Warnings mounted before Winchester library slaying

Boston Globe ^ | February 28, 2018 | Mark Arsenault

[Jim Noble]

WOBURN — For years before the bloodshed, the warning signs around Jeffrey Yao became clearer.

Fellow students, neighbors, police — even Yao himself — saw troubling evidence of mental illness in the Winchester man. On several occasions, residents and former classmates said they warned school or law enforcement officials that Yao was dangerously erratic...

On Saturday, authorities say the 23-year-old brought a 10-inch knife to his local library and slashed a young woman to death in a seemingly random attack...

“Jeff has a long history of mental illness, including multiple hospitalizations,’’ Carney said in an interview before Yao’s court appearance. “This terrible tragedy, which shocked his parents, is unquestionably related to his severe mental illness.”

After Saturday’s slaying, Yao’s neighbors told the Globe that they feared Yao, whom they said had tried to break into homes, smashed glass in the road, shattered his own windows, and made threatening gestures to passersby on Farrow Street. Neighbor Leslie Luongo said she was so afraid of Yao that she would run to her car every day when she left the house at 5 a.m. to go to work. She said residents kept their children indoors, kept baseball bats nearby...

[Jim Noble]

I'm posting this because it has nothing - and everything - to do with the massive propaganda campaign for "gun control". The profile of this dangerous crazy guy (Yao) is shared by many if not all mass casualty shooters. The fact that society cannot immobilize people liek this - when we have done so for most of our history up to the 1970s is THE issue, not guns. This man was hospitalized multiple times, and let out multiple times, by doctors who, I'm sure, would bleat "we can't predict dangerousness". Nonsense. A freaking neighbor lady running to her car at 5AM can predict it. We need a major change in the way we deal with dangerous crazy people.

[Diogenesis]

The Governor (picked by Rat Romney) is
an ObamaCARE supporting pseudoRepublican
who supports: the care and protection of rattlesnakes.

That right. Rattlesnakes (like himself) over med students.

[GodBlessRonaldReagan]

At least it wasn’t one of those scary semi-automatic assault knives.

[Wuli]

There were many errors in the past when involuntary commitment of someone with mental issues was easier. It was too easy sometimes, and some persons were wrongly locked up, sometimes unnecessarily for life.

Then the legal pendulum swung in the other direction, and the difficulties with getting someone involuntarily committed became too much.

Now we need to find some place in the middle of where it is now and where it use to be. There will still be errors and we will have to be vigilant about how any new laws are working, or not.

[Governor Dinwiddie]

"Diversity is our strength!"

[csvset]

What a strange twist of fate.

NBC10 Boston learned from sources Sunday night that Stryker is the daughter of Dr. Timothy Stryker, who was questioned in the 1993 death of his girlfriend.

More about her father here.

UPDATED: Stoneham doctor’s alleged killer, Stryker, dies in prison

[IronJack]

Agree. It’s hard to strike the right balance and protect all concerned.

[Southern_Republican]

Don’t you mean FULL semi-automatic assault knives ;)

[Jim Noble]

the difficulties with getting someone involuntarily committed became too much

That's true, but incomplete.

There is nowhere to put someone like this Yao character, and, if there were, there's no arrangement to pay for it.

[Living Free in NH]

Thank God he didn’t have an AR-15 because he would’ve killed her worse.

[bert]

The sarcasm is un justified. The murder was in a state with tight gun control. /S

[Wallace T.]

In the distant past, someone like Yao might have been found dead several months later, buried in a shallow grave in an isolated area. He would have been sent to his Maker quietly by neighbors, using what we now call, shoot, shovel, and shut up.

[Wallace T.]

In the distant past, someone like Yao might have been found dead several months later, buried in a shallow grave in an isolated area. He would have been sent to his Maker quietly by neighbors, using what we now call, shoot, shovel, and shut up.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Until someone with broader conscience spoke up. That’s why not.

[Auntie Mame]

Very interesting. Makes you think, doesn’t it?

[Wallace T.]

I recall a situation in a small town in Missouri where a local bully who had intimidated many locals was found shot to death. This happened about 30 years ago and made the 60 Minutes show. The state police investigated but found that everyone in the town shut up about the killing. There was a sheriff in the county, but he didn’t act against the bully. Ineffective law enforcement, whether rendered so by political correctness, bribery, cowardice, or incompetence, forces people to act outside the law to seek justice or obtain protection.

[GailA]

BTT

[HiTech RedNeck]

If you replace “forces” with “tempts” then you would have a correct statement.

How was it however that they could mount an effort to murder a bully and yet not change out their sheriff?

[Wuli]

I was not being incomplete.

The lack of available spaces for the involuntarily committed is one of the problems that was conjoined with the issue of getting the commitment signed - the two issues go together; you cannot commit people if there is no place to go, and the theme at the time was “half way houses” and such, which (a) did not work in many cases, and (b) saw constant NIMBY issues, and (c) never got the per-patient resources that had been spent on the old institutions.

The problems are the problems, they are all related.

[HiTech RedNeck]

There used to be giant tower-like facilities; exploration of their ruins (and other commercial and residential ruins) is one of the things the You Tube show “The Proper People” features.

And that’s when government expenditures were smaller.

One problem today is optics. How does it look? Another problem is how will it be managed. In one sense a “skepticism of government” movement quite succeeded. And maybe it’s better for freedom in some sense that we have to face the occasional school shooter than see Jim Rob slammed in a mental facility for being sufficiently countercultural (even if he’s still wrong sometimes).