Recent years have seen an epidemic of violence involving children and adolescents, many of them not involving firearms.
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After the murder, it was learned that Matthews had plotted to kill someone since the start of his freshman year — roughly two months before the crime was committed. He had discussed his plans with Peterson and Cash and had even admitted to a teacher in the weeks before the slaying that he had an urge to kill somebody. His teacher simply told him that murder was a felony.
As the police put it, Matthews had developed “an irresistible urge to see what it felt like to kill someone” — an urge that became lethal reality.
Recent years have seen an epidemic of such violence involving children and adolescents, many of them not involving firearms.
In 1995 in Illinois, Brian Pruitt, 16, with a history of psychiatric drugs and treatment, fatally stabbed his grandmother in her bedroom, waited for his grandfather to return home, and murdered him as well.
In 1997 in New Jersey, Sam Manzie, 15, attacked and raped 11-year-old Eddie Werner, who had come to his family’s home selling items door-to-door for the local PTA. After strangling Werner with an electrical cord, and photographing him with the cord still wrapped around his neck, Manzie discarded his victim’s clothes and possessions in a garbage bin by the psychiatric facility where Manzie had been receiving regular treatments including psychiatric drugs. According to Manzie’s mother, Manzie said, “I wasn’t killing that little boy. I was killing [my psychiatrist] because he didn’t listen to me.” Other examples abound.
The Hidden Hand of Violence continued...
    
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