March 22, 2001

Students responsible for the school shootings nationwide tended to have common characteristics: They were mostly middle class, of average intelligence, Caucasian, 16, with mental problems.

"They're not going to have spiked purple hair or bolts through their tongues," said Baltimore psychologist James McGee, a consultant to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. "These are unremarkable little boys with an appearance of normality."

McGee was among the leading national experts speaking at a three-day seminar on workplace and school violence and stalking that began in San Diego yesterday.

The event, sponsored by the San Diego County District Attorney's Office, was planned long before the recent shooting at Santana High School that left two students dead and 13 others wounded.

But it added a relevance to the 200 attendees, who included law enforcement, school and health professionals.

Dave Cowles, superintendent of Vista Unified School District, said schools must now differentiate between genuine threats and "throw away comments made because of the media hype."

But all threats must be investigated for their potential for violence, he said. And all students must be punished regardless of their intent, he said.

Cowles and other county superintendents received special invitations this week to attend the event in light of the Santana High shooting, and subsequent copycats.

For example, two sixth-grade boys at Hope Elementary School in Carlsbad were suspended this week after police said they threatened to "shoot up the school." They were trying to get attention, not cause harm, police said, but they could face criminal charges.

McGee discussed some of the contributing factors to school violence. Students feel they have no recourse from ridicule, he said. If they tell an adult, the heckling often gets worse.

Another problem is access to guns. Forty to fifty percent of homes with children have firearms, said McGee. An equal percentage of those homes have firearms that aren't secured.

"And if you have a gun in the house and there's a teen-ager, I don't care if you have it encased in concrete," said McGee. "If he wants it he will get it."

Other experts speaking at the conference included Gavin de Becker, author of The New York Times best-selling book The Gift of Fear, which offers insights for people to protect themselves and their children from crime; Kris Mohandie, a psychologist with the Los Angeles Police Department who trains teachers on how to analyze student threats; and Reid Meloy, a local expert on stalking who investigated such high profile stalking cases as those involving Madonna and Gwyneth Paltrow.