Lawyers: Families of Virginia Tech Victims to Get $11M Settlement

 

Associated Press
Thursday, April 10, 2008
 
ROANOKE, Va.   Families of the victims in the Virginia Tech shootings have reached an $11 million settlement with the state, lawyers said Thursday. The deal is designed to prevent future lawsuits.

Slideshow of 11 years of school shootings

Finland still reeling after Jokela school shooting

NIU shooter had trace amounts of drugs in system

March 15, 2008
BY DAVE NEWBART Staff Reporter/dnewbart@suntimes.com

Traces of nicotine, cold medicine and an anti-anxiety drug were found in the body of a man who killed five students in a Northern Illinois University classroom last month, authorities said Friday.

Northern Illinois University released the results of toxicology tests and an autopsy of Steven Kazmierczak, a former NIU student who opened fire in a lecture hall on Feb. 14.

Steven Kazmierczak
(AP file)

The tests found less than .025 micrograms of anti-anxiety drug Alprazolam, commonly known as Xanax, in Kazmierczak’s bloodstream.

Fight for kids

Grand Rapids Press
March 11, 2008

Why does commenting on the fact that there is a problem with the psychiatric system warrant such attack?
Have we not observed the countless side effects of psychiatric medications commercialized on television? What about the increase in school shootings and the fact that these shooters were on psychotropic drugs or experiencing the harmful effects of sudden withdrawal from them?
There is a common thread here. There is a problem and I applaud Ann Auburn for being brave enough to say something about it (“Group campaigns against psychiatry,” Press, Feb. 25).

Guns dont kill people; psychiatry does

March 8, 2008
Columbiatribune.com

In view of the rash of shootings recently, may I suggest that what the United States needs is not gun control, but shrink control. When you trace the cause of most of these shootings, it is inevitably mental-health problems in the shooter, and all too often, the shooter is receiving or has received treatment.There are almost as many theories of psychiatry and psychology as there are practitioners. Which theories work? Which dont? Nobody seems interested in finding out, lest someones lucrative income be lost.

New Mini-Documentary Exposes Psychiatric Drugs Turning Kids into Killers;
54 Dead and 105 Wounded in Recent Teen and School Shootings
  
LOS ANGELES PRNewswire-USNewswire
March 5, 2008 

On February 14, Illinois gunman Steven Kazmierczak became the 12th shooter in the past decade under the influence of psychiatric drugs documented by international drug regulatory agencies to cause suicide, mania, psychosis, hallucinations, hostility and in the case of one antidepressant, “homicidal ideation.” With casualties from school or teen shootings now totaling 54 dead and 105 wounded, the mental health watchdog Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) says it is time to stop vested interests from spouting their usual propaganda about psychiatric drugs, and instead demand a federal investigation for the sake of public safety. While the psychiatric/pharmaceutical industries have persisted in vehemently denying that antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs cause violence, CCHR is quick to point out that it was similar vested interests that stalled the FDA from issuing black box warnings on suicide for more than 13 years. (See video from 1991 FDA hearing. http://www.cchr.org/video/psychiatric_drugs/fda_hearing_1991.html )

In a new 11-minute documentary ( http://www.cchr.org/school_shootings/index.html ) entitled Psychiatry’s Prescription For Violence, psychiatrists, psychologists, professors, attorneys and medical experts join CCHR in exposing the link between psychiatric drugs and acts of violence that have been buried by those putting profit before public safety. CCHR’s battle for full public disclosure on the risks of these drugs spans nearly two decades and is chronicled in a new report.

Psychotropic drugs and shootings

March 4, 2008 (SF Chronicle)
Don Hart

The recent shooting at Northern Illinois University is the latest in

a long line of tragedies brought about by the failure of legally

prescribed psychotropic drugs. Virtually every one of these public

massacres was done by people taking these drugs, mostly “selective

serotonin re-uptake inhibitors,” like Prozac, Zoloft and Wellbutrin.

The fact that the shooter at Northern Illinois University was “off

his meds” is of no consequence.

For the most part, these people want to get off their meds because it

makes them feel like zombies. No one wants to feel like that. So, unless

all these patients are put in lockdown wards (I am definitely not

advocating this), they will tend to go “off their meds.” Of course, the

two Columbine shooters were fully on their meds.

 What can be done to stop large-scale shootings?
 
Courier-Post (Cherry Hill, New Jersey)
March 2, 2008
 
We asked members of our Camden, Burlington and Gloucester county community editorial boards what they think can be done to prevent shooting sprees such as the one that happened last month at Northern Illinois University and the one last spring at Virginia Tech. To read all the responses from board members, visit www.courierpostonline.com/opinion.

BOB HOLT of Mantua: I believe the cure for school shootings begins at home. There must be better communication between the parents and the child, and the parents need to take note of developments in their children’s lives.

Gunman’s parents say he slept in own bed between shootings

9news.com
February 27, 2008

COLORADO SPRING The parents of a gunman who went on a shooting rampage at two religious campuses say they were not “clued in” to the depths of his bitterness. The parents of Matthew Murray talked to 9Wants to Know through their spokeswoman, saying they are finally ready to talk about their struggle.In December, Murray, 24, killed two staffers at a missionary training school in Arvada and two teenage sisters outside New Life Church in Colorado Springs the next morning.In between the shootings, Ronald and Loretta Murray say he came home to sleep in his own bed. They talked to him that night and had an inclination that something was wrong.Ronald called Matthew from a business trip about 1:30 a.m., two hours after the attack at Youth With a Mission in Arvada and said Matthew seemed agitated and out of breath. He told his father he’d been in an altercation at an Applebees restaurant.