Kinkel Arraigned For Shootings
Wearing a bulletproof vest and a blank expression, 15-year-old Kip Kinkel stood before a judge Tuesday and heard dozens of charges against him in a shooting rampage that left his parents and two classmates dead.
Kinkel answered a soft "yes" when asked if his name and birthdate were correct on the indictment but his attorneys were granted more time to enter a plea.
When the three-minute arraignment was over, the freckle-faced defendant was turned toward the packed courtroom gallery to be handcuffed. He glanced up and gave a wide-eyed look at the 60 spectators, about a dozen of whom were among the Thurston High School students injured in the shooting.
"He's going to pay for what he did," said Nichole Buckholtz, a 17-year-old who suffered a gunshot wound to the leg. "Seeing him in handcuffs showed he wasn't so powerful. On May 21, he held the lives of everyone in the cafeteria in his hands. Now he's helpless. He's not so big and bad."
Most of the hearing was taken up with Circuit Judge Jack Mattison reading the list of counts stemming from a two-day reign of terror that began when the freshman was arrested with a gun at school.
Hours after he was released to his schoolteacher parents, he allegedly shot them to death and then went to Springfield's Thurston High cafeteria and fired his rifle from the hip, killing two classmates and wounding 22 others. Investigators later spent days clearing Kinkel's home of bombs and explosive materials before they could remove his parents' bodies.
Kinkel faces four counts of aggravated murder, 26 counts of attempted aggravated murder, six counts of first-degree assault, 18 counts of second-degree assault, unlawful possession of a firearm, unlawful manufacture of a destructive device, possession of a destructive device and first-degree theft.
If convicted of the adult charges, he could face life behind bars. Under Oregon law, juveniles cannot get the death penalty.
Kinkel, who has been held under a suicide watch at a juvenile detention center, was led into court and sat with his two attorneys about five minutes before the spectators were allowed in.
A date for a later hearing was not immediately set.
The arraignment came just over three weeks after the rampage, the latest in a string of school shootings that stunned the nation and led to a national debate over how to stop such violence in the future.
President Clinton, speaking to more than 750 students at Thurston High on Saturday, said he supports a bill introduced in the U.S. Senate last week that would require youngsters who are caught with a gun at school to be held for 72 hours of psychiatric evaluation.
In Springfield, a city of 51,000 about 110 miles south of Portland, Kinkel was well known among students for his fascination with guns, bombs and torturing animals. Students recalled how the boy once voted "Most Likely to Start World War III" once tood before a literature class and told of his plans to "kill everybody."
Written by Brad Cain