Wash. Marks Anniversary of School Shooting

When Barry Loukaitis carried two pistols and a rifle into a middle school classroom here 10 years ago, he was packing enough ammunition to kill everyone in the room.

Loukaitis first killed Manuel Vela, 14, a classmate who had reportedly made fun of him. Arnold Fritz, 14, was next, killed by a bullet to his chest.

Loukaitis, then 14, shot teacher Leona Caires, mother of four, as she wrote a problem on the blackboard. She fell dead with the eraser and chalk still in her hands.

It was the first of a spate of school shootings in the mid-1990s, and could have escalated to a massacre of Columbine proportions if teacher Jon Lane had not risked his life to end the carnage.

Lane tackled Loukaitis, and likely saved the lives of 16 students in the algebra class at Frontier Middle School, on Feb. 2, 1996. His heroism was the only bright spot in a tragedy that shocked this community of 15,000 people about 150 miles east of Seattle.

"He had a plan. I don't know what it was," Lane said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. "When I came into the classroom, it changed his script."

While the three killings and hostage situation were over in about 15 minutes, the ordeal for some has endured.

Ten months later, Fritz's cousin, Aaron Harmon, a ninth-grader, shot and killed his mother, his sister and himself, apparently distressed by his cousin's death. And Phil Fritz, Arnold's father, killed himself a few years ago at the grave of his son.

The pain of that day still reverberates for Natalie Hintz, who as a 13-year-old almost lost her right arm to a bullet. She still suffers from her grievous wounds despite years of surgery and therapy, said Robert Schiffner, a former Grant County prosecutor now in private practice.

Traumatized by the violence they witnessed, other students who were in the classroom have had problems. Some have criminal records and one is in prison, Schiffner said.

"It's very difficult for these kids to talk to someone, except someone who was in that room," Schiffner said. "Some talk freely among themselves and some never want to talk about it again."

Lane visited a psychologist for a time.

"It's not weak to seek out help," Lane said. "I did see some awful things."

The students who were in that classroom are now in their 20s and scattered, and the number of staff who were at Frontier in 1996 is dwindling. There is no public event planned in Moses Lake to mark the tenth anniversary.

"We struggle with the value of going back and revisiting it," said P.J. De Benedetti, then and now a school administrator.

Loukaitis has never talked about the shootings, and declined recent requests from The Associated Press for an interview from prison, where he is serving two life sentences without parole.

Prosecutors said Loukaitis planned the shootings carefully, getting ideas from the book "Rage," written by Stephen King under a pseudonym, and the violent movie "Natural Born Killers."

During his trial in Seattle, Loukaitis pleaded innocent by reason of insanity and blamed his act on "mood swings." John Petrich, a psychiatrist for the defense, testified that Loukaitis experienced delusional, godlike feelings before his deadly rampage.

JoAnn Phillips, his mother, told the jury her son was motivated by the Pearl Jam song, "Jeremy," which portrayed a maligned teenager who shoots his classmates. Phillips and Terry Loukaitis, Barry's father, said the family was burdened on both sides by generations of depressive illness.

Grant County prosecutor John Knodell, who handled the case against Loukaitis, said he doesn't believe there was any real motive.

"What we have to recognize is there is such a thing as evil,' Knodell said recently. "Barry personified it that day."

Loukaitis never testified. At 16, he was convicted as an adult of two counts of aggravated first-degree murder.

An outdoor memorial was erected at Frontier — a circular brick courtyard, with three basalt pillars. One pillar lists the names of the people who died in the classroom. One lists the names of 16 surviving students. One thanks Lane.

There is no mention of Loukaitis.

If any good came out of the shootings, it is that it spurred educators to take more seriously threats of violence, and to look closely at students who express violent thoughts in their writing, as Loukaitis did, Schiffner said.

"Anyone who had contact with Barry Loukaitis knew he was a walking time bomb," Schiffner said.

In the wake of the shootings, the district created an alternative middle school for kids who were having problems. But De Benedetti is not sure Loukaitis would have qualified.

"He was not a bad student or behavior problem," he said.

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On the Net:

http://www.moseslakeschools.org