Shots Fired! Students Down!!
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Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2001 01:55:37 GMT
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Tim Hutchinson got lucky. In 1976, when he was 15, Tim was stopped in a stolen car loaded with an assault rifle, ammunition, and explosives. Ten minutes later, he would have been at his high school shooting.
His new autobiography, Battlescars, was pre-released on the second anniversary of the Columbine tragedy. In it, Hutchinson, who started carrying a handgun to school at the age of 12, describes his transition from troubled teen to successful author.
READ SOME OF THE BOOK RIGHT HERE !! (Then go to www.battlescars.org for more info)
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I met Lenny one day at school during lunch. We seemed to have a bit in common, like wanting to fit into the 'in crowd' at school. We both knew that wasn't likely, and sometimes we would say horrible things about kids in the 'in crowd' amongst ourselves. In the days to follow, we started hanging out together, during and after school. He was the type of person who enjoyed playing practical jokes on people that were usually harmless, but a lot of fun. But there was something different about him - something I couldn't quite figure out. The best way to explain that, I suppose, is to say that once in a while I got this feeling that he was hiding something. Like he had a hidden agenda, almost.
No matter what you call it, something about him made me to be a bit apprehensive about being around him. It was like he held back about some deep dark secret, and occasionally a little piece of it would slip out. Because of this, I never allowed us to become close friends. I remained more reserved during our conversations than I had in the past with other friends. Despite my concerns, we still had a good time together.
One day during class, about two months after meeting him, he told me that he had something cool to show me. When I asked him what it was, he said it was a secret fort that he built behind some billboard signs near a small wooded area. He said that I should come see it after school because he had a surprise for me.
We met at a side door of the school after the last class of the day. He had brought another boy with, someone I recognized. It was Lenny, a member of a school gang that was notorious for dealing large amounts of drugs.
What is he doing here? Is Lenny a member of that gang? I wondered. I had never seen him around any of the other gang members during the past two months I had known him. Now I was more curious than ever to know what that secret was.
It took us about 10 minutes to reach the billboard signs. Once there we crawled over a fence to get to the rear of the signs. I looked around, but didn't see any fort there. What was Lenny talking about? He came up behind me and said, "Look over here." As we both turned around together, Lenny dropped a piece of paper on the ground and asked me to pick up for him.
I bent down to pick it up and felt a sudden, sharp pain in the face. Lenny had just kicked me there. Blood immediately began flowing from my mouth. I fell to my knees and looked up at him. He had a serious look on his face and was holding a baseball bat. He then told me that he wanted to join the gang Jerry was in. For his initiation, he had to kill someone and that someone was me! Jerry was there as a witness.
I tried to get up to run, but as I was standing up, Lenny hit me in the back with the bat. The pain was intense and I fell to the ground. I remember being hit about 3 or 4 more
times with the bat. Then one blow landed on my head and I fell unconscious.
When I opened my eyes next, it was dark out. I'm not sure how long I had laid there. It must have been hours. I tried to move, but it was too painful. After another hour or so of lying there, I decided I would have to crawl home, no matter how much it hurt. Little by little I made it out from behind the billboards and rolled down a hill. It took many hours to get to the supermarket that was one block from home.
It was very late at night and the store was closed. After lying by the front door for a while to rest, I called out for Father Satan to help me. I then crawled across the parking lot, across a street, and finally down our alley. By the time I reached the back door of the house, it was starting to get light out. I rested at the back door for a short while, then crawled into the house, slid down the basement stairs on my stomach and crawled to my bedroom. My arms and knees were bloody from all the crawling I had done to get home and into my bed. While lying in bed, I thanked Father Satan for helping me get here alive, then I decided on two goals: One, to nurse myself back to health, and two, to kill Lenny.
Unable to get upstairs for anything to eat, I stayed in bed for the next three days and was very hungry. By the end of the third day, I had the strength to stumble into the bathroom next door to my bedroom. I removed my blood-stained clothing, turned on the water in the shower, and laid down on the floor in the shower stall. The warm water felt good against my body as I watched the red tinted water run down the drain.
After I got out of the shower, I put the stained clothing into the incinerator and burned them. Then I went upstairs for something to eat. After eating, I went back to bed. I need as much rest as possible, I thought. Tomorrow I would go back to school. Tomorrow I would bring my gun. Tomorrow I will kill Lenny!
As I lay there I thought about how the kids in the 'in crowd' seem to be the same ones year after year: The jocks, popular kids, and beautiful girls. Kids like me were the victims of our home lives, awash in the sea of uncertainty, never sure where the tides would take us next. So many friends have come and gone in my life. I'm tired of things being this way, but I didn't see any escape route from my life. I didn't trust people anymore, so asking for help was out of the question. I was trapped, angry, and full of hate towards the whole world. Tomorrow Lenny would get what he deserved and I would enjoy giving it to him.
