Man kills his 9yo son to keep him from receiving Covid vaccine (murder/suicide)

[Nevilledog]

https://magazine.atavist.com/sins-of-the-father-san-francisco-vaccines-murder-suicide/

A small, good-natured boy named Pierce O’Loughlin was growing up between the homes of his divorced parents in San Francisco. Nine-year-old Pierce was accustomed to custody handoffs taking place at Convent and Stuart Hall, the Catholic school he attended. On changeover days, one parent dropped him off in the morning at the hilltop campus overlooking the bay, and the other picked him up in the afternoon. The parents avoided seeing each other. Their split had been ugly.

On the afternoon of January 13, 2021, Lesley Hu, Pierce’s mother, arrived at Convent and Stuart Hall for a scheduled pickup. Hu planned to take Pierce to a Coinstar machine to exchange a small bucket of coins for a gift card he could use to buy toys. Then they would go to dinner at a restaurant called House of Prime Rib, because Pierce loved to eat meat.

But Hu’s son wasn’t waiting for her at the school. Staff told her that he had been absent that day. They didn’t know why.

Another mom might have assumed that her child had a cold or that his dad had let him skip school and taken him somewhere fun for the day, but not Hu. She wondered if Pierce had been kidnapped—not by a stranger but by his own father.

Over the course of their marriage, Hu had watched as her now ex-husband, Stephen O’Loughlin, became obsessed with pseudoscience, self-help gurus, and conspiracy theories, spending long nights watching videos online, then sharing the details of fantastical plots with Hu, their friends, and people he barely knew. The COVID-19 pandemic had only made things worse. O’Loughlin huddled for hours at his computer streaming YouTube clips and poring over right-wing websites—what he called “doing research.”

*snip*

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

1. omg...so sad

[ItsjustMe]

2. Seriously

What the hell is wrong with those people?

[electric_blue68]

3. That was awful! That poor child, and mother.

[NJCher]

4. Conspiracy theories

The story at the link is very long but quite interesting. She had a lot of warning about this guy. He was a mark for every crackpot product or theory that came down the pipe.

[yardwork]

17. And there was nothing she could do. Court ordered shared custody.

[montanacowboy]

5. What a story

Crazy anti vaxxers - and conspiracy theories
What is wrong with these people’s brains

[littlemissmartypants]

6. Really good read. Thanks, Nevilledog. ❤️

[North Shore Chicago]

7. A recommended read

A psychologically damaged man.

[Boomerproud]

8. Horrific.

for little Pierce. How did that man get joint custody?

[jimfields33]

9. I read the whole thing. Speechless, sad, upset, frustrated and a whole host of emotions.

Poor child and mother.

[ProfessorGAC]

12. Summed Up My Feelings Exactly

Essentially word for word.

[MissB]

16. This. Exactly

I can’t add anything, but I’m posting to bump the OP. That was a worthwhile but incredibly sad read.

[Irish_Dem]

10. The GOP promotes conspiracy theories for political and financial gain.

They couldn't care less that they kill people with their lies.

[Delphinus]

18. Absolute

truth.

[UpInArms]

11. That was perhaps the most tragic essay I have ever read

For the first time Hu could remember, her husband began making bizarre claims. Busy caring for 17-month-old Pierce, she tried to tune O’Loughlin out when he ranted about how Barack Obama was born in a cave and had been a CIA asset before he was elected to the U.S. Senate. She fell asleep as he talked about the New World Order and awoke to discover that he’d been up all night scouring the internet and now wanted to talk about the sprawling influence of the Illuminati. She cringed when O’Loughlin began parroting Alex Jones’s lies about the Sandy Hook massacre being a hoax.

[dalton99a]

13. There is so much blood on Trump's hands.

[Meowmee]

14. tragic

That poor child. Having trouble wrapping my head around all of this. He was so crazy, that should have made it easy to win custody.

[Richard D]

15. And...

Now that wack-job Kennedy is a candidate. Another mass murderer.

[okaawhatever]

19. K & R