Shooter Kills 1, Injures 22 at Oregon School

A 15-year-old freshman suspended a day earlier for bringing a gun to school allegedly walked into the crowded cafeteria at Thurston High Thursday, climbed up on a table and opened fire, calmly spraying bullets across the room until three students wrestled him to the ground. “Just shoot me,” he then said.

One student was killed and at least 22 others injured when the slight, freckle-faced boy strode into the room wearing a trench coat and slinging a rifle at his hip, witnesses said.

Pandemonium erupted in the cafeteria, where students were gathered to socialize before morning classes. “Everybody go to the closest room!” a voice screamed over the intercom as students, at first believing it was a practical joke, ran screaming and diving for cover from the bullets and shards of breaking glass.

Wrestling coach Gary Bowden, an Army veteran, said he knew what had happened as soon as he walked into the room. “I smelled the blood, and knew exactly what it was,” he said.

Police identified the boy as Kipland P. Kinkel, a junior varsity football player who had recently threatened to blow up a school pep rally and who often talked to classmates about killing. His English class journals, classmates said, were full of murderous fantasies.

“If the assignment was to write about what you might do in a garden, Kinkel would write about mowing down the gardeners,” said Marc Johnson, a 14-year-old classmate.

The horror continued to unfold as sheriff’s deputies went to the Kinkel family home outside this blue-collar suburb and found the bodies of two people believed to be his parents, also dead of gunshot wounds.

Students said Kinkel’s parents had recently grounded him for the coming summer for toilet-papering a house. The afternoon before Thursday’s shootings, the couple had picked their son up from a juvenile detention center, where he was being held after bringing a weapon to school.

Supt. Jamon Kent said the school district had followed normal procedures by suspending Kinkel and another student and turning them over to police when they arrived at school allegedly showing off a gun stolen during a home burglary.

School authorities, he said, had no knowledge of Kinkel’s earlier threats to blow up an assembly and kill people. “There are four counselors out there, and 1,500 kids,” he said. “We’ve lost a number of resources, and our counselor ratio now is one to as many as 700 or 800 students. That’s far too many to have an in-depth relationship with kids.”

In the wake of several other school shootings across the nation, Oregon bristled at suggestions that this was “a school problem” and said it was time to seek out the reasons for adolescent pain.

“I think we need to ask ourselves: What kind of despair drives children to this kind of violence? What kind of lack of hope or sense of abandonment . . . drives them to make this kind of terrible choice?” said Gov. John Kitzhaber, visibly shaken at an afternoon press conference.

“It has been a priority to primarily build prison cells to house people after crimes have been committed, after victims have been created,” he complained. “This society owes it to itself to make a commitment to prevention at least as serious as its commitment to punishment.”

Witnesses said Kinkel was wearing a trench coat as he arrived shortly before 8 a.m., walking calmly into the cafeteria where students normally gather before classes begin. Carrying a .22-caliber rifle and a pair of handguns--one of them a Glock semiautomatic--he allegedly held the rifle at hip level and began firing.

The weapon clicked on empty at one point as he held it directly against the head of one student, witnesses said, and at that point, 17-year-old wrestler Jacob Ryker, already shot in the chest, jumped him.

Ryker, a brawny 6-foot, 4-inch Boy Scout, got shot again in the hand as he grabbed for the gun. At that point, his 14-year-old brother, Josh, and another student jumped on and held Kinkel to the ground. The older boy was shot again, this time seriously.

Kinkel was saying, “Just shoot me. Shoot me now,” Josh recounted later. He looked down at his classmate’s face. “There was no remorse there,” Josh said.

Michelle Calhoun said she and her boyfriend, 17-year-old Mikael Nicklausen, were sitting in the cafeteria, where they often met to talk, when she got up to get something to drink. She heard a commotion, turned and saw Kinkel enter the room.

“He just walked in and started firing at everybody. I thought this could never be happening. I thought I was dreaming. It all happened in slow motion, just like everybody always says it does. I can’t believe it was happening at my school.”

Nicklausen, a senior, was the only student who died in the attack. He had recently enlisted in the Oregon National Guard, and Calhoun planned to join him after graduation next week.

After the attack, Calhoun’s father, Jim Calhoun, said he and his daughter hadn’t been speaking for the past two weeks. When he heard of the shootings at the school, he tried frantically to track her down by phone for two hours, then caught her up in a weeping embrace outside the school.

“If she hadn’t gotten up to get something to drink, I’d be out here as a grieving parent,” he said.

