The overwhelming majority of child killers, including school murderers, are boys. Teasing, bullying, and emotional abuse might be particularly difficult for some boys to handle. The feelings of powerless and emotional pain that result from such abuse are the very definition of sissy. No boy wants to be a sissy. He fatally stabbed his mother and killed two students and wounded seven others in 1998.
Many boys see violence as a way of being cool.
Barry Loukatis had told a friend it would be pretty cool to go on a killing spree just like the two characters in Natural Born Killers. A very small number of youthful murderers have a mental illness or are emotionally disturbed. Those who are appear to be influenced by their own auditory and visual hallucinations. Luke Woodham saw demons when he thought of the violent acts Grant Boyette urged on him, as discussed above. Death from Violence as Temporary Many youthful murderers go into shock when they realize what they've done.