Responsible parenting
Michele Cossey from Pennsylvania in the US has a son who was being bullied. She dealt with it by buying him an armoury comprising an assault rifle fitted with a sniper’s scope, a 9mm handgun, a .22 rifle and gunpowder to make grenades.
Her son, Dillon, who left school at 12 after being bullied over his weight, planned to use them in a massacre in Plymouth Township, Pennsylvania. He had such a passion for the Columbine High School shooters that he decided to attack Plymouth Whitemarsh High School last year. He was sentenced to seven years in a juvenile detention centre earlier this year after pleading guilty to planning the attack.
His mother admitted she helped her troubled son build a cache of weapons by buying a rifle and gunpowder but investigators still do not know whether she was aware her son was planning a deadly school attack. Prosecutors said she had created a "me-and-mum-against-the-world" attitude in her only child. Montgomery County Assistant District Attorney Christopher Parisi said she had tried to boost her son’s self-esteem "and in some way help the child, as misplaced as those thoughts may have been".
Very disturbingly, Dillon had also been in touch with a Finnish teenager who carried out a massacre at his school last November. Pekka-Eric Auvinen, 18, shot dead six pupils, a nurse and the head teacher before killing himself.
