Just a little over two years ago, Delta State University had a brush with something that has become more common these days.
One of its professors, Shannon Lamb, drove to the school and shot a fellow professor Ethan Schmidt, apparently hours after taking the life of his girlfriend on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
This was not a mass shooting – something we all thanked God for that day as the situation unfolded and eventually came to a head when Lamb took his own life shortly after the incident – but it was as frightening of an experience for students and employees at DSU as any other situation when a gunman has been on the loose.
And as the hours and days passed by in the aftermath of the shooting, we all thought authorities would get to the bottom of the motivation behind the shooting.
So far, to my knowledge, no one has been able to definitively put their finger on why Lamb did what he did.
His family seemed stunned. His employer – the school where he earned his degrees and would later terrorize on his final day – was just as baffled. There was some odd behavior, but nothing that could have led anyone to predict his final acts on Earth.
And so it appears the family of the man who shot up a large Las Vegas crowd this week, an event that has been dubbed the most deadly mass shooting in American history, is also paralyzed in disbelief over the atrocity that killed 58 souls and injured hundreds more.
Not much was known about Stephen Paddock, the 64 year-old assailant, prior to writing this article, but his family described him as a wealthy, retired accountant.
Though his father once appeared on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list (1969-77), Stephen Paddock was likely better known to the casino employees in Vegas than he was to any law enforcement authorities in Nevada.
In times like these, there isn’t much therapy for the hurt, but something that does provide some solace is knowing why.
Paddock may have taken that with him when he apparently ended his own life as police busted into the hotel room he was using as his vantage point.
Authorities may uncover something that was unknown to his friends and family which may shine light on his motive, but if they do not, that will be one of the hardest things for me.
When I was in ninth grade, Mississippi experienced the mass shooting of Pearl High School by one of its students, Luke Woodham.
A few years before, I watched the Oklahoma City federal building bombed by a terrorist, and during my first year of college, I watched with my friends as the twin towers fell in New York on 9/11.
In each instance, there was some semblance of an answer to the question “why?’
It didn’t make the events less tragic, but knowing why someone would exercise that level of hate, knowing the motives and getting a grasp on the sick minds behind each event was somewhat therapeutic, because it brought closure.
But much like the incident the Delta endured two years ago, this shooting may never bring the closure we would all like to see.
I sincerely hope the families and friends of those killed this week will be able to experience some sort of closure. Regardless, it will take them, and the rest of the country, a long time to heal from this.
