Oregon school shooter attacked special education classroom, police say
I keep coming back to the detail that the shooter aimed at a special education classroom. That isn't random. Elementary school shootings are rare enough, but choosing the room with the most vulnerable kids suggests something specific was going on in that boy's head, something that might not fit the usual profile of a school shooter looking for maximum casualties.
The age gap is what unsettles me most. A 16-year-old attacking a building full of five and six year olds, at a school he used to attend. That means he knew the layout, possibly knew the teachers, maybe even knew some of the special education students if he'd been in that room years earlier. The motive may stay murky, but the premeditation seems obvious. You don't stumble into that specific classroom by accident.
I'd want to know what his relationship was to that room, if he had a sibling there, or if he was once a student in special education himself. Those records are protected for good reason, but they might hold the key to why this particular target. For now we're left with the terrible arithmetic: three children, one teacher, and a shooter who was still a child himself.