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A man was shot and killed on a street near where I live this week. Close enough that I probably would have heard the shots, had I been outside at that moment. He was apparently shot in a random killing, following the murder a couple of days before of an elderly man not far away. The second shooting took place a short distance, a few feet, in fact, from a McDonald’s and in an area of heavy car and foot traffic, an area where I often go. It could have been me. It could have been anyone.
Does everyone remember the Virginia Tech killings? More people were killed at VT than in any other mass killing event in modern American history, other than 9-11, 2001, which of course was an act of war. What happened in Olney, Maryland, this week could easily have been a replay of Virginia Tech or something almost as bad.
The person now under arrest and accused of the killings, Rohan Goodlett, had been arrested previously for burglary(among other charges at other times). He went to a house in a small community near here, Brookeville, tried to meet with a woman inside, stuck his foot in the door when she tried to close the door and went around shouting outside the house shouting about “friendship”. He was arrested and found mentally incompetent to stand trial.
Here is where the story starts to resemble Virginia Tech or Tucson. He obviously was a troubled person having difficulty restraining his impulses. He needed help. He got some, but clearly not enough. He was eventually released with the stipulation that he follow 17 requirements, including taking psychotropic drugs to control his mental illness, and ordered to stay out of legal trouble. How is a person in mental difficulties suppose to monitor himself?
The first killing took place over the past weekend. An 81 year old man, Nazir Ahmed, was killed about a mile and a half from where I live. My guess, and it is only that at this point, is that Ahmed showed some friendship and kindness toward his neighbor and got repaid by being murdered. The elderly man was said to be very outgoing for a man of his age, which means he probably came into frequent contact with troubled young man next door.
Then, two days later, the man was killed walking home from his new job at a Subway Sandwich shop. Punyasara W. Palkumbure Gedara was a recent, legal immigrant from Sri Lanka and, from what we know now, his killing was purely a random act by a deeply disturbed person. He was shot in broad daylight and perhaps by shots fired from the car itself.
Left unanswered is how Goodlett acquired a gun and whether there was anyone else with him at the time Gedara was shot. Police pulled over Goodlett later Monday afternoon, driving a beige, older Toyota fitting the description of a car witnesses had seen rushing from the street where the shooting occurred. They found marijuana in the car, which was the basis of the arrest. Later, he was tied to the murders.
This story is a tragedy all the way around, an example, from what we know now, of life being wasted because of the confluence of mental illness and firearms. We’ve heard these stories so many times that they have become common place, almost accepted. The only reason the story did not make national news is that the police weren’t ready to say the two killings were linked until they had already made the arrest. Further, the deaths stopped at two, not ten, twenty or thirty.
It could easily have been a mass killing. The person who shot the worker going home from his job could have opened fire in the McDonald’s or any nearby store. He could have walked up to a group of people and opened fire. This story, in many respects, appears to be cut from the same cloth as Virginia Tech, except the number of victims.
Clearly, there are many things wrong with the way mentally ill people are being handled in our society. The old way of lock ‘em up and throw away the key was inhumane and unconstitutional. We should never wish to go back to that system. We need a better way of assessing people who have the potential for violence and we need consistent intervention to try to stop that violence. If there had been a few more people killed this week, we would once again be having that national debate about random violence and what is wrong with our society. Instead, even in the DC area, this event will be soon forgotten. Not here.
Our county police department was a bit coy about the whole matter from the start. They must have made the potential connection almost immediately between the death of the elderly man and the person next door with an arrest record and a history of mental problems. In fairness, they probably had no reason to suspect that he would kill again (if they did, they had a responsibility to let the public know). The police reluctance to come blabbing forth with everything they know is understandable. We should not forget, however, that it was the news media putting out, without authorization, the license plate number of the snipers in 2003 that led directly to a citizen spotting the car and calling police. The public can be a vital partner in stopping crime, given the chance.
I am so very thankful that the killings stopped at two. Like everyone around here, I am saddened that it happened at all, but at least greater tragedy was avoided. We dodged, by luck and circumstance, what could have been a much larger event. Yet another slap across the face, this one close to home, that something has to be done to change the way mental illness is handled in our society.
By the way, just as an aside, the accused killer, Goodlett, had a Facebook page and listed 162 people as his friends. Either the drugs he was ordered to take were doing a good job of controlling his mental illness when he was taking them, or a significant group of people were unable to judge his troubled state. The latter would not be too surprising, because some forms of mental illness can be mistaken for merely being different or eccentric.
Doug Terry, 3.24.11
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