The BulleTin • Monday, May 10, 2021 A3
TODAY
Today is Monday, May 10, the
130th day of 2021. There are 235
days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On May 10, 1869, a golden spike
was driven in Promontory, Utah,
marking the completion of the
first transcontinental railroad in
the United States.
In 1774, Louis XVI acceded to
the throne of France.
In 1775, Ethan Allen and his
Green Mountain Boys, along
with Col. Benedict Arnold, cap-
tured the British-held fortress at
Ticonderoga, New York.
In 1865, Confederate President
Jefferson Davis was captured
by Union forces in Irwinville,
Georgia.
In 1924, J. Edgar Hoover was
named acting director of the
Bureau of Investigation (later
known as the Federal Bureau of
Investigation, or FBI).
In 1933, the Nazis staged mas-
sive public book burnings in
Germany.
In 1940, during World War II,
German forces began invading
the Netherlands, Luxembourg,
Belgium and France. The same
day, British Prime Minister Nev-
ille Chamberlain resigned, and
Winston Churchill formed a new
government.
In 1941, Adolf Hitler’s deputy,
Rudolf Hess, parachuted into
Scotland on what he claimed
was a peace mission. (Hess
ended up serving a life sentence
at Spandau Prison until 1987,
when he apparently committed
suicide at age 93.)
In 1977, Academy Award-win-
ning film star Joan Crawford
died in New York.
In 1994, Nelson Mandela took
the oath of office in Pretoria to
become South Africa’s first Black
president. The state of Illinois ex-
ecuted serial killer John Wayne
Gacy, 52, for the murders of 33
young men and boys.
In 1995, former President
George H.W. Bush’s office re-
leased his letter of resignation
from the National Rifle Associ-
ation in which Bush expressed
outrage over an NRA fund-rais-
ing letter’s reference to federal
agents as “jack-booted thugs.”
(NRA Executive Vice President
Wayne LaPierre apologized a
week later.)
In 2002, A tense 39-day-old
standoff between Israeli troops
and Palestinian gunmen at the
Church of the Nativity in Bethle-
hem ended with 13 suspected
militants flown into European
exile and 26 released into the
Gaza Strip.
In 2010, President Barack
Obama introduced Supreme
Court nominee Elena Kagan,
billing her as a unifying force for
a fractured court.
Ten years ago: The bulging
Mississippi River rolled into the
Mississippi Delta after cresting
before daybreak at Memphis,
Tennessee, causing widespread
damage. In a one-two punch
against Moammar Gadhafi’s
forces, NATO warplanes struck a
command center in Tripoli and
pounded targets around the
besieged port of Misrata.
Five years ago: With his White
House dreams fading, Bernie
Sanders added another state to
his tally against Hillary Clinton
with a win in West Virginia;
Republican Donald Trump also
won there and in Nebraska, a
week after he cleared the field
of his remaining rivals. Stephen
Curry became the first unan-
imous NBA MVP, earning the
award for the second straight
season after leading the de-
fending champion Warriors to a
record-setting season.
One year ago: Vice President
Mike Pence was said to be
self-isolating at home, two days
after his press secretary, Katie
Miller, tested positive for the
coronavirus. American families
celebrated Mother’s Day amid
the social distancing restrictions
caused by the coronavirus.
Today’s Birthdays: Author Bar-
bara Taylor Bradford is 88. R&B
singer Henry Fambrough (The
Spinners) is 83. Actor David Clen-
non is 78. Writer-producer-direc-
tor Jim Abrahams is 77. Singer
Donovan is 75. Singer-songwriter
Graham Gouldman (10cc) is 75.
Actor Mike Hagerty is 67. Sports
anchor Chris Berman is 66. For-
mer Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa.,
is 63. Actor Victoria Rowell is 62.
Rock singer Bono (U2) is 61. Rock
musician Danny Carey (Tool) is 60.
