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Tuesday, April 17, 2007

An Old History

Not a record.

The massacre at Virginia Tech University Monday ranks as the worst such mass college killing in American history. But it is not the deadliest rampage at a U.S. school.

That terrible distinction belongs to the horror that befell the Bath Consolidated School in Bath Township, Mich. nearly 80 years ago.

On May 18, 1927, school board member Andrew Kehoe went on a rampage apparently triggered by his anger over a property tax that had been levied to build the school. Blaming the tax for pushing his farm into foreclosure, Kehoe killed his wife and torched his farm buildings. He turned next to the school building, where he had surreptitiously hidden dynamite over several weeks, and detonated the explosives.

When rescuers arrived, Kehoe drove to the school and detonated a firebomb he had with him in his car, killing himself and the school superintendent. Most of the 43 others killed in the bombings were children.

Hat tip Ol’ Broad.

(2) Comments
Posted by Owen at 2152 hrs
Off-Duty

  1. I saw a story about this on PBS a few years ago.

    Hope it doesn’t motivate anyone to “outdo” this one as well as the latest one.

    That being said, it shows that these kind of tragedies aren’t necessarily always about gun violence.

    What it really is about, is how society deals with abberant behavior.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on April 18, 2007 at 0805 hrs


  2. Another point ot make here is that at that time getting dynamite was as easy as going to the local hardware store.  Sometime in the years in between it became much more difficult to acquire dynamite and now you don’t see people using it to cause terror or damage on a regular basis.  At least not in this country.  So, control of an item can control who has the item.  Could this work with guns?  Hard to say.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on April 18, 2007 at 1047 hrs


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