Court delves into mind of Wisconsin school slayer

0 Comments | AFP, April, 2007

BARABOO, United States (AFP) — As the United States struggled to understand why a Korean-American student massacred at least 30 people at Virginia Tech University, testimony in a leafy rural Wisconsin courthouse plumbed the mind of another school shooter.

A portrait emerged this week of a disturbed and lonely boy who was unable to explain why he shot his principal three times in the school hallway as they wrestled to the ground on September 29, 2006.

Irene Hainstock, the boy's paternal grandmother, testified that the teenager called her from jail right after the shooting.

"I said, 'Eric, what have you done?' and he said, 'Grandma, I don't know. Something snapped in my head.'"

Witnesses described Hainstock as a sexually and physically abused youngster...