Actor Darryl M. Bell is 58. Model
Linda Evangelista is 56. Rapper
Young MC is 54. Actor Erik Pal-
ladino is 53. Rock singer Richard
Patrick (Filter) is 53. Actor Lenny
Venito is 52. Actor Dallas Roberts
is 51. Actor Leslie Stefanson is 50.
Race car driver Helio Castroneves
is 46. Actor Kenan Thompson is
43. Olympic gold medal swim-
mer Missy Franklin is 26.
— Associated Press
LOCAL, STATE & REGION
IDAHO
Few school shootings committed by girls
BY REBECCA BOONE AND
LINDSAY WHITEHURST
Associated Press
BOISE, Idaho — Authorities
say they are trying to deter-
mine what prompted a young
girl to open fire at a rural Idaho
middle school, one of the few
school shootings in which the
suspect is female.
The shooting happened
around 9 a.m. Thursday, when
police say the girl pulled a
handgun out of her backpack
and shot two other students
and an adult custodian before
she was disarmed by a teacher
and held until police arrived.
None had life-threatening in-
juries.
Jefferson County Sheriff
Steve Anderson said Friday the
investigation is likely to take a
“considerable amount of time.”
He said neither the name of
the suspect — a sixth grade girl
— nor the name of the teacher
who disarmed her would be
immediately released.
The shooting took place
over the course of about five
minutes, Anderson said.
School shootings are rare in
Idaho, and shootings where the
suspect is identified as a young
girl are uncommon but not un-
heard of in the U.S.
Just 2% of shootings
Girls and women commit
just 2% of both mass shootings
and school shootings in the
U.S., according to data com-
piled by the group The Vio-
lence Project.
The group maintains a da-
tabase of shootings at schools
where more than one person
was shot or a person came to
school heavily armed with the
intention of firing indiscrimi-
nately. It includes 146 cases go-
ing back to 1980. Girls were the
shooters in just three of those
cases. Experts differ on exactly
why, though it’s known that
men commit over 90% homi-
cides in general.
Researchers have also found
that shooters who target bigger
groups or schools tend to study
past perpetrators, who are
more likely to be male.
John Roark/The Idaho Post-Register
People embrace outside after a shooting at Rigby Middle School in Rigby, Idaho, on Thursday. Authorities
say a shooting at the eastern Idaho middle school injured two students and a custodian, and a female stu-
dent was taken into custody.
“They see themselves in
some of these other shooters,”
said Violence Project Presi-
dent Jillian Peterson, a forensic
psychologist and professor at
Hamline University in Min-
nesota.
Boys in general tend to ex-
ternalize anger and sadness
against other people, whereas
girls are more likely to inter-
nalize those emotions and have
higher rates of depression and
anxiety, Peterson said.
The Idaho girl is also
younger than most school
shooters, who are more often
in high school.
The Violence Project’s da-
tabase shows about 18% of
school shootings were at mid-
dle schools, though most of
those were among older teen-
agers. Only a handful involved
sixth grade students, Peterson
said.
fer insight into common char-
acteristics between many kids
who plan or carry out school
shootings. The students were
often badly bullied, suffered
from depression with stress at
home and exhibited behavior
that worried others. They were
often absent from school be-
fore the attack.
Most attackers who carried
out deadly school shootings
were male; seven were female,
according to the studies. Re-
searchers said 63% of the at-
tackers were white, 15% were
Black, 5% Hispanic, 2% were
American Indian or Alaska
Native, 10% were of two or
more races, and 5% were un-
determined.
School shootings have be-
come increasingly common
in the U.S. over the past two
decades, but they remain rela-
tively rare in Idaho. In 1999, a
student at a high school in the
community of Notus, west of
Boise, fired a shotgun several
times. No one was struck by
the gunfire, but one student
was injured by ricocheting de-
bris from the first shell.
In 1989, a student at Rigby
Junior High pulled a gun,
threatened a teacher and stu-
dents, and took a 14-year-
old girl hostage. Police safely
rescued the hostage from a
nearby church about an hour
later and took the teen into
custody. No one was shot in
that incident.
