T.J. Lane Says Good-bye

There's a killer on the road
His brain is squirmin' like a toad
From The song, Riders on the Storm

He longed for only one thing. The world to bow at his feet. They should feel his secret fear. The dismal dread. His pain had made him sincere. He was better than the rest of all those ones he detests within their castles so vain, selfish and conceited.
Excerpt from a December 30th, 2011 Facebook posting by T.J. Lane


The shooting happened over a year ago in Chardon, Ohio. T.J. Lane was at Chardon High School waiting on a bus to take him to an alternative school that was geared toward students with either academic, or behavioral problems. Instead of leaving, he walked into the school cafeteria wearing a tee shirt with the word Killer written across the front, picked out a table at random and began to fire at fellow teenagers with a Ruger .22. He killed three and wounded three. One of the wounded remains paralyzed from the waist down.

As mass killings go, this was a minor one, unless of course you were there, or one of your kids was murdered, or wounded. There are no minor cases of mayhem when loved ones are victims. As the year progressed new and greater outrages happened. Body counts mounted into double digits on more than one occasion and T.J. Lane and Chardon, Ohio became old news. A large number of Americans might not even remember the shooting happened. After all, it has been a busy year for the heavily armed and deranged. It is hard to keep track of all the names and places.

The details are numbingly familiar. Lane was portrayed by various people as quiet, sweet, someone with a simmering temper, and a loner. He was living with his grandparents at the time of the shooting. The weapon he used was apparently stolen from his grandfather's barn. He was described as being cold and detached as he shot his victims.

So why talk about him at all now? Why focus on just another demented fool who still hasn't told anyone why he decided to take the lives of others, especially since it has been over a year since the shooting?

Well today, NBC News' Elizabeth Chuck reports that T.J. Lane was sentenced to three life terms without the possibility of parole. He had copped to that plea in order to get the death penalty off the table. He also had a good-bye message of sorts for the rest of us.

Chuck writes that when young Mr. Lane came into the courtroom he was wearing a blue button down shirt. However, shortly after arriving he removed it. The tee shirt he was wearing underneath was emblazoned with the word, Killer in large hand written letters.

When the judge asked him if he wanted to make a statement, T.J. Lane raised his middle finger to the packed courtroom, flipping off both his family and the families of his victims and said, "This hand that pulled the trigger that killed your sons now masturbates to the memory. Fuck all of you."

Oh yes, a very sweet lad indeed.

I wish I had something quite deep to say about all this. I suppose I could compare him to the Norwegian loon Anders Breivik, or rail about how gun owners never seem to secure their weapons. I could even go off on yet another anti NRA rant at this point.

Sometimes though, when faced with absolute darkness, there is simply nothing you can say. There is no analyzing it, there is no dissecting it, there is no reason to speculate that if A hadn't happened then B wouldn't have happened and therefore C,D,E and F would still be alive.

T.J. Lane was and still is nuts. He got a gun. He used it and he really liked using it. Now he will spend the rest of his life in prison. End of story.

He is eighteen years old.

Evil, it would seem, doesn't practice age discrimination.



3-19-13