Learning of these senseless tragedies and the loss of lives touches a nerve inside me...
Jeff Weise and Robert Bonelli Jr. should have been living lives filled with hope and promise. Instead, they ended up destroying themselves and harming others. Yet in the deepest part of my being, I believe that somehow, if I had only known these young men, and if I could have befriended them, perhaps these tragedies would not have occurred.
I also believe that, hidden beneath their pent-up anger, frustration, and feelings of powerlessness, was a spark of hope that, somehow, life would finally make sense. That their plans for violence would not be necessary.
Unfortunately, however, if there were periods of time when Jeff and Robert felt this way, no one ever came to their rescue. They had no one to fan those sparks of hope. And their desperate cries for help went unanswered.
Eventually they would both drift down the wrong road, and each would make the terrible choice to use violence in order to battle the real or imagined wrongs that they felt were done to them.
Jeff Weise chose death. The community he tried to hurt will continue to exist, while he will be written off as an aberration.
Robert Bonelli Jr. is alive, but he's facing a lengthy prison sentence. Thankfully, no one died during his rampage. Yet he will have many years, however, to think about what he did. And his father, meanwhile, will have to watch his son age in prison.
Finally, there will be the various law enforcement agencies, mental health professionals and social workers who will spend countless hours trying to figure out what went wrong with these two. But I do not believe there will be clear-cut answers.
Without God in a person's life, anything can happen.
D.B.
I also believe that, hidden beneath their pent-up anger, frustration, and feelings of powerlessness, was a spark of hope that, somehow, life would finally make sense. That their plans for violence would not be necessary.
Unfortunately, however, if there were periods of time when Jeff and Robert felt this way, no one ever came to their rescue. They had no one to fan those sparks of hope. And their desperate cries for help went unanswered.
Eventually they would both drift down the wrong road, and each would make the terrible choice to use violence in order to battle the real or imagined wrongs that they felt were done to them.
Jeff Weise chose death. The community he tried to hurt will continue to exist, while he will be written off as an aberration.
Robert Bonelli Jr. is alive, but he's facing a lengthy prison sentence. Thankfully, no one died during his rampage. Yet he will have many years, however, to think about what he did. And his father, meanwhile, will have to watch his son age in prison.
Finally, there will be the various law enforcement agencies, mental health professionals and social workers who will spend countless hours trying to figure out what went wrong with these two. But I do not believe there will be clear-cut answers.
Without God in a person's life, anything can happen.
D.B.
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