Kip Kinkel

2006-01-28T15:59:00.001-08:00

In May 1998 in the State of Oregon Kip Kinkel shot both of his parents at his family home and the next day, drove to his school and started shooting randomly in the school cafeteria. One student died at the scene, another died several days later as a result of gunshot wounds, several other students were injured. Kip is now serving life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, he was tried as an adult.

During his trial details of Kip's life, family and medical history were brought up and served to highlight a catalogue of errors. Kip's past psychiatric history was particularly interesting as was the fact that he'd given very obvious "clues" to his state of mind in his school books, these were not oblique comments he had made, they were direct statements about what he intended to do and yet no-one, neither psychiatrist nor school teacher, neither parent nor any of his friend's parents had thought to further investigate. Kip had been arrested about a year before the shootings for making explosives in his bedroom and, the day before the shooting, he'd been given a caution from the police for taking a weapon to school, he was released into the custody of his father. Kip came from a middle-class family, both of his parents were high-achievers and worked as school teachers, his sister was similarly academic. Kip was a slow-learning with proven learning difficulties.

What happened here? Why were so many of the "clues" as to what would inevitably happen missed? This blog looks into the past history of Kip Kinkel and tries to understand what leads a child to take such dreadful action and, furthermore, why the adults involved with his care, singularly failed to deal with his problems before they escalated and eventually culminated in this tragedy.

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