Opinion: We may never know what spurred Carson City rampage
Publisher’s note: This editorial is from the Sept. 8, 2011, Reno Gazette-Journal.
In the face of unthinkable tragedy, it is the nature of humans to want answers.
Surely, there must be a reason why a man would walk into a restaurant and start shooting, eventually killing four people he apparently had never met before taking his own life.
How could a coffee shop in a strip mall turn so quickly into a killing zone?
How could a such a typical, simple, everyday decision as the one made by members of the National Guard in Carson City to “get away from the tyranny of the inbox” (as Brig. Gen. William R. Burks explained it on Wednesday) and meet over breakfast at the nearby IHOP end in their deaths?
How could this happen in small-town Nevada?
Is it really possible that there is no explanation, that there was nothing anyone could have done to foresee — and to prevent — the tragedy that occurred on Tuesday morning in Carson City?
Yes, it is possible.
On Thanksgiving Day in 1980, Priscilla Ford suddenly swerved her Lincoln Continental from North Virginia Street into a crowd in front of the Club Cal Neva in Reno, killing six people and injuring 23. Two years later, she was convicted of murder. She died in prison in January 2005.
Ford had been diagnosed with schizophrenia with violent tendencies, but no one could have imagined that she would one day go on the rampage that would stun Truckee Meadows residents and visitors that day.
Similarly, family members of Eduardo Sencion said the man accused of opening fire on patrons in the restaurant Tuesday was “mentally troubled.” In 2009, he’d filed for bankruptcy protection. None of that explains what happened in Carson City, however.