USA TODAY International Edition
A school shooter recounts what led up to his actions
‘I felt like I wasn’t wanted by anyone,’ 2016 gunman says
CINCINNATI – He and his girlfriend had broken up. His parents wouldn’t let him run track. And he had been abusing Adderall, a stimulant used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, for about a year.
This was 14-year-old James “Austin” Hancock.
On Feb. 29, 2016, a few weeks before his birthday, Hancock brought a handgun to Madison Junior/Senior High School in Madison Township, Ohio, and shot two students at lunch. Two others were injured from shrapnel or trying to leave the scene.
No one died, but the incident sent shock waves across this community.
Yet Hancock didn’t plan to shoot up his school, he said July 27 from his new home, Circleville Juvenile Correctional Facility.
The following story was pieced together using Hancock’s own words in a deposition:
“I felt like I wasn’t wanted by anyone, especially my mom,” he said.
Hancock’s biological parents split up shortly after he was born, and his dad got full custody of him when he was 5. His father and stepmom have two other young children.
“I spent most of my time in my room, but they never really paid attention.”
Hancock said the longer eighth grade went on, the worse it got. He regrets not talking to a counselor about the feelings building up inside him.
“I mentioned some stuff to my grandma … but nothing major, nothing that was really bothering me,” he said. “I talked to her about stuff with my dad about how he was being really harsh on me. And, I mean, he’s told me — he’s told me a few times before that he hated me and that he wished I … wasn’t his son.”
After the then-14-year-old was arrested, a sheriff’s deputy asked Hancock why he did it.
“So I wouldn’t have to go back home,” he said.
At age 16 in the deposition, Hancock was giving a deeper explanation. “I didn’t really like my home life because I was always grounded for my grades,” he said. “So it was always a strict home life.
“And then I found out my girlfriend was cheating on me, so that was a big deal. And, I don’t know, after that I just started failing a couple of my classes, so it would just be more rough on me at my house.
“I wanted to be on the track team, but that’s also when my grades were bad. My teacher said … as long as I had my grades at D+ — because she was … one of the track coaches — as long as I have a D+, I would be on the team.
“So I brought my grades up to a D+, but to my parents that wasn’t good enough. So they wouldn’t let me on the team,” he said.
He started abusing Adderall when he was 13, he said.
Instead of taking the pills as prescribed, Hancock would save up 10 and take several at a time, he said. He did this the night before the shooting.
“I just wanted to get high off of it, I guess, just to relieve all these things — like, all these emotions that I was feeling,” he said. “I’d just use it to get rid of my feelings. But really, after the medicine went away, I would just feel worse.
“I ended up getting addicted to that, but I started getting really skinny because I didn’t really eat. But the Adderall seemed like it was messing with my emotions somehow, like just made me angrier and more depressed.”
The weekend before the shooting, Hancock’s grandmother bought him a BB gun at Walmart because his birthday was only a few weeks away, he said. They went to his great-grandmother’s house the next day, where Hancock showed off his present and talked about hunting with his father.
His great-grandmother showed him her handgun. It was the one he would fire in school that Monday.
“That night I was thinking about the gun I saw: Like, should I take it? Should I not take it? Like, because I had no intention to do what I did with it. I guess I just wanted to have it for showing off or whatever.”
When the teen returned home, his dad was mad. He yelled at him and locked up his BB gun.
“I was scared that Sarah, my stepmom, was going to find it. … I had put the gun in my backpack to go to school with no intention of doing what I did.”
He was nervous that someone would find the gun but told two friends about it.
“And my two friends had followed me (into the bathroom), and they wanted to see it. So I showed it or whatever, but I put the clip in one pocket and the gun in another pocket so I could eat my food.
“So when I went back out and sat down, I started eating my food. But I had sweatpants on, and the clip was like slick metal, so it kept trying to slide out of my pocket. So then I went back to the bathroom, and I put the clip in the gun.
“And when I went back, I guess one of the buddies I told — because he knew, like, I was mad at everything for like the longest time — so he was worried that I was going to do something.
“I could see my buddy whisper to some girl that I had the gun, and she started panicking. And on top of that I had took Adderall the night before, (which) boosted my anxiety. So she started panicking and running ... and from then it just felt like I blacked out and that’s when everything happened.
“It just seemed like everything went blurred,” Hancock said.