Another withcraft trail comming up

Coumbia County, Wisconsin, USA.

15 year old Eric Hainstock took two guns to school on Friday 29 September. The school caretaker took the shotgun off him. The school principal, John Klang, struggled with him. Durring the struggle the principal was shot 3 times. He died later in hospital.

The following comments are based on news reports. Some of these are linked to in the links section.

Eric has been arraigned and charged with first degree murder. He will be tried as an adult.

On the legal front; that the caretaker was able to take the shotgun off him and the fact that the principal was shot durring a struggle i.e. he was able to get close without being shot would suggest to me that there is a very strong defence for accidental shooting.

On the basis of looking at similar defences for example the silly and inevitably doomed defence of Chris Pittman's team - who tried to argue that an anti-depressant drug Zoloft (Pfizer Inc) made 12 year old Chris not responsible for his actions when he shot his grandparents I am not optimistic for Eric's chances.

Like Chris and like Jason Clinard (a 14 year old who shot his school bus driver in March 2005) Eric Hainstock came from a disrupted home. Like Chris Pittman he also suffered relentless abuse from his father.
In the following paragraphs I report some of the factors which Eric had to live with: (These are based on reported court records and testimony of neighbours).

His parents divorced when he was 2 (or 4 - reports differ). The judge in a 1995 opinion ruled that both parents had 'serious shortcommings'.

He was punished frequently by his unemployed father, punishments including: beatings with a belt, with a wooden paddle with the words 'Board of Education' written on it and had hot sauce put on his tongue, and kicked him in the butt etc. These were cited in an abuse charge against his father in 2001, which was eventually dropped. The family home was unkempt. It was surrounded by broken down vehicles. A neighbour reported frequently seeing Eric running laps round the house as a punishment for small mistakes.

Eric frequently went to school dirty and unwashed. At school he was both picked on and picker on according to a friend. An older student reported that he was a loner and a little 'weird'.

Tragically in this case it seems that the principal Mr Klang who was shot really was a humanitarian teacher. One classmate of Eric reported that Eric would calm down after talking with Mr Klang. Shortly before the shooting though he was given a school punishment by Mr Klang for having tobacco. Perhaps this was the final straw; the one person he relied on had (it may have felt like this) turned against him. Mr Klang seems to have been a popular principal; children who are victimised by their parents may take out the rage and frustration on someone other than the parent.

Two sympathetic adults in Eric's life - a local Quaker minister, Paul Willis, and a previous special needs teacher both reported that Eric was an 'affectionate kid' or 'sweet and giving kid'. And both reported that he was troubled. The Quaker minister reported of Eric "In general, he didn't think things through."

Writing this piece I've noticed that I've been using the past tense about Eric Hainstock, I guess working on the assumption that he will get life in prison - his life is finished.

Basically, like Chris Pittman, Eric was (past tense again) an adolescant boy who had been separated from his mother at a young age and who had been worked up to a pitch of intense anger by a physically abusive father . At some point there was a trigger - people whom he saw as suportive also abused or punished him. In Chris Pittman's case his grandfather started to beat him with the same paddle his father had used. With Eric the supportive principal punished him for a minor misdemeanour. This person then becomes the butt of all the anger. They are sympathetic figures so the child is not too scared to fight back but by punishing the child they incur his ire. In both cases too we might add the easy availability of unsecured guns in the family home. (Chris had actually been given a shotgun by his father before he was packed off to stay with his grandparents).

In other words, in both cases, the child is really acting as a kind of conduit for the anger and aggression of the father.

However; just like with Christopher Pittman we will now have to sit through a 'trial' where Eric will be held responsible. His background will be touched on but due to a kind of myopia which will seize all those involved in the legal process we will not note any connections or consider the multiple and (more or less total) ways in which Eric, a child, was failed. Considerations which in fact are not the product of some radical psychology but are really part of common understanding; how a child behaves is a reflection on their parents. We all know that.

But we will go through this pantomime, which has about as much reason it in as a 17c witchcraft 'trial' and, unless Eric is very lucky, we'll pack him away so we can forget about it.

And - to make the rather obvious point, thus do nothing to prevent similar tradgies occuring again.

Update
More details have come out about the bullying and abusive treatment that Eric's father Shawn meted out. These are detailed at Madison.com . Reading the catalogue of abusive treatment he received it would appear no wonder at all that Eric snapped.