I returned to school the next morning and starting looking for Lenny. I didn't bother going to class, just walked through the halls looking in all the classrooms. Sometimes as I looked into a class, the teacher would tell me to get out of the hall and go to the class I belonged in. I angrily swore at them and made an obscene gesture with my middle finger.
One male teacher came out into the hallway after I had "flipped him the bird." I challenged him to a fist fight. He wouldn't fight me, which made me even madder; I began shouting at him. By now the students from that class were coming out into the hallway to see what the commotion was about. The teacher told them to get back in the classroom. He then said he was going to the office to report me.
He turned and walked down the hall towards the school office. As he walked away, I yelled to him, "I'm the teacher," in a mockingly way, then called him names. I left school after that and hung out at Castle park. There I saw someone familiar. I didn't know her name, but I had seen her in school before. I approached her and asked if she knew who Lenny was, and if she knew where I could find him. She looked startled. I wasn't sure if it was because of the question, or because my face still looked battered. I asked her what was the matter. She said, "Didn't you hear about Lenny?" I said "No." She then told me that Lenny had joined a gang so he could sell drugs. The first person he tried making a drug deal with was an undercover police officer. Lenny had been arrested.
Upon hearing this, part of me was sad knowing that I probably wouldn't be able to shoot him now. But mostly I thought it was very funny! I didn't bother explaining what was so funny to her. She asked if I knew him very well. I said, "Yeah, we'd been hanging out together for a few months." As I started walking away she said her name was Kelly, and asked if I wanted to go to a party the next weekend. It was a pool party at her house. I knew she was part of the 'in crowd' and wondered if this was some kind of joke, or even worse, a trap. She had a very sincere look on her face though, so I said, "Sure," and got the address from her.
When the day of the pool party arrived, I went into my mom's makeup, found some light-toned facial cream and used it to cover up the bruises and cuts that remained on my face. Then I got on my best party clothes, which I had bought with the money I earned from some gun running I had done.
I felt good wearing my fine clothes. I had a silk shirt with matching bead chain around the neck, brand new black jeans and the fanciest black shoes I could find, and a leather jacket with dozens of black beads strung on the fringes that hung from the jacket. I looked like a million bucks, and felt like it too!
I stopped at the front door of my house as I was leaving and tried to clear my mind of all the stuff that had been happening. Tonight I just wanted to relax and have some fun.
Kelly's house was about a mile away. I don't know if it was the anticipation of a good time, or what, but it seemed like it took only minutes to get there. Her parents had a fairly nice house that looked well kept. I heard noise coming from the back yard and headed that way. I saw about 40 kids from school hanging around by the pool. No one was swimming and almost everyone had a glass of beer. They were having a kegger - very cool!
I said, "Hi," to a few people and then saw Kelly. She was talking to a small group of her girlfriends. I went over and said hi to her. She introduced me to the group. We stood there and talked for a while. They all thought my clothes were the greatest and said they wished their boyfriends would dress like that. I liked having someone say nice things like that about me. I felt myself starting to blush a little, so I excused myself to get a glass of beer. As I walked away several of them called out, "Hurry back!"
I picked up a glass near the keg and began filling it with beer. I had noticed there was a group of about a dozen jocks and one of them was walking up to me. As I finished filling my glass, he asked me, "Why are you talking to my girl?" "Who's your girl?" I asked. He pointed out one of the girls in the group with Kelly. "What's the problem man? It's a party, we're just talking," I said.
He poked his finger into my chest and said, "You better leave my girl alone or I'll kick your ass!" I laughed at him, then threw my glass of beer in his face, kneed him in the groin and watched him fall to the ground, moaning in pain. I yelled at him, "Who do you think you are to threaten me?"
The other jocks quickly surrounded me. Several of them threw punches that I deflected with my arms. They grabbed my arms and legs, lifted me high in the air, and tossed me into the pool. As I surfaced they began dumping their glasses of beer onto my head. Everyone at the party, except Kelly, was staring down at me and laughing. Kelly stood back away from the crowd with a sad look on her face. The jocks spat out insults at me, which made the others laugh even harder.
The anger welled up inside of me as I floated in the water. The makeup had come off of my face. My bruises and cuts were clearly visible when I finally looked right at them. Then I climbed out of the pool and stared at the group of jocks. Outnumbered, I didn't dare make a stand. Not there, not then, but make a stand I would, on my terms, when they least expected it. The others stopped laughing and just stared at me with a shocked look, a few asking amongst themselves, "What happened to his face?"
