(Article changed on February 11, 2013 at 10:50)
(Article changed on February 10, 2013 at 15:28)
"Suspect Had History Of Bizarre Acts."
The stories weren't about Jared Loughner, James Holmes and Adam Lanza but a 30-year-old former babysitter named Laurie Dann in Winnetka, IL, a northern Chicago suburb.
On May 20, 1988, Dann shot six students at Hubbard Woods Elementary School, one of whom died, and another man before killing herself and ushering in the era of the school shooting.
Like Loughner, Holmes, Seung-Hui Cho (Virginia Tech) and Stephen Phillip Kazmierczak (Northern Illinois University) before her, Dann had a pronounced history of mental illness, exhibiting warning signs of gun violence. She bought all her weapons legally and in compliance with prevailing gun laws.
Like Loughner, Holmes, Cho, Kazmierczak, One Goh (Oikos University), Wade Michael Page (Sikh temple), Jacob Roberts (Oregon mall) and at least 10 other crazed gunmen in recent years, Dann exhibited many signs of emotional disturbance.
She had a "thing" for raw meat, putting it under her mattress at college while she slept and stealing it from the refrigerators of families for whom she babysat. She rode elevators for hours wearing rubber gloves to avoid touching the metal.
Two days before the shootings, Dann mailed arsenic laced snacks to former acquaintances and her psychiatrist and hand delivered others, leaking and appearing foul, to fraternities at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL.
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