In the UK Asian means Arab or Indian.  I'm going with a wacked out lone Muslim terrorist seeking martyrdom and the 72 virgins.

Edit:  Check that.  The story was from the BBC, but the witness describing the perp was an American.

Broome Community College Assistant Professor Tuong Hung Nguyen was asked to work with police to communicate with the shooter. Nguyen is fluent in Vietnamese.

Last edited by phreddy (2009-04-03 14:01:51)

What do you want, the standard profile, or the reason he went after an immigration center? People who go on "rampages" are targeting an institution or group. Individual human life is of no consequence for them, mostly because they have no care for themselves and have lost all empathy for other human life. We really have to wait for things like his employment record or whatever manifesto he left glued to the walls of his SRO. As most of these jackasses tend to end up well ventilated by the police or themselves, we're all left to ask "why" when the answer to that particular question is never going to satisfy.

Such people always tend to find justification in SOMETHING. If we even accept half of what the "cop" was doing, then it would be enough to drive ME apeshit, and we all know I can manage English adequately. Sounds like someone rode him into a corner, but it still doesn't excuse his response to it. You've got children who are abused for years who don't grow up to be abusers, themselves. I don't see a "vicious cycle" here, just someone who was late to snap and eventually went after the group/institution he felt had done him the most wrong. If left to my own devices, I would have just killed this "cop" person. The note is hard to parse, because of the language problem, but if so many of the experiences were correct, I'd probably wanna cut a bitch too. Doesn't mean a homicidal rampage was in order.

Last edited by pALEPHx (2009-04-07 23:32:58)

I wasn't discounting his paranoia, only accepting that it had to have a focus on SOMETHING. He didn't exactly go after a police station or other government office. It's a subjective logic; he blames who he blames. While I don't put it past a probation officer or some other kind of law enforcement agent with an agenda, I highly doubt the circumstances, as well. This guy was definitely fantasizing more than probably occurred.

I try to put myself in Korea, or something (I have a friend who teaches there), and wonder if I'd consider myself "persecuted" by local officials because I hadn't mastered the communication skills. I still wouldn't be given to vengeance fantasies or the use of weapons to eradicate the institutions that had made my life inconvenient (even if I blamed them, and not myself for not actively learning to assimilate better). Job loss or inadequacy is a different matter. This country has accepted so many who have been able to find work, even those who have doctorates in their native lands, in far less superior positions.

This person was wired wrong to deal with personal failure. That may be cultural, or habitual, but the end result was outright violence, and that is not a social norm for his own culture, or ours.

GooberMcNutly wrote:

Kind of like my wife when she catches me fiddling with the thermostat.

But you ARE trying to kill her.

That letter sounds eerily similar to Kathy.  Rogers might want to watch his back.

square wrote:

That letter sounds eerily similar to Kathy.  Rogers might want to watch his back.

It really does.