As I left the party Kelly ran up to me. She said she was very sorry. I looked at her and saw several tears running down her cheeks. I put my finger on her cheek and watched as one of the tears rolled onto it. I then put the finger with the tear drop on it to my lips, and lightly kissed it as I looked into her eyes.
She had taken a chance by inviting me to her party, only to see everything spoiled by the jocks. They hurt her too. She had done nothing to deserve having her party being ruined like that by a bunch of conceited jerks. The look in my eyes said that I too was truly sorry that this had happened. Then I walked away. I had preparations to make for tomorrow's big event. Tomorrow I would kill all the jocks at school.
My first stop was home, where I changed into some army fatigues I had. After grabbing a pint of whiskey from my stash, I left the house. My next task was to figure out how to transport the weapons to school without being detected. What I needed was a car, so I stole one. I learned how to do that from a couple of guys named Bret and Randy I knew from downtown.
Bret and Randy invited me to steal a car with them, and I agreed to go. They quickly showed me what to look for when checking out potential cars to steal, and how to steal them. I was a fast learner. A short time later they spotted the perfect car and stole it. However, our trip was cut short when Bret, showing off his so called 'expert driving skills,' lost control of the car, and crashed into a convent.
I knew some weapons were needed, real weapons. My handgun just wouldn't do it. What I needed was a machine gun. Oh yeah, and some explosives too. Next stop was the garage where Vodka, the gun dealer, stored the weapons he had for sale. Not seeing Vodka there, I crawled through a window on the side of the garage. Once inside, I unfolded a plastic chair and sat down. I knew I needed a good plan, so I took a couple of sips of the whiskey and started thinking.
Perhaps I should go to school right away first thing in the morning. That way when everyone is in homeroom I can go from room to room and shoot the jocks. No, that would take too much time, and once people realized what was happening they would run out of the school. Can't let that happen.
Okay, so I'll run down the hall and throw explosives into each room. Whoever isn't killed will no doubt run into the hallway. I will stand at the end of the hallway and shoot the jocks. No, with all the confusion in the hall after the explosions, I wouldn't be able to shoot just the jocks. There would be lots of people in the hallway then. There were lots of hallways in the school. Which one would be the best to start with? Besides, a lot of non-jock kids would be killed then too. A few non-jock casualties are okay though, but I don't want to kill them all.
I decided to get some equipment ready as I thought about a plan. My choice of weapons was simple; an M-16 machine gun with enough clips to handle hundreds of rounds of ammo, explosives, and of course, what had become my closest and most loyal friend, my handgun.
I thought how I could get most of the jocks together, in one place, quickly and unaware of what I was going to do. Then it occurred to me that when a fire alarm went off in school, the non-jock kids usually went across the street to smoke. That left mostly the jocks hanging around right outside the school door. That was it! I would hide some explosives in cardboard boxes and place them outside a few entrances that I was certain the jocks would come out of. I could see those two entrances at the same time if I positioned myself at the track field across the street.
The plan started coming together. I would start a fire in the building - not one someone could get to, or put out right away. The boiler room was the perfect choice. Then as the kids came out of the building, I would wait until most of the non-jocks had gathered together for their smokes before shooting the cardboard boxes, filled with explosives, which I would place by the two main entrances. Then I would jump up and start shooting any jock that wasn't killed by the blast. "Perfect," I thought.
One final decision to make: What would happen to me afterwards? Would I let myself be arrested? If I did, I would probably be sentenced to life in prison where I would end up with some cellmate who would want to use me like his personal whore. No, can't let that happen. Besides, shooting the jocks would be the greatest accomplishment of my life. Why not die while I was at the top and spare myself from the horror of prison? Yes, that was what I would do. I would die there, but how? Should I shoot it out with the cops? No, that will only serve to make them look like heroes. Besides, I want to be the one to start, and finish this event. I will shoot myself right after all the jocks are dead.
I loaded the weapons and explosives into a car I had stolen, then sat in the garage the rest of the night sipping whiskey, thinking about how much I hated jocks. Jocks need the nerds to invent things and the ordinary Joe to build them. Otherwise, their pathetic little make believe world of sports could never exist at all. Nerds basically rule the world. Ordinary Joes work for the nerds to build the stuff they invent, and the jocks are there for cheap entertainment. Why then, do the jocks think they are so important? They are the ones with the twisted view of reality. They think that because they have bigger muscles than others, that gives them the right to push others around, and somehow makes them so much better than others? Well, my weapons are the great equalizers and I'm declaring war on the jocks!
Sunrise came, and I knew it was time to go. I walked out of the garage, got into the car and headed towards school. Maybe under other circumstances I would have been a little nervous, but a combination of hatred, anger, and some whiskey suppressed any nervousness I may have otherwise had. Besides, I knew now how to create inner power through hate and pain. Father Satan would be with me this very day.
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