Many parents of school shooters ignore glaring warning signs. This grandmother didn't. [View all]

[iemanja]

She had seen her grandson’s red, spiral-bound notebook before that night, but now, as Catherine O’Connor sifted through its pages for the first time, what she read astonished her.

“School Shootings,” Joshua O’Connor had titled the first page, above a reconstruction of the Columbine High School massacre that left 13 people dead. In the pages that followed, Joshua, who’d just turned 18, described a detailed plan to carry out his own massacre: the shotguns, pistols, assault rifle and ammunition he would buy and the bombs he would build; the doors he would zip-tie “so bitches can’t escape”; the spot by the bleachers where he would set off the first explosion; the route he would take on his killing spree; the moment, when it was over, that he would end his own life.

“I Need to make this shooting/ bombing... infamous,” he wrote in early 2018. “I Need to get the biggest fatality number I possibly can.”

Catherine O’Connor, a retired probation officer who was Joshua’s guardian, showed the journal to her husband, who was equally disturbed. The next day, after O’Connor dropped her grandson off at school, she searched his room and found a semiautomatic rifle in a guitar case. Then she did what many parents of school shooters never do: called the police to report that a child she loved posed a threat to his classmates, his community and himself.

WaPo paywall: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/12/09/parents-school-shooters-charges-crumbleys/

Police found bomb parts in Joshua's room. The day after his grandmother called the police and Joshua was taken into custody, the Parkland shooting happened. He was later sentenced to 22.5 years in jail.

Link to tweet

Video from a VA local TV station:

https://www.kiro7.com/news/north-sound-news/teen-who-plotted-school-bombing-apologizes-calls-grandmother-the-hero-/919312094/


I know Joshua O'Conner was a threat and had to be placed in prison, but I can't help thinking about the light sentences for the Capitol Hill attackers who went through with the violence they planned.