Authorities said as many as 10 students were injured trying to escape in the panic that followed the attack.

A total of 22 students were hospitalized. At least three remained in critical condition and several others were in serious condition. Paramedics at the scene set up a triage center and transported all the victims within 57 minutes of the attack, fire department officials said.

Kinkel was easily taken into custody. “When we arrested him, he was very calm,” said Capt. Jerry Smith of the Springfield Police Department.

Afterward, Lane County sheriff’s deputies drove to the family’s isolated home, a three-story A-frame cabin in a wooded area near the banks of the McKenzie River. There, they found the bodies of two adults, and Sheriff Jan Clements said he had “no reason to believe” they were not Kinkel’s parents.

His father, William P. Kinkel, 59, was a retired language teacher at Thurston High School. Faith M. Kinkel, 57, taught Spanish at a nearby high school.

Neighbors said the boy often went hunting and fishing with his father and uncles along the river, and said the family was a quiet and well-liked one with no obvious problems. Police Chief Bill DeForrest said authorities had released Kinkel the previous day to his parents after fingerprinting and photographing him in connection with a variety of charges, including possession of a firearm on school grounds.

School officials had initiated an investigation after a parent reported a handgun had been stolen during a burglary, and named one or more students who were believed to have been involved. DeForrest said it wasn’t clear whether Kinkel had stolen the weapon himself or bought it, but students said it was common knowledge at the school that Kinkel had purchased the gun from another student who had stolen it.

Kinkel, students said, ran with a crowd of students who favored alternative rock bands like Nirvana and Nine Inch Nails. “Those kids were, like, wild,” said Marc Johnson, a fellow student. Kinkel was well-liked by girls, but didn’t have a girlfriend.

Megan Conklin, 17, recalled getting on the school bus shortly after she moved to Springfield from Washington last year. Kinkel told her to get out of the seat. “He said I shouldn’t sit down because we don’t allow dogs to sit back here with us,” she recalled. “He’s really mean. He hurt my feelings. He called me a fatso. I got off the bus and ran.”

Over and over, students told stories about how Kinkel bragged about torturing animals. He told friends he blew up cats, even blew up a cow one time.

“He was a really nice guy, but he always talked about this weird stuff. Lots of people said things like that, but he nibbled at doing it. He had this thing about torturing animals,” said Alanna Janssens, a neighbor who went to school with Kinkel for years.

Sometimes, they said, he expressed curiosity about what it would be like to kill a human.

“He was talking about a while ago, he was going to put a bomb in the bleachers at a pep rally. I’ve heard him talk about bombing the whole school,” Chase said.

Students said the suspect had once given a talk in speech class on how to build a bomb. In middle school, he was voted “most likely to start World War III.”

Dist. Atty. Doug Harper said the suspect would be tried as an adult, although he is too young to face the death penalty.

“I know that all Americans are heartbroken,” President Clinton said from the White House Rose Garden. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the the families of the people who were killed and wounded, and with that entire fine community.”

Staff writer Anne-Marie O’Connor in Los Angeles contributed to this story.

* PASTORAL PATHOLOGY: The heartland holds hurt souls, Shawn Hubler writes. A27

* A TOWN IN SHOCK: 15-year-old was regarded as a braggart but not a danger. A26

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13 School Deaths Since October

Thursday’s shooting in Springfield, Ore., was the most recent in a string of school shooting around the United States.

Oct. 1, 1997, Pearl, Miss.: 16-year-old boy accused of killing his mother goes to school and allegedly shoots nine students. Two die, including boy’s ex-girlfriend.

Dec. 1, 1997, West Paducah, Ky.: 14-year-old boy accused of opening fire on student prayer circle at high school, killing three and wounding five.

Dec. 15, 1997, Stamps, Ark.: Sniper wounds two students outside a school in southwestern Arkansas; 14-year-old boy arrested after a manhunt.

March 24, Jonesboro, Ark.: Two boys, aged 11 and 13, open fire outside middle school, killing one teacher and four girls; nine girls and one other teacher wounded.

April 25, Edinboro, Pa.: 14-year-old male student shoots and kills teacher; two 14-year-old boys wounded.

Tuesday, Fayetteville, Tenn.: High school senior male shoots and kills another 18-year-old senior male.

Thursday, Springfield, Ore.: 15-year-old male student, a day after being expelled for carrying firearm, opens fire in cafeteria, killing one student and wounding 25 others.