Washington school shooter remembered alongside his victims
MARYSVILLE, Wash.— Among the balloons and flowers tied to the chain-link fence outside MarysvillePilchuck High School are these: a white wrestling shoe; a youth football team photo, with one player encased in a red-marker heart; and a candle covered with a plastic cup bearing the name “Jaylen.”
They are all tributes to Jaylen Fryberg, the popular 15-year-old freshman who texted five friends to invite them to lunch Friday and then gunned them down at a table in the school’s cafeteria.
Two girls died in the attack, and three other students— including two of Fryberg’s cousins—were gravely wounded. Fryberg died after shooting himself.
While families or friends of shooting victims sometimes express sympathy or forgiveness for the perpetrators, the notion of a mass shooter being memorialized alongside his victims is unusual, experts say. It speaks to the unique grief this community is feeling, even in a nation where such horrors are becoming ever more common.
“Usually there’s so much anger and frustration and bewilderment in the aftermath, and generally the shooter is not someone who was this loved over time,” said Carolyn Reinach Wolf, a mental health attorney who studies mass shootings. “This is a very different response. Some of that is a credit to the community: People are able to get past the grief of the victims and see that the shooter’s family is grieving and horrified just as much.”
Fryberg, a football player who was named a prince on the school’s homecoming court one week before the killings, was a member of a prominent Tulalip Indian Tribes family. He seemed happy, although he was also upset about a girl, friends said. His Twitter feed was recently full of vague, anguished postings, such as “It won’t last ... It’ll never last,” and “I should have listened. ... You were right ... The whole time you were right.”
On Friday, he pulled out a handgun in the cafeteria and started shooting. The victims were Zoe R. Galasso, 14, who died at the scene; Gia Soriano, 14, who died at a hospital Sunday night; Shaylee Chuckulnaskit, 14, who is in critical condition; and his cousins, Nate Hatch, 14, and Andrew Fryberg, 15.
Andrew Fryberg also remained in critical condition. Hatch, who was shot in the jaw, is the only victim who has shown improvement. He was upgraded to satisfactory condition Monday in intensive care at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, where he posted a message of forgiveness on Twitter.
“I love you and I forgive you jaylen rest in peace,” he wrote. A friend confirmed the feed’s authenticity to The Associated Press.