Posted on 04/25/2003 7:40:06 AM PDT by syriacus
Classmates and friends spoke of a friendly guy who played on the football team.
Just before he put the handgun to his temple, James Sheets looked into a fellow classmate’s eyes.
He had already shot the Red Lion Area Junior High School principal, Gene Segro.
His classmate, Angel Williams, stared back at him, caught his eyes. She could tell he was going to hurt himself. He gave her a look that said he was about to end his life.
And then he did.
Just like that, students said, it was over.
Everyone who knew Sheets never suspected he could or would kill anyone, let alone himself.
Alishia Stambaugh, a 14-year-old eighth-grader who sat behind him in science class, said he was nice and always friendly to her.
He was a quiet kid with black curly hair. “He was not a trouble maker,” said Steve Haymire, an acquaintance who saw Sheets at social events like dances.
“The thing he did today was the last thing I would have thought he would have done,” said Haymire, who was shocked by the shooting.
Larry Macaluso, superintendent of the Red Lion Area School District, said at a news conference Thursday that he was not aware of any problems Sheets had or issues he might have had with the school’s principal.
Sheets lived with his mother and stepfather, Angelia and Arthur Baker, who live on Freysville Road in Windsor Township. He had a 5-year-old half-sister.
Josh Lowe’s bus was about to pull into the parking lot at the junior high Thursday morning when it abruptly changed course for the high school. The eighth-grader was surprised to hear about the shooting, but even more surprised to learn who the shooter was. The 14-year-old said Sheets was a pretty friendly guy and had a lot of friends.
Sheets played football for the junior high and played baseball for Red Lion Recreation and attended Red Lion Bible Church.
Summer Hess, 16, a 10th-grader at Red Lion Area Senior High School, said she and Sheets went to grade school together. Though they didn’t hang out together much, they remained friends in the intervening years. She said she never heard him talk about guns, or show any behavior that prepared her for his actions Thursday.
“He seemed like an OK guy,” she said. “He got along with everybody.”
“I never suspected he would shoot anybody,” she said.
“Especially Dr. Segro,” added her classmate, Becky Bednar. Some said Sheets was a jock. Football coach James B. Jefferis Jr. declined to comment Thursday.
But there was another side to Sheets. He wore cowboy boots and was often seen sporting a black leather jacket, the one hewas wearing Thursday.
“He was a country boy,” said Billie Jo and Bobbie Jo Timmons, twin sisters who were sitting two seats away from Sheets when he fired the fatal shots.
He had an interest in guns — like many of the boys at his school, the Timmonses said. Several of the boys interviewed Thursday who had been in the cafeteria Thursday morning recognized the type of gun used to kill Segro.
“He always talked about guns,” Bobbie Jo said.
But Jimmy Sheets had another love — Brandi Burger.
The two teenagers went out with each other and recently broke up. She met another boy, students said, and that broke Sheets’ heart, Bobbie Jo said.
Brandi attended Thursday’s 1 p.m. counseling session at the high school. She and her family declined to comment Thursday.
Bryan Sieling, a 14-year-old eighth-grader, said Sheets had a bunch of friends.
“There weren’t many who didn’t like him,” he said. “He seemed normal to me.”
A delusional schizoid who believes he is being attacked or threatened will react the same way a healthy person would react if they were being attacked or threatened - sometimes with deadly force.
That would do it :<
I'll bet you're right. It does seem that quite a number of teen suicides I have heard of (whether by overdosing, one-car "accident," hanging or gunshot) took place shortly after a "break up."
I wonder why he killed the principal.
Hope we'll hear some followup on this.
Now I'm wondering how long it will be until the anti-gun crowd will start dancing in this blood? They will, you know.
No doubt.
(More lives might be saved if they have a Million Mom March against teenage love. )
??? WTF ??? Sentences like this just scream for background music. Oh My God! We thought he was normal... how could we have overlooked these signs that he was a potential John Wayne... or Fonzie!! Another side?? I don't even know where to start with the hit job that this article is!
Of course he was: it's the lack of morals, stupid.
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