The school shooting occurred just before 8 a.m. when up to 400 people were gathered in the cafeteria for a farewell ceremony for graduating seniors. Witnesses said they saw Kipland, dressed in a cream-colored trench coat, running through the cafeteria firing from the hip 51 rounds from his .22-caliber Ruger semiautomatic rifle.
He was also packing a .22-caliber Ruger semiautomatic handgun and a 9mm Glock semiautomatic pistol. In his backpack police found several fully loaded ammunition clips and an assortment of loose ammunition.
In retrospect Kip was nothing other than a budding psychopath. "He always said that it would be fun to kill someone and do stuff like that," said student Robbie Johnson. "Yesterday, he told a couple of people he was probably going to do something stupid today and get back at the people who had expelled him."
Kinkel allegedly gave a talk in speech class about how to build a bomb and bragged about torturing animals. According to Nissa Lund, 14, Kip told her he once stuffed lit firecrackers in a cat's mouth. Rachel Dawson, Kip's former girlfriend in middle school, said he boasted about shooting little cats. Clearly a serial-killer-in-the-making, Kip also talked about blowing up a cow. In a recent literature class Kip stood in the front of the room and read from his journal his plans of to "kill everybody." On the other hand, friends said when he was not busy with revenge fantasies, bombmaking and killing animals, Kip was a normal, boisterous, high school freshman who was into alternative rock bands like Nirvana and enjoyed playing guitar and football.
About a year ago, the Kinkels discovered Kip was downloading bomb-making instructions from the Internet and building bombs, said Kim Scott, a best friend of Kip's sister, Kristin. "They tried to discipline him and they tried to keep him from making more bombs, but at some point, Kristin said, they just pretty much had given up on being able to control him."
Friends of the family said the parents knew of the son's penchant for making bombs. Bill -- his father -- bought the guns used in the killings as a way to divert his son's obsession with weapons into a supervised hobby. They even hired an anger-management counselor who clearly had no success with the junior Charlie Manson.
Two days after the rampage, police disclosed that Kip had lunged at an officer in the police station with a hunting knife he had taped to his leg. When he arrived at the station the handcuffed freckle-faced killer was briefly placed in an interviewing room while his accompanying officer left to secure his weapon. When he returned, Kinkel attacked the officer with the knife and the officer pepper sprayed him.
With six instances of rampaging students in schools logged into the Archives, experts and psychologist are trying to explain this emerging phenomenon. In fact, they have coined a new term to classify this kind of schoolyard behavior: Intermittent Explosive Disorder. All occurences of IED seem to have taken place in predominantly white, semi-rural, middle-class school districts with no prior history of violent crime coupled with easy access to high-powered weapons.
On November 2000 national elections Kinkel emerged as a central figure in the debate over an Oregon ballot measure that could reduce the sentences of thousands of inmates. "If Kip Kinkel is resentenced, I will be living in fear every day, along with my family and fellow victims, that if he is released he will hunt us all down," Jennifer Alldredge, a student wounded by Kinkel, wrote in the state's official voter guide.
The Republican candidate for attorney general is also featuring Kinkel in TV ads that accuse the incumbent of supporting the earlier guidelines, which theoretically could reduce Kinkel's 112-year prison sentence to one that frees him at 21.
State Representative Jo Ann Bowman, a leading repeal supporter, argued that opponents are using Kinkel as a scare tactic. Even if the ballot measure passes, she said, no judge would resentence Kinkel as a juvenile. "There's no way that anyone could kill four people and wound 25 without spending an extremely long time in prison," the Portland Democrat said.
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