March 5, 2001 part II

The shooter's name was Andy. He was an unnattractive, scrawny kid who had lived in the area for less than a year. His mother and brother lived in Maryland and he had minimal contact with them. His father neglected him. They lived in a studio apartment in a run-down complex near Santee School. He had trouble adjusting to Santee. The only friends he made were like him; poor, not the best upbringing. They skateboarded and smoked weed. He was picked on at school.

The papers had a field day with Andy's story. They made him a case example of what abuse, by family or peers, leads to. But that isn't all of it.

Santana's social strata wasn't what you see in movies. It wasn't a pyramid with the attractive jocks on the top and the runny-nosed, buck-toothed band geeks on the bottom. We still had some separation, because people get along best with like-minded people – but for the most part we all had some social equality. We didn't have gang wars by peer group or graduation year. You'd never see a guy from the football team trash can a freshman, unless it was his little brother. There was no teasing, no picking on specific targets except by people you knew. The few times I was picked on at Santana were by kids I had gone to Cajon Park with, when picking on me through elementary and junior high school was in style. No strangers, different social level or not, ever gave me any trouble. Nor anyone else I saw.

The kids who picked on Andy were his “friends.” He stood there and took it, and the worst thing you can do to a bully is ignore it and pretend like its nothing. Bullies have two goals in mind: to rattle you and to get away with it. He let them get away with it, and rattling him had become a challenge. He showed up to their group, hung out with them day in and day out voluntarily. He obediently took the teasing, which just led to more. I know these kids that picked on him, and I know he wasn't the only target. They were all targets to each other. Everyone picked on everyone else, trying to one-up each other. Maybe Andy didn't realize that because he was new. Maybe he did, and didn't know how to retaliate. Maybe he did retaliate, which is why he was accepted in the group, but no one cared to mention that when the reporters came calling.

Andy had “fallen in with the wrong crowd.” His friends were depicted by the media as being hoodlums, the worst of the worst, but in reality they were a bunch of teenage losers capable of little else than shoplifting liquor from Albertsons. They hung out at Woodglen Vista park behind the bathrooms, taking bong hits and passing a stolen bottle of vodka. They wrote on the picnic tables with sharpies. They didn't start fires or steal little old ladies' purses. They didn't get in knife fights or turf wars. These weren't hardened criminals that he was associating with, these were just unsupervised teenagers doing the things that unsupervised teenagers do. None of them to my knowledge have gotten in any serious trouble in the time since.

The news reported that someone had stolen his skateboard the week before, three times. Andy and his dad were poor. Neither could afford to replace a skateboard at all, let alone three times in one week. Obviously, he got the same one back. So here's a scenario for you: some kids hanging out behind the bathrooms at the park, sharing a joint. Too blazed to realize they'd left some of their stuff laying around for a considerable amount of time. Someone sees a skateboard, recognizes it as Andy's. They take it and ride it, or just hide it. He finds out, laughter ensues, eventually the thief returns it or says where its hiding. This happens three times.

Big deal.

Andy's best friend Josh Stevens was quoted in Time Magazine, saying "Listen to In the End, track eight on Linkin Park's CD. That was the song that inspired Andy." I just wanted to be like, are you shitting me?

Trying to hold on, I didn’t even know
I wasted it all just to
watch you go
I kept everything inside and even though I tried
it all fell apart
What it meant to me will eventually be a memory of a time
I tried so hard
And got so far
But in the end
It doesn't even matter

Like most songs from Linkin Park's first three albums (four, if you count the compilation with Jay-Z) this song is about a breakup. This is where you got your hardcore inspiration? This explains how you were picked on and everyone hated you? This is why you decided to become a murderer?

After ABC Today and Time Magazine pushed the Linkin Park issue (clearly people who had never listened to Linkin Park), frontman Chester Bennington replied with "You might as well say, 'it's because he ate mayonnaise that day.' "

Andy also used the chorus for In the End in a note to his father explaining why he did it. Which didn't really explain anything at all.

Andy had been talking about “pulling a Colombine” for weeks. A couple guys who heard said, “yeah right, I dare you.” At least two adults knew, maybe more. One, the aunt of a friend, overheard some of Andy and Josh Stevens' detailed plans. She waited two days to asked Josh if it was serious. He told her it was fake, and that he was going to have his mom's boyfriend talk to Andy. She figured this would be good enough. 29 year old Chris Reynolds, Josh Stevens' mother's live-in boyfriend, was more of a buddy than a responsible adult. He hung out with the boys, skateboarded, took them paintballing and was disliked by most of the residents of their complex, Woodglen Vista Apartments. Two days before the shooting he overheard much of the conversation between Andy and a group of boys, heard Andy and Josh say they were going to steal a car and go to Mexico afterwords. Someone replied, “you're a pussy, you won't do it.” Reynolds asked Andy if it was true. He said no, and Reynolds felt that was good enough.

Monday morning Andy met up with friends, got stoned and then headed to school. A few of his friends were apparently concerned enough to actually pat him down, checking for a gun. One looked in his backpack but didn't move the books to see his father's handgun resting beneath it. Satisfied, Andy's friends let him pass. He went in the bathroom. No one thought to tell a teacher, a counselor, a principal. No one called the cops. The shooting started less than fifteen minutes later, when Andy shot Bryan Zuckor in the head after he entered the bathroom.

Andy had a dysfunctional upbringing. He didn't live in the best area and he wasn't the most popular kid in the school. Neither was I, and I've never killed anyone. I even listened to Linkin Park at the time, too. Yet somehow we're supposed to believe that this combination of a divorce, an unhappy family life and feeling like you don't fit in with your high school is clear grounds for murder. Of the 1700 students at Santana, more than half of us were the products of broken or mixed marriages. Only one of us brought a gun to school.

When the police broke into the bathroom and Andy handed over his gun, reloaded and cocked, he said “its only me.” And it was. At some point Josh had dropped out of the plan – or maybe he was never really in it. Maybe, to him, it was just talk, just a way to work out frustrations. He and the other people involved were all on the news afterwords, starting in the Albertsons parking lot a few short hours after the shooting. Reporters couldn't get enough of Chris Reynolds at first, and many of the boys freely did interviews before someone realized they were incriminating themselves. Eventually Stevens and Reynolds hired lawyers, just in case, and all of the boys that had been associated with Andy's grand plan were transferred to different schools in the district. Only Andy went into custody and was tried as an adult. He is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for 50 years in a state penitentiary. Some people disagree with this decision. There has been a small movement since his conviction to get the decision overturned based on his age and mental status at the time of the shooting. Taking away all hopes and ambitions from a 15 year old boy seems excessive to these people, who ignore the fact that he did exactly that for a 14 year old and a 17 year old. He murdered two people, injured 15 and permanently scarred the rest of us. Fifty years sounds fine to me.


Related:
A website is run by friends and family (people that seemed to have only shown support for him after the shooting) and has been up for some years; http://andyspeaks.com .

The Time Magazine article discussing Linkin Park and other events leading up to it:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101010319-102077,00.html

Photo montage made by another student:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vurdZm79r08