virgo
04-11-2008, 03:35 PM
...but his mom noticed the warnng signs. (http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/04/11/boudreau.campus.rage/index.html)
GREENCREEK, Idaho (CNN) -- It was just 2½ years ago when Elaine Sonnen found out that her 16-year-old son, Richard, had been planning a Columbine-style attack at his high school.
It would be a fitting payback to his high school classmates who Richard said relentlessly bullied him.
"I always wanted to get back at them," 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."
Elaine Sonnen found out about her son's plan during a conversation with him. She ordered him to write down the names of the eight students he wanted dead and then gave the list to his caseworker the next day.
Later, he added a teacher and his mother and sister to the hit list.
She took immediate action and had her son committed to an Idaho mental institution. Over the next 16 months, he received treatment at several mental health facilities throughout Idaho.
"There, I opened up. I felt better. I moved on with myself," Richard said.
"They felt at that point ... they had done everything they could do for him," added Elaine Sonnen. "He was doing great. He could make it on his own. They had no question."
In January 2007, after almost a year and a half in mental institutions, Richard Sonnen started a new life at Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho. He was taking a cocktail of three anti-psychotic drugs to help him function.
"[For] the first time in 12 years I was able to hold my son," said Elaine Sonnen. "So I knew he was on the road to be well."
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GREENCREEK, Idaho (CNN) -- It was just 2½ years ago when Elaine Sonnen found out that her 16-year-old son, Richard, had been planning a Columbine-style attack at his high school.
It would be a fitting payback to his high school classmates who Richard said relentlessly bullied him.
"I always wanted to get back at them," 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."
Elaine Sonnen found out about her son's plan during a conversation with him. She ordered him to write down the names of the eight students he wanted dead and then gave the list to his caseworker the next day.
Later, he added a teacher and his mother and sister to the hit list.
She took immediate action and had her son committed to an Idaho mental institution. Over the next 16 months, he received treatment at several mental health facilities throughout Idaho.
"There, I opened up. I felt better. I moved on with myself," Richard said.
"They felt at that point ... they had done everything they could do for him," added Elaine Sonnen. "He was doing great. He could make it on his own. They had no question."
In January 2007, after almost a year and a half in mental institutions, Richard Sonnen started a new life at Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho. He was taking a cocktail of three anti-psychotic drugs to help him function.
"[For] the first time in 12 years I was able to hold my son," said Elaine Sonnen. "So I knew he was on the road to be well."
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