Devastating Events Of 1998: A Case Study

In May of 1998 quite a few events occurred that received a lot of media attention. One devastating event happened to fall on the day I was born, May 21. On Thursday, May 21, 1998 a devastating event occurred at Thurston High School in Oregon. That day 15-year-old Kipland Kinkel, a freshman at the time, opened fire on fellow students using a semiautomatic rifle. Kinkel had originally been suspended on Wednesday May 20 for bringing a stolen gun to school. Someone had notified the police and reported the gun as stolen. The police then found Kinkel to be the perpetrator and brought him down to the station for processing. Due to Oregon law, officials were not permitted to retain Kinkel, so he was released into parental custody with the charge of possession of a stolen gun. Kinkel also faced punishment at school, he was suspended and waiting to face a hearing that could have resulted in expulsion according to the school’s superintendent Jamon Kent (Clark, 1998). A few of Kinkel’s
According to authorities, he had a .22 caliber handgun, a .22 caliber rifle, and a 9 mm semiautomatic Glock pistol with him, but had been tackled before he could reload his gun or reach for a different one. The student that was able to tackle Kinkel was Jake Ryker, who was among those critically injured as well. Ryker was a junior and a wrestler at Thurston High. In response to the shooting, John Kitzhaber, the governor of Oregon when the shooting occurred, said that, “All of us should look at how we have failed as a society and how this could happen in the heart of Oregon. It has been a priority to build prison cells and prison beds – after the fact. These actions in no way prevent juvenile violence” (Egan, 1998). At the time of the shooting, Thurston High School did not have metal detectors either, so smuggling in the weapons would not have been a difficult task for