Posted on 08/22/2009 8:11:24 PM PDT by xjcsa
PARKERSBURG, Iowa — The body of the football coach lies under a rectangular patch of dirt, slowly being covered by creeping clover and crab grass.
[snip]
The body of the former football player is in a county jail. But there is no doubt among people here that his is a soul lost. An insanity defense for 24-year-old Mark Becker is expected when his murder trial starts next month.
For more than 30 years, the Thomas and Becker families were bonded by school, church and the communal raising of boys in this small town about 100 miles northeast of Des Moines. Then their worlds collided in a fury of gun blasts.
And Parkersburg, a town of 1,900 people and no stoplights, was left to piece itself together, again.
It was Mr. Thomas who emerged from the basement on May 25, 2008, to find his house, along with 220 others, blown away by the biggest tornado to scrub Iowa in decades. He walked two blocks to the demolished high school where he had taught and coached for more than three decades, and vowed to patch Ed Thomas Field and the football program together in time for the season opener.
Mr. Thomas pointed Parkersburg toward normal. And it followed.
It was Jan Thomas, his wife, who was the first volunteer paramedic to arrive at the high school’s temporary weight room early on June 24. The police chief stopped her at the door. It’s Ed, he said. Mrs. Thomas had arrived in time to say goodbye.
That night, she called Joan and Dave Becker. And a small-town murder, as unexpected and unexplained as any other, had its most important answer. A violent death cannot shatter a town if it does not divide friends.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
A devastating EF-5 tornado last year, and the murder of the town's most visible leader this year, yet the town moves forward, and the families of the coach and his killer are as close as ever. The power of the love of Christ is evident in Parkersburg.
Turn your TV to ESPN on August 28; they are televising the football team's opening game.
The full story is worth the read.
Very sad, but the Times wants to make these people look bad, and I don’t think the crime should be treated as something condemning these people or their town. The kid who killed the coach sounds like a classic paranoid schizophrenic with sudden young adult/teenage onset, which is the worst kind. Perhaps they didn’t recognize it or accept it in time, but I’m not sure much would have been helped even if they had.
I remember a few years ago, when a teenager in Washington State shot and killed his family and some of his classmates, that his father had been begging the state mental health authorities to take him into custody. IIRC, even the parents of one of the Columbine killers had wanted him committed before the act.
The Times makes it sound like these people, blinded by their religious faith and good neighborliness and being ignorant rural boobs, just wanted to blame the kid’s behavior on Satan or drug use. I’m sure most people suspected that he had had some kind of psychological break, but nobody, small town or not, really knows how to handle that now.
He had done a series of bizarre things, and once upon a time this would have been a danger sign and he would have been committed. But now you can’t get somebody like this committed until after he has killed someone, or you can wait for him to kill himself.
This happened to a friend of mine (who lives in a big city and is not a Christian and therefore is not like the people in the article) whose 22 yr old son drove into a wall and killed himself after several attempts to do so and after suffering years of mental illness during which his family could not get him committed to somewhere safe.
Huh. I guess I didn't read it that way.
The kid who killed the coach sounds like a classic paranoid schizophrenic with sudden young adult/teenage onset, which is the worst kind. Perhaps they didn’t recognize it or accept it in time, but I’m not sure much would have been helped even if they had.
They were quite aware of his problems. The Becker and Thomas families had prayed together quite a bit for Mark, and they knew he had the potential to be somewhat dangerous. I just don't think they realized just how dangerous.
The Times makes it sound like these people, blinded by their religious faith and good neighborliness and being ignorant rural boobs, just wanted to blame the kid’s behavior on Satan or drug use.
Funny that you mention that. He was, in fact, into drugs, including methamphetamines. And when he walked out of the building after shooting Ed Thomas, he was shouting things about Satan ("you have to tell Satan", "Satan told me to do this"). So it gets hard to tell what all the factors were in this, but all sources agree that Mark Becker was a nice, good kid when he was younger.
He had done a series of bizarre things, and once upon a time this would have been a danger sign and he would have been committed. But now you can’t get somebody like this committed until after he has killed someone, or you can wait for him to kill himself.
Actually there was some sort of breakdown in communications between the police and the hospital's mental health department; the police expected to be notified when he was released (after evaluation due to his bizarre actions a few days before), but they never got word. The morning after his release was when he killed the coach; the details of the communication breakdown have not been made public yet.
thanks for setting the record straight.
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