In 2016, Idaho lawmak-
ers passed a bill that allowed
most people to carry concealed
weapons without a permit. But
that right doesn’t extend to
schools, courthouses or correc-
tional facilities.
Earlier this year, Rep. Chad
Christensen, a Republican
from Ammon — just 15 miles
south of Rigby — pushed for
legislation that would allow
school district employees with
enhanced concealed weap-
ons permits to carry guns
on school property. The bill
passed the House but didn’t
move forward in a Senate com-
mittee. Similar legislation was
rejected in 2019 and 2020.
In a Facebook post made
roughly two hours after the
Rigby Middle School shoot-
ing, Christensen said the state
needed to do more to stop
shootings, and he criticized
those who pushed against his
concealed weapons bill.
“For all of those that have
stood in the way of my school
carry bill, shame on you. You
know who you are!” Chris-
tensen wrote.
The Idaho chapters of Moms
Demand Action and Students
Demand Action — both part
of Everytown for Gun Safety,
a gun control advocacy group
— said forcing more guns into
schools isn’t the solution.
“The idea that we should be
bringing more guns into our
schools after what happened
today is ridiculous,” Idaho
Moms Demand Action volun-
teer Theresa Kaufmann said
in a prepared statement on
Thursday. “We need our law-
makers to stop putting chil-
dren, teachers and the entire
state in danger by weakening
our already weak gun laws.”
Common factors
Two recent studies by the
U.S. Secret Service’s National
Threat Assessment Center of-
ShakeAlert system
now active for mobile
phones in 3 states
Skagit Valley Herald
(Mount Vernon, Wash.)
When a Cascadia Subduc-
tion Zone earthquake strikes
beneath the Pacific Ocean, it
will shake up much of the West
Coast.
The U.S. Geological Sur-
vey and the Pacific Northwest
Seismic Network on Tuesday
finished releasing a new early
warning system that can no-
tify mobile phone users in the
state that the shaking is about
to start.
That system, called Shake-
Alert, has been in develop-
ment for 15 years, according
to a news release. A prototype
was released in 2016, and the
system went live for Califor-
nia in 2019 and for Oregon
this March. With availability
now in Washington state, the
ShakeAlert system is online
for more than 50 million res-
idents within the country’s
most earthquake-prone re-
gion.
Mobile phone data will au-
tomatically notify users in an
earthquake’s path as long as
the device settings are set to al-
low Emergency Alerts, Public
Safety Alerts and Public Safety
Messages.
How does it work?
The ShakeAlert program re-
lies on real-time data from Pa-
cific Northwest Seismic Station
sensors throughout the region.
As seismic waves that create
the shaking during an earth-
quake spread, they are picked
up by those seismic stations lo-
cated in public spaces such as
schools and city-owned build-
ings. That data is fed into the
USGS Advanced National Seis-
mic System.
ShakeAlert technology can
also be used to automate sys-
tems such as slowing train
speeds to reduce the potential
for derailments, opening fire-
house doors to ensure emer-
gency response can occur and
closing valves to reduce leaks if
gas or water pipelines are dam-
aged, according to the release.
The ShakeAlert system will
continue to improve as more
sensors, called seismometers,
are added to the network. One
such sensor is being installed
at Conway School in Mount
Vernon, Washington, an hour
north of Seattle.
Superintendent Jeff Cravy
said the Conway School Board
approved placement of the
sensor at its April 26 meeting.
It will be the 13th seismom-
eter monitored by the Pacific
Northwest Seismic Network in
Skagit County, according to the
network’s website.
The sensors may not look
like much — “It’s basically a
20-by-20 box that sits in our
communications room,” Cravy
said — but they can provide
valuable information before a
natural disaster strikes.
For Conway students, the
newest seismometer could also
provide some local data from
which to learn.
“Our hope is to use the web-
site with Conway-specific in-
formation as well as some sur-
rounding spots to do science
activities,” Cravy said.
5/31/2021