Warning Signs in Shooting Spree?

As soon as Elaine Soonen found out that her son, Richard, wanted to take out some of his classmates, she took action. In fact, he wanted to strangle them, to get back at them.

“I always wanted to get back at them,” Richard Sonnen said of his classmates. “I always wanted to strangle them. … I was always mad. I was always angry and I would come home and cry to mom and dad.”

Richard was adopted from a Bulgarian orphanage when he was 4.5 years old. However, after a few months home he began to show anger and was unpredictable. Sonnen stated that when he was 6 Richard told her he wanted to kill her.

By eighth grade Richard was being treated by a psychiatrist and was on anti-psychotic medications. He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, and “other disorders”.

When he was a junior in high school Sonnen uncovered a plan that Richard had made to set bombs around the school, as he had been repeatedly bullied since middle school.

But what comes next is even worse. After being institutionalized (on his parent’s request), Richard stays for over a year and a half, gets well enough to attend college, and proceeds to allegedly make a threat against his new school.

However, now that Richard is over 18 his parents have no legal authority to medically help him and he leaves school to go live on his own.

What worries me about cases like this is that they seem all too familiar. I have a child that seems very much like Richard. A sweet as candy kid  when he wants to be who also has the anger and aggression, a child who deals with psychosis (and tries hard to manage it), a child who WILL deal with bullying and who very well deal with bipolar.

My hope is that because we are dealing with the issues early and treating him early with therapies and medication that we can work through his issues before they become issues.