In an age of relative innocence, when three dead teenagers seemed like quite a few, the town of Paducah, Ky., tried mightily to forgive. Just one day after Michael Carneal opened fire on an early morning prayer circle at Heath High in December 1997, placards reading WE FORGIVE YOU MIKE and WE FORGIVE BECAUSE GOD FORGAVE US popped up at the school. The sister of the 14-year- old gunman was invited to sing in the choir at the funeral for the girls he killed after plucking a semiautomatic pistol from his backpack. And at the nationally televised service, Christian musician Steven Curtis Chapman asked anyone who had found Jesus Christ because of the week’s events to stand. When several did, Chapman looked out over the congregation and said, “There are three little girls just going nuts in heaven right now.”
Unfortunately for Paducah, in the 17 months since the funeral, many locals have been more devoted to finding lawyers than finding Jesus. The lessons the town offers mourners of Colorado’s catastrophe are mostly dispiriting ones: the need to assign blame eventually leads to the courtroom – “In American culture, money makes the system tick,” says Michael Breen, lead lawyer for victims’ parents in several suits now pending. “You need financial damages to get accountability.” But the courtroom seems to lead nowhere, except to additional grief. “Everybody sympathizes with [the parents who lost children],” says PADUCAH SUN editor Jim Paxton, whose editorials have criticized the lawsuits brought by the parents of the three dead girls. “But they don’t have a monopoly on victimhood.”
Carneal avoided a criminal trial by pleading “guilty but mentally ill” and was sentenced to life in prison last December. Frustrations mounting, the parents of the three dead girls then sued Carneal and 44 other people in state court – mostly teachers, administrators and students at Heath who allegedly might have prevented the tragedy if they’d correctly read the signals. Last month the parents’ lawyers filed a second, $130 million federal suit against 25 media companies for glamorizing violence with willful recklessness -movie studios, Internet porn sites and computer game makers.
The second suit won much media attention, but it was the first that tore the town apart. “If I were in [the victims’ families’] situation, I don’t know how I would react,” says Heath High principal Bill Bond, himself among the initial defendants. “But I can tell you this: the faculty feels smeared.” A McCracken County judge removed 35 of the 45 defendants, including all school personnel and students not alleged to be co-conspirators. But Breen, lawyer for the parents, quickly appealed the ruling – then filed a third lawsuit against three more teachers and five more students three weeks ago. Among them: prayer-group leader Ben Strong, widely praised for persuading Carneal to stop firing but also warned by him five days before the shooting that “something big” was going to happen.
Though it seems hard to believe that anything could hurt Paducah more than the shooting itself, the lawsuits have come close. “I haven’t lost my sympathy for the parents – but some have,” says Vicky Warford, 45, mother of a Heath High freshman who wishes the plaintiffs would back off. The inclusion of the principal troubled many; “Bill Bond’s bent over backwards for our kids,” says Ray Jenkins, whose daughter Missy, 17, was paralyzed that day. Others voice concern for John and Ann Carneal (parents of a killer but also of a valedictorian) whose solid reputation before the shooting reduced the pointing of fingers afterward. John Carneal stopped working for six months after the shooting, rarely visiting his downtown law office, where the first A and the N have fallen off the brick facade, changing his name to “C R EAL.” How did he spend his days? “He’d pray for a couple of hours,” said one friend. “Then he’d cry. And then he’d wish he was dead.”
A fresh fault line has developed between the parents of the living and those of the dead in Paducah. Nancy Holm, whose son Hollan was one of five students Carneal injured but did not kill, publicly broke ranks with the dead victims’ families in a letter last month to the PADUCAH SUN. One reason? Hollan had just fretfully asked her if he himself might be sued. “By continually parading students and faculty through the courts as defendants for a crime that was the responsibility of one person, as far as I am concerned, we cannot even start to heal,” Nancy Holm wrote. Two days later the sound of semiautomatic rifle fire echoed through the halls of Columbine High. As lawyers began to circle in Littleton last week, and the family of victim Isaiah Shoals announced they were considering a lawsuit, it may be hard for Holm’s message to be heard in Colorado.