You dodged a bullet that’s for sure.
Speaking in general, I think we all agree that for healthy people, happiness is a choice.
I do have sympathy for unhealthy people whose occasionally unexplained pain is not so visible, or even quite recognized by others.
How the mentally disturbed or severely depressed deal with something, that even they don’t understand, has a multitude of scenarios that will play out.
We can kind of justify being harder on and expecting more from healthy, stronger people. (I’m still speaking in general.)
This case, however, freaks me out. I lean toward a clean toxicology report, based upon the shock of boyfriend and dad, and even the cops description of the non responsiveness.
A clean report and that non-responsiveness means insanity. I do believe it exists and can defy chances for healing through the faith alone. Some people carry very hard crosses, so naturally as a mother, you say what if she were my poor child.
As an observer in a civilized society, however, we can be rigid and consider the effect here of a mass killer, and not sympathize so much with the cause of such a deeply troubled daughter to do something like this.
This girl is both. She is a mass killer and yet she is so insane she is devoid of feeling for herself or anybody else.
She still had not asked even to see anyone, of her family or boyfriend. Is that catatonic, or what. Psyche ward in prison lay ahead, I think.
I don’t think a clean report means insanity. I think it likely means just plain evil, at least at the moment the decision to plow into the crowd was made. It happens. Look at the guy that shot up the theater in Colorado. He tried that blank look insanity defense, too. I think hers is no more credible than his was. If she was not drugged, she has that depraved heart thing going on.
I felt very sorry for the Dad. He was a sweetheart and said he didn’t know what he should do. It is not his fault or the mother’s fault no matter how imperfect they may have been. There is one person to blame and that is the driver. She either made a foolish choice to get high or she made a foolish choice to be a mass murderer.
Mental illness exists in a much more limited way that the industry would have you believe. It has become the go to criminal defense. Also it is a handy thing if you want to sit on your butt and collect disability checks.
As for her previous treatment, the report said she was hospitalized for 2 weeks. That makes me wonder if she has been previously arrested and got that treatment as a diversion. Then there was another event where she was not hospitalized. They said she was given drugs during the first treatment.
The disbelief of the boyfriend means nothing. He is the boyfriend. He probably knows more than he is saying. The dad may truly not know anything. No one likes to face these things.
People who jump first to sympathy usually have not been close to anyone in a similar situation. When you see it you see just how much they are choosing it. Just as criminals are always innocent, substance abusers never choose it — only they really do. As for the mentally ill, sometimes it is a chemical thing or a physical thing in some way. LOTS of times it is simply a choice to be crazy. They enjoy shocking people for sport.
A lot more problems people have are about their sin nature than they care to admit. They do not want to be accountable when they can have the whole world feeling sorry for their jerk ways.
BTW, I don’t see it as I dodged a bullet. It wasn’t a bullet. It wasn’t about me. It was about my mother. She didn’t do it at anyone and it buys no one an excuse for their own bad behavior. Whatever bad choices I made I made because I was born a sinner, not because my mother was born a sinner.