Search Sub No: Password: Subscribe BREAKING NEWS: HEADLINES: Gas sends hundreds to hospital More Stories... INDICATORS: R/$ 7.04 R/€ 9.56 R/£ 14.13 Gold $/oz 690.50 JSE Alsi 28360.69 More Indicators... Unfortunately, this browser doesn't support the news ticker. Please visit iol.co.za for breaking news!
He is no serial killer, carefully stalking his prey. He is no vengeful husband, destroying the family he built and lost. He kills, seemingly, without rhyme or reason and then turns the gun on himself.
The man who committed suicide after killing 32 people at Virginia Tech University in the bloodiest school shooting in US history on Monday is a South Korean national identified as Seung Hui Cho.
Students said he was wearing a brown hiking-type shirt with a black vest over it. They said he repeatedly fired on cowering students and staff, trying to kill as many people as possible.
The most common profile for a mass murderer is the lone gunman: someone who was "isolated, reclusive and antisocial", said Alan Langlieb, director of workplace psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University.
He said human behaviour was too complex to lend itself to straightforward answers. "Some of it is premeditated, but a person could wake up one day and decide to create social havoc."
There were very few people who had enough disregard for human life to perpetrate such horrific acts of random violence, and most of those would never carry out such an act, Langlieb said. But for someone who is pathologically unstable, socially isolated, angry at the world and out to make a statement, something as simple as a news story could be enough to set them off.
Nearly two-thirds had never been in trouble at school and most showed no marked change in academic performance, interest in school, friendship patterns or school disciplinary problems prior to the attack.
The largest group of shooters were considered to be "mainstream" students (41%), but about a third were characterised as "loners" and about a quarter were part of a "fringe" group.
Most attackers had no history of violence or criminal behaviour, but about three-quarters of the attackers felt "persecuted, bullied, threatened, attacked or injured by others prior to the attack".
They were also likely to have had trouble "coping with significant losses or personal failures" and 98% had "experienced or perceived some major loss prior to the attack".
More than half of the shooters had been planning the attack for at least a month and more than two-thirds of the attackers had told more than one person about the plan before they carried it out.
A study by the FBI found students engaged in school violence often displayed a preoccupation with violence, depression, narcissism, alienation, lack of empathy, anger management problems, intolerance and a lack of trust in others.
Blaming society or violence on television was not the answer, Langlieb said, noting that people reacted very differently to the same situation and that antisocial personalities developed at an early age and seemed to have been present throughout history and across cultures.
"Society can do more in a preventative way to get help and support for people who are in need but that's different from saying living in a stressful environment makes people engage in road rage. It's not so much what goes on in the environment as how people cope with stress."
This is cache, read story here
