As we continue to witness the aftermath of the tragic Chardon High School shooting, the question on everyone’s mind is: what prompted the alleged shooter, T.J. Lane, to commit such a horrible crime?!
Family and friends describe Lane as a normal boy who excelled in school, played with his sister, and enjoyed skateboarding.
However, the letter he posted on his Facebook page on December 20th of last year illustrated another side of the troubled young teen.
The first two paragraphs of his letter revealed a look inside the mind of a teen fighting depression head on:
In a time long since, a time of repent, The Renaissance. In a quaint lonely town, sits a man with a frown. No job. No family. No crown. His luck had run out. Lost and alone.
The streets were his home. His thoughts would solely consist of “why do we exist?” His only company to confide in was the vermin in the street. He longed for only one thing, the world to bow at his feet.
Lane was left in the custody of his grandparents when his mother and father split after years of domestic abuse.
Between 1995 and 1997, the boy’s father Thomas Lane Jr., and mother, Sara A. Nolan, were each charged with domestic violence against each other.
Lane Sr. was well known to county authorities because of a series of arrests for abusing women and assaulting police officers. One time, he even held a woman’s head under running water and bashed it into a wall, leaving a dent in the drywall, court records show.
A witness to violence and a casualty of isolation, loneliness and no family structure, may have all helped trigger the 17-year-old student to take the lives of three other students. It’s no excuse, but does provide some insight as to why he committed such an unspeakable act.
Examining Lane’s Facebook profile tells a similar story of a young man determined not to become, what he felt, was a slave to the populous.
