-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- http://www.courier-journal.com/localnews/2000/0004/06/000406carn.html Carneal's motives remain a mystery Teen says he was 'mad at the world' before shooting By JAMES MALONE, The Courier-Journal PADUCAH, Ky. -- Despite three days of new questioning by lawyers, convicted Heath High School gunman Michael Carneal is still unable or unwilling to explain why he opened fire in the 1997 shooting that left three students dead and five wounded. Carneal, 16, says he felt angry, afraid "and mad at the world" and could not maintain social relationships years before the shootings, according to a 500-page deposition taken in early February. He said he had considered taking his own life and felt that his parents favored his older, overachieving sister, Kelly. Carneal also said he was lying when he told police and his psychiatrists that friends helped plan the shooting. The deposition was taken at the Northern Kentucky Youth Development Center, a state juvenile center in Crittenden, Ky. Carneal was sentenced to 25 years in prison at age 15 for shooting the students in the school lobby on Dec. 1, 1997. He is to be sentenced as an adult when he turns 18 and is expected to be sent to state prison. A copy of the deposition was given to The Courier-Journal at the newspaper's request by Michael Breen, a lawyer for the plaintiffs in a civil lawsuit brought by the families of three slain girls. Lawyers for Carneal were present during the deposition. In it, Carneal never addressed why he opened fire on his schoolmates and said he can't remember shooting. Asked what he thought during the shooting Carneal replied: "I don't remember." But he said he felt "crappy" when he shot and killed a former friend, Nicole Hadley. The day of the shooting, Carneal opened fire with a stolen .25-caliber pistol as a student prayer group was disbanding from a morning devotional. But during 13 hours of deposition questioning by Breen, Carneal never said why he shot his classmates -- nor did he express sorrow. Asked what he was afraid of, Carneal answered, "Ridicule, not having friends, rejection, people under my bed, people in vents, trees falling down and hitting my house, burglars, getting beat up. For some reason, a lot of times, I thought that my friends or my family was kind of plotting against me for some reason. Just things like that." And in a final psychiatric evaluation that has not previously been made public, Carneal said that he did not have a problem with the people in the prayer group but noted that his friends "did not like them." Carneal was envious of their popularity and their friendships but also felt they rejected him. No longer the 5-foot-2-inch, nerdy freshman fascinated with the Smurfs, Carneal now is a strapping 6-foot-1-inch, 245-pound teen-ager who takes daily doses of antidepressants. He said he aspires to take college correspondence courses when he completes his high school work. In other highlights of the depositions: Carneal said he has written two letters to one of his victims, Melissa Jenkins, who was left paralyzed, but the contents of those letters were not revealed. He said some of his friends at Heath High School were involved in the occult but he personally was not. He said that until recently, he had never talked about the shootings with his family. He said he discussed it once with his mother. Carneal said that Ben Strong, a preacher's son who was hailed as a hero after some accounts had him confronting Carneal as he shot, did not stop him from shooting and emerged from behind a column. He said he wanted to shoot Heath High Principal Bill Bond but was not aiming at anyone in particular when he opened fire. He said he made up his mind to shoot students about 30-45 days earlier but can't recall why, or why he decided on Dec. 1 as the day. Throughout the deposition, Carneal consistently denied the most chilling allegations of the crime -- that he took extra long guns and more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition so that friends could join in the carnage. McCracken County Sheriff Frank Augustus has said he thinks there was a plan to do just that, but that at the last minute his friends balked. When Breen asked Carneal why he took the four long guns to school, Carneal replied, "because that's all I had." He added, "The best way to describe it is just so if you got done firing one gun, you can just throw it down and pick up another one and start firing. You won't have to reload the gun. That's the best way I know how to describe it." In a final report from Carneal's psychiatrist, issued days before Carneal pleaded guilty to charges of murder and attempted murder, he again went into detail about the plan. His interviewer, defense psychologist Dewey Cornell, noted "consistency" about details of the shooting in six different interviews Carneal gave to police. But Carneal "felt an obligation" to protect his friends, wrote Cornell, of Charlottesville, Va. As their rapport warmed, Cornell said, Carneal became more open about discussing "peer" involvement and noted Carneal "volunteered" to steal guns for an older group of socially estranged students who had befriended him. Carneal told Cornell that on the Wednesday before the shootings, he spoke with three boys "specifically about what kind of gun each boy would use" and once named four boys he intended to provide guns. Carneal's defense psychiatrist, Dr. Dianne Schetky of Rockport, Maine, wrote that the boy thought his friends would look up to him for the shooting and "worried" that his friends would be angry if he backed out. Filed in McCracken Circuit Court, the lawsuit is one of two pending from the shooting. The parents of Kayce Steger, Nicole Hadley and Jessica James also filed a federal lawsuit against a movie studio and developers of violent video games found on Carneal's home computer. The parents allege that the games and movies desensitized Carneal to graphic violence and aggression. -- ----------------------- NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ----------------------- ________________________________________________________ 1stUp.com - Free the Web� Get your free Internet access at http://www.1stUp.com <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are not allowed. 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