Bridgeville rampage

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The Bridgeville rampage occurred on August 4, 2009 at a gym in Bridgeville , a suburb of Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania . The 48-year-old perpetrator George Sodini shot dead three women and wounded nine other women before taking his own life.

Course of action

The LA Fitness gym where the rampage occurred.

At around 7:40 pm local time on August 4, 2009, George Sodini walked into the LA Fitness gym on The Great Southern Shopping Center, 10 miles south of Pittsburgh. Sodini, who was a member of the fitness center, had visited the fitness club around 11:40 a.m. that day in preparation for the massacre. In the evening he returned to the building, registered and shortly before 8 p.m. went to a room in which a dance class for women was taking place. He put his gym bag on the floor, took out two handguns, turned off the lights in the room and began shooting at random at the 20 to 30 women in the room. According to police reports Sodini fired at least 32 shots with two 9 mm semiautomatic pistols and committed after suicide by yourself with a .45 caliber - revolver shot in the head. A fourth weapon, a .32 caliber semi-automatic pistol, and two letters reporting his frustrations with women were later found in his pocket.

Three women were murdered in the rampage: Jody Billingsley (38), Elizabeth Cannon (49) and Heidi Overmier (46). Nine other women were injured, five of them seriously. The injured also included the course's pregnant leader, Mary Primis, who was hit in the shoulder by two bullets. However, according to her husband, the fetus was not injured.

backgrounds

Perpetrator

The perpetrator was the 48-year-old George Sodini (born September 30, 1960 † August 4, 2009), who had been employed as a systems analyst in the finance department of a law firm in Pittsburgh since 1999 . Sodini lived in a home he bought in 1996 for $ 78,000 . On one of his blogs, he reported on a promotion and put his fortune at $ 250,000. He had no previous convictions and there was no evidence of mental illness.

Sodini ran a blog named after him in which he wrote about his sexual frustration and his rejection by women. In a blog post, he reported that he had not had sexual intercourse with a woman since 1990, although he “did not consider himself ugly or weird”. Another post states, “The last time I spent a full night with a friend was in 1982. I'm a failure. Girls and women just don't look at me. ”“ Women just don't like me. There are an estimated 30 million desirable women in the United States - and I can't find any! ”Sodini wrote.

In the blog, Sodini had repeatedly announced acts of violence since November 2008, but then postponed it again. He gave the planned time, but not the exact place where the attack was to take place. On November 5, 2008, he wrote that the act had "already been planned for this summer", but that he then wanted to wait for the results of the US presidential election in November. An entry from January suggested that he shrank back from the act at the last minute: “I pinched! Damn! I already had the loaded weapons with me! ”In the last entry from Monday, August 3, 2009, Sodini reported that he had taken the day off to practice his mission and work out every detail. “Tomorrow is the big day [...] any of the exercise scripts I left on my coffee table or the notes in my gym bag can be freely published. I will not be embarrassed because [...] I will be dead, ”wrote Sodini.

On a second blog, Sodini shared blonde jokes, wrote about his desire to meet younger women, and posted videos touring his house.

motive

According to Police Chief Superintendent Charles Moffatt, Sodini had "a lot of hatred of women ". According to the police, Sodini had no one personally in his sights because he did not know any of the women personally, but wanted to attack women in general. In his apartment, the police found other letters as well as the course program of the gym in which Sodini had outlined the aerobics class. Criminologists classify the rampage as a hate crime or bias crime against women, because the perpetrator is similar to z. B. Marc Lépine specifically targeted women.

Another possible motive is Sodini's fear that he would lose his job. On his blog, he wrote: “I predict I will not survive the next layoffs [...] The paycheck is all I have left. There is nothing for me in the future. [...] Unlikely to find a similar job. I think I'll take care of things then. "

Like other perpetrators who committed suicide after a rampage, Sodini was careful about his public perception. Criminologists assume that he wanted to become famous through the rampage. In his blog entries, he speculated how the public and his acquaintances would react to his actions. He also left instructions on where his plans and notes could be found and that they could be freely published.

further reading

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g 'Hell-Bent' Shooter Used 3 Guns In LA Fitness Rampage ( Memento from August 11, 2009 on WebCite ). In: WTAE-TV. 4th August 2009.
  2. ↑ a b c Hatred of women drove perpetrators to run amok in the gym . In: AFP , August 5, 2009.
  3. ↑ Bob Herbert: Women at Risk . In: The New York Times . August 7, 2009.
  4. ↑ a b Police: Gym shooter 'had a lot of hatred' for women, society . In: CNN . August 6, 2009.
  5. ↑ US fitness center shooter wrote about plans for attack on website . In: The Guardian . August 5, 2009.
  6. ↑ a b Ned Potter, Chris Cuomo, Lee Ferran: George Sodini Posted 2 Web Sites, Online Videos Before Pennsylvania Gym Shooting . In: ABC News . August 6, 2009.
  7. ↑ George Sodini's Blog: Full Text By Alleged Gym Shooter . In: ABC News. August 5, 2009.
  8. ^ A b Gunman in health club shooting a 48-year-old loner . In: CTV . August 5, 2009.
  9. ↑ Sean D. Hamill: Blog Details Shooter's Frustration . In: The New York Times. August 5, 2009.
  10. ↑ «Women just don't look at me» . In: Tages-Anzeiger . August 5, 2009.
  11. ^ A b J. Reid Meloy, Mary Ellen O'Toole: The Concept of Leakage in Threat Assessment. In: Behavioral sciences & the law. 29, No. 4, July / August 2011, pp. 513-527 ( Memento from November 9, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 146 kB). doi: 10.1002 / bsl.986
  12. ↑ James Alan Fox, Jack Levin: Extreme killing: Understanding serial and mass murder . SAGE Publications , Thousand Oaks 2005, ISBN 0-7619-8857-2 , pp. 211 f.
  13. ↑ Jessica P. Hodge: Gendered Hate: Exploring Gender in Hate Crime Law . Northeastern University Press, Boston 2011, ISBN 978-1-55553-751-7 , pp. Ix .
  14. ^ Claire M. Renzetti, Susan L. Miller, Angela R. Gover: Routledge international handbook of crime and gender studies . Routledge , London 2013, ISBN 978-0-415-78216-6 , pp. 86 f.
  15. ^ H. Colleen Sinclair, Jordan T. Hertl: Gender-motivated bias crimes: examining why situational variables are important in the labeling of hate crimes. In: Carol T. Lockhardt (Ed.): Psychology of Hate . Nova Science Publishers, New York 2013, ISBN 978-1-61668-050-3 , pp. 1-34.
  16. ↑ Adam Lankford, Nayab Hakim: From Columbine to Palestine: A comparative analysis of rampage shooters in the United States and volunteer suicide bombers in the Middle East. In: Aggression and Violent Behavior. 16, No. 2, 2011, pp. 98-107 (PDF; 192 kB). doi: 10.1016 / j.avb.2010.12.006 .
  17. ^ JL Murray: Suicidal – Homicidal Ideation in Mass Killers and Transcendence. In: Deviant Behavior. 36, No. 7, 2015, pp. 581-588. doi: 10.1080 / 01639625.2014.951570 .