How did dark, murderous acts become light conversation?
Do you ever wanna become a serial killer, a 16-year-old Regina boy messages his friend. i think I could really pull it off.
Her response is equally unexpected: okay well as long as you dont go after my friends or family or me im toats goods. and if you do ill kill you in like 1 .2 seconds.
As the Facebook conversation continues, the boy adds, i kinda really wanna kill Hannah.. like it literally cross my mind pretty much everyday … I like have it pretty much all planed out and I don’t think shes safe around me ...
The friend — a teenage girl then also 16 — later responds, how about this. I go find Hannah. and beat her up. As there’s further discussion about that possibility, the friend offers that she could just send other chicks
to do the task, adding no biggy lol.
The two hash out whether or not the friend would actually do it before the boy chimes in, well i don’t want no yell across the street fight I want her to show to school the next day with a black eye a limp and a few missing teeth …. Or no no I want some one to through a shovel at her than she dies.
At that point the friend finally suggests he’s gone to far.
But the boy goes further, saying, see me becoming a murderer is the better idea cuz than that way atleast I know it would be done. He adds, id like to hit her with my truck that would be nice.
That boy is Skylar Prockner, recently sentenced as an adult for murdering Hannah Leflar, repeatedly stabbed to death in January 2015, four months after those Facebook messages. Hannah had moved past their breakup; Prockner never did, or could.
There are so many things troubling, shocking, senseless — pick your word — about this case that took a 16-year-old girl from those who loved her. One awful truth that struck me was the cavalier attitude to life, death or devastating harm.
I’ve seen it before.
In a case not so dissimilar from this one, a 16-year-old Regina teen, upset with his ex-girlfriend over a breakup, also somehow selfishly concluded his need for revenge was worth so much more than a young girl’s life.
He hid outside her home in October 2007, lured her outdoors with a text message, then fired a stolen rifle at her forehead with every intention to kill her. As she lay bleeding and near death on the sidewalk, he flippantly texted her: “Kay. I’m gone.” Miraculously that girl, also 16, survived but with severe, lasting injuries.
The teen now known as the La Loche shooter — killing four people and injuring seven more — said some of his victims weren’t even targets but merely “happened to be there in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
On some level, I get homicide fuelled by drugs and alcohol, or spur-of-the-moment acts of provocation or passion. But when did harming or killing anyone becomes “no biggy?” I struggle to make sense of the disconnect between light banter and calculated, dark acts.
Immaturity and bluster provide some explanation. Even the friend, in testifying about her exchange with Prockner, tearfully told his sentencing hearing, “I was 16 years old, and I talked a lot of smack.”
When did murder plots become a casual conversation for teens? And that’s not to cast blame on those who — no doubt regretfully now — perhaps didn’t believe the perpetrator was serious. Hindsight offers clarity, at any age.
But in Prockner’s case, some went beyond mere talk, by offering encouragement or help in an earlier revenge plot, and never saying “no” or “stop.” Another teen, who has pleaded guilty to murdering Hannah and still faces sentencing, was supposedly her friend.
Days before Prockner’s sentencing, as I sat at the Conexus Arts Centre and watched capand-gown-clad high school grads cross the stage, my mind drifted to Hannah Leflar — a child of my city who should have had that same opportunity.
My thoughts were eventually disrupted by the valedictory address, delivered by an articulate, passionate teen-near-woman. Lauded recently as a YWCA Young Woman of Distinction, she has contributed to this community in every way possible.
Figure out a way to cultivate kids who become that promising valedictorian, and not the ones who would so carelessly consider ending a promising life.