This is about as personal as this stuff gets. At least it is as personal as I would ever want it to get. And honestly, I wish it wasn't. I would have been blissfully ignorant but for the connection to my family.
I received a call on Tuesday evening from my mother. She was asking for prayer for my niece...my brother's daughter. She is eleven years old. They live in Houston. My mother has been helping out with my brother's kids (my sister-in-law had eye surgery recently) and, as usual, had picked up my niece from school that day. She remarked that her favorite teacher had not been there and wondered if he was ill. She said that he was such a nice man that he was probably helping someone else who was sick. My mother didn't think very much of it at the time and dropped her off at home. A couple of hours later she got a call from my sister-in-law who told my mother that my niece's teacher had been murdered.
Except it was worse. Much worse.
They had found her teacher at home. He had been shot. So had his wife, also found dead. So was his son, also found dead. They had to tell her and it was going to have to be that night. The alternative would be to tell her the next morning and the consensus was that it would be worse for her to hear what happened just before going to school. Because there would be school the next day. The school authorities had decided to tell all of the children at the elementary school and deal with it. You can imagine how traumatic that was going to be...to be told that your favorite teacher was dead...murdered...just before going to bed. Poor kid.
I didn't bother blogging about this that evening or the next because I wanted to wait until more of the story had developed. And now it has.
The killer aspired to be the next Columbine killer. He had practiced killing animals for years. He had taken shots at the adjacent high school. There is unconfirmed word tonight that he may have had potential accomplices inside the adjacent high school.
So, what was the connection to my niece's teacher?
He was his son.
Yes, he warmed up for his mass murder by killing his father, mother and his older brother. His target wasn't the elementary school that his father taught at but the high school a few hundred yards away. He had a large collection of firearms and many, many rounds of ammunition for each. When he was captured (and thankfully he was) by the Texas Rangers in nearby Magnolia he had a .223 rifle and a 9mm pistol with him...purportedly the weapons used to kill his family. The killings appeared to have happened over the weekend...perhaps on Sunday evening. I think that he had a younger brother who escaped death by his absence from the home.
He has made a full confession to the authorities and is in the county jail. His bail is in the neighborhood of $5 million.
I don't know if this will ever make the national news. But it could have.
Here are some news links to the story...
KPRC Television Video at this one.
ABC News website storyAnother ABC News report. Video at this one but inexplicably it's about the VA Tech mass murder...someone at ABC has their head up their ass.
The local ABC affiliate's report is here. With the right video.
Houston Chronicle story here.
