Posted on 04/18/2007 8:51:11 AM PDT by Ellesu
BARABOO, Wis. - The teen accused of gunning down the Weston school principal last September told his grandmother afterward that "something snapped" in his head, she testified.
Irene Hainstock took the stand Tuesday at a hearing on whether Eric Hainstock, who turned 16 last week, should be prosecuted in juvenile court instead of adult court, where he is charged with first-degree intentional homicide in the death of Principal John Klang.
The charge carries a mandatory life prison term. If prosecuted as a juvenile, he could be incarcerated only until the age of 25, his lawyers have said.
According to prosecutors, Hainstock, a high school freshman, went to Weston Schools Sept. 29 with a shotgun and a handgun and shot Klang three times as the principal wrestled him to the ground.
Irene Hainstock said Eric seemed fine when she saw him the Sunday before the shooting.
She said she next talked to him "when we heard the news."
"I said, Eric, what have you done," she testified. "He said, 'Grandma, I don't know. It's like something snapped in my head."'
Pushed up to the witness stand in a wheelchair, she tearfully told about her relationship with her grandson and described his upbringing as troubled.
She said he had been bullied at school, including a time when a student held him by his ankles with his head in a toilet, and school personnel did not seem to do enough to help him.
But Sauk County District Attorney Patricia Barrett said a school report showed Eric Hainstock instigated the toilet incident, and that he had threatened other students and gone to school with powdered calcium that he said was cocaine and a mixture of Kool-Aid and cough syrup that he said was blood.
In eighth grade, Barrett said, he threw a chair in choir class and grabbed a teacher by her arm until it was numb as he screamed profanities.
Irene Hainstock said she was not aware of those incidents.
"Would you argue the defendant can be a very sweet boy when things are going his way, but that he wants things to go his way?" Barrett asked.
"I'm sure he wants things to go his way," Irene Hainstock said. "Just like any child."
She said she often talks with him by telephone from jail, and he tells her of the good grades he is earning and the bad dreams he has.
"He just kept saying, 'It's awful, it's awful, there's blood all over," she said. "I just wish he were the Eric I know."
Family friend Ruth Willis, leader of a church youth group that Eric Hainstock attended, said he generally got along with children at the church but complained of being bullied and abused at school, and he also would act out to get attention.
She recalled warning Mike Ecker, former principal at the school, as Hainstock's behavior worsened.
She said she told Ecker, "If he did not find help for this kid, he would have another Columbine (shooting) on his hands," she told the court. "I could see the anger in him."
The hearing was to continue Wednesday.
Join the club.
So was I but I didn’t go on a shooting spree over it.
Me, too.
But I turned into a nutcase radical religious homeschooling ideologue :-).
Jail all bullies. Problem solved.
This Liberal mentality is the root-cause of these nutcakes doing the deeds they do, IMHO.....
I agree with you!
Me too until I waited for the bully and rammed his face into a chain link fence as if we were in a cage match. Problem solved.
ERIC WAS BULLIED. HAND OVER YOUR GUNS.
Fight back now or face the consequences, unarmed.
Where’s the father? I don’t know anything about this case, but I would bet that the kid has not been raised in an intact family.
Briefly.
I told my dad about it, and he told me: "The only thing you can do is when one of those guys approaches you is to tell him to get lost. When you say that, he's going to want to hit you, so be ready and try and beat him to the punch. Hit him has hard as you can, as many times as you can, as quickly as you can. If you get in trouble, we'll have a talk with the principal."
I followed my dad's advice to the letter.
I whaled on the kid who was harassing me and then his big brother stepped in and whaled on me.
I took a beating, but they got a lesson.
My dad is full of good advice.
I wonder where Eric Hainstock's dad is, and what he's up to.
I made the mistake of thinking I could run to my great grandmother to save me. She saw me running down the street crying and locked her screen door on me. She told me to get my butt back out there in the street and wait for the bully.
When the bully saw me standing my ground he decided to walk on the other side of the street and never had a problem again. We ended up as friends but there was no way to avoid him in our tiny town.
2 smart parents/grandparents. You may get beat up, standing up but that is the only way. You have to confront a bully. Nowdays kids don’t seem to learn that because usually “mamma” fixes things. Kids IMO aren’t learning how to appropriately problem solve.
ie It wasn't his fault!
You know...I was the kid picked on in middle school...it never once crossed my mind to do something this heinous. I went home, talked with my mom, cried a little, prayed some, then went to school again the next day. To make excuses for this stuff is amazing to me.
And, I would wager that is exactly why the thought never crossed your mind. You had a caring parent(s). Same for me.
I have to say...it wouldn’t have crossed my mind even if I hadn’t had a caring parent! It’s a different day we live in. I was the “pickee” in 1967-68. Different times.
One of my relatives asked my wife and once if we were concerned about our kid’s “socialization”. I told them “Not at all — once a week, I drag them into the bathroom and me and a couple of my friends beat them up and take their lunch money”.
Never got the question again...
Which begs the question...what's changed? Why do they lash out in such a way? There's something large missing (among other factors as well) but what is it?
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