets were female?

It is chilling to think that the threats that preceded these murders were ignored because we believe it is perfectly normal for adolescent boys to hate girls and want to kill them. When will we learn that ''boys being boys'' is a pathetic excuse for ignoring the deeply misogynist tendencies of our culture?
Again, from the Buzzfeed article:
Ultimately, though, no new legislation was passed, and she’s not sure how many minds around Jonesboro were changed. “Women’s attitudes may have changed some, but not men. These guys are born and raised with a gun. You buy your son his first gun — that’s a rite of passage.”
I don't know what else to say.
posted by jedicus at 2:29 PM on March 13, 2017 [23 favorites]


Haunting. I remember where I was when I heard about this, standing near a TV in the college's campus center. There had been a couple of school shootings the year before, but this one made it clear to me that there was something new arising. What that something is, I now believe I know, but I won't throw the thread down that hole right away.

A clown drove from Florida and insisted he perform for the kids; a magician somehow slipped past police and was caught stealing quarters from students in the cafeteria.

These are both tiny short stories, probably by George Saunders or Joy Williams. Florida is a long drive. Imagine making it with this in mind and not even asking someone first. What kind of Patch Adams bullshit is that.
posted by Countess Elena at 2:29 PM on March 13, 2017 [5 favorites]


Your focus is on the clown and not on the magician who snuck in to rob the children?
posted by Sangermaine at 2:47 PM on March 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


wow, what a sad commentary on our country that I didn't even remember this particular school shooting since there have been so many.
posted by AFABulous at 3:26 PM on March 13, 2017 [15 favorites]


The horrible thing that puts the lump in my throat is that I can't even recall this happening. There've been so many over the years I don't even remember this one.

What a fucking country.
posted by los pantalones del muerte at 3:33 PM on March 13, 2017 [15 favorites]


At 11 and 13, you want to kill girls? My daughter is 6, she has 5 years before her male friends want to kill her?
posted by amanda at 5:05 PM on March 13, 2017 [3 favorites]


I grew up in the area, and this happened two months before I graduated high school. Buzzfeed thankfully distinguishes the school where this happened from Jonesboro proper, but still characterizes Jonesboro or the region as a small town. Jonesboro's the fifth biggest city in the state--no one from Arkansas would ever call it a "close-knit rural community." There's a large university there, and quite a lot of industry. As far as the state goes, it does pretty well. But it's also incredibly white and segregated. It's hunting territory--duck hunting season is a major annual event and the entire region is all about guns and the machismo culture that comes along with them. As a native son, I remind everyone that on average the good people of my home state would rather err on the side of more guns than on fewer events like this. The state's legislative slate for 2017 has already shown that the trend isn't slowing: the legislature is making moves to force universities to allow staff to carry concealed weapons, even though universities are trying to keep this from happening, and there's more/worse in the pipeline.

I love where I'm from, but I made it to age 24 before I had to leave. I tried to lean on the idea of small town mentality as an apology for too long, but cities like Jonesboro don't have the luxury of that excuse.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 5:20 PM on March 13, 2017 [13 favorites]


Jesus, the teachers were back the next day and the students the day after that. They never took the deceased students' names off the class rosters. I can't imagine. My middle school had a thwarted shooting attempt (the kids went to jail) not long after Jonesboro and Columbine. The rest of our school year basically went up in smoke with reconciliation activities, sign making, assemblies, and so on. It got some brief national press, and we all got drilled in school on saying no to reporters. That was difficult for us to get through, and there was never any actual violence. I can't imagine returning to the school as quickly as they did in Jonesboro. The trauma those people must carry. Wow.
posted by lilac girl at 5:46 PM on March 13, 2017 [11 favorites]


Just blows my mind that both of the shooters have been allowed to purchase guns. This country is insane.
posted by longdaysjourney at 8:08 PM on March 13, 2017 [8 favorites]


Buzzfeed thankfully distinguishes the school where this happened from Jonesboro proper, but still characterizes Jonesboro or the region as a small town. Jonesboro's the fifth biggest city in the state--no one from Arkansas would ever call it a "close-knit rural community."

I felt like this was a pretty good article overall, and didn't try to do the kind of grandstand-y extraction-of-meaning I've come to expect from this kind of writing. That said, I'm not sure if I can think of more than a handful of journalistic exercises that have ever struck me as getting the scale of places like that right. I feel like the author here seemed to make more effort than usual on this front. (I comment mostly because it's a thing I noticed; I'm so used to seeing places with a hundred thousand people in them characterized as "sleepy mountain towns" or whatever.)
posted by brennen at 8:47 PM on March 13, 2017 [2 favorites]


Excellent article. Heartbreaking how this has effected the survivors lives. They needed sustained and quality psychological support and sounds like most didn't get it.

I just can't get my head around how young the shooters were.
posted by kitten magic at 9:06 PM on March 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


I remember this shooting, although it has since been eclipsed by even more horrific events. I had forgotten the ages of the shooters and victims, though. My daughter is 12 years old and in the sixth grade, so I found that aspect frightening on a personal level. I thought it was interesting that at least in the interviews cited the shooters couldn't explain why they did it. I see the same dynamic at play with my daughter when she does something foolish, like forgetting her books after being reminded multiple times to not forget them. "I don't know, I just forgot, okay!" It also seems like the criminal justice system was at a loss on how to deal with them (much as the U.K. courts had difficulty with the boys who murdered James Bulger). They weren't going to be imprisoned for life, but they clearly weren't ready to reenter society when they were released. And the fact that they both legally obtained guns is mind boggling. I feel like the rest of the developed world is leaving the US behind in many ways, and our pathological attitude towards guns is a big part of that (our attitudes towards income inequality, race, and healthcare are others, and they are all entangled in many ways).
posted by TedW at 8:15 AM on March 14, 2017


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