It is amazing how these incidents just go from bad to worse.....what to do with this 15 year old?
Eric Hainstock's voice was flat in a video interview with police Sept. 29 as he confessed to shooting Weston School Principal John Klang not even three hours before.
In a grainy video with bad audio, the 15-year-old high school freshman sprawled in a chair in bloodied pants and shirt as he told investigators that he didn't want to kill Klang when he took two loaded guns to school that Friday morning.
Why did he pull the trigger then? police asked. "I just freaked out," the teenager said. At another point, he mumbled, "My adrenaline was going."
Asked whether he fired the gun three times at Klang by accident or on purpose, he responded, "On purpose."
"It was pop, and then a couple of seconds later, pop, and then a couple seconds later, pop," Hainstock said, describing the sequence of shots fired in a school hallway decorated for homecoming.
The video confession was played Friday, the fourth day of a hearing before Sauk County Circuit Judge James Taggart to decide whether Hainstock should be treated as an adult or a juvenile in Klang's murder.
The hearing, sought by defense attorneys, is expected to continue through Tuesday.
On Friday, Sauk County District Attorney Patricia Barrett called witnesses who testified they saw Hainstock after he came through the school's front door with two loaded guns.
Weston guidance counselor Angela Young said she heard Hainstock say, "I'm here to (expletive) kill somebody."
And special education teacher James Nowak testified he saw Hainstock point the handgun at Klang's head, then sweep the gun toward Nowak. "That's when Mr. Klang made his move," Nowak said.
During Hainstock's video confession, he told police Klang started coming closer and closer, and finally caught the boy in a bear hug. "He wrapped his arms around me, and I fired," the boy said.
"I shot him," Hainstock said.
On the video, he demonstrated how he fired the .22-caliber revolver from underneath his left armpit. "Then, when (Klang) fell down and took me down with him, I nailed him in the leg," he told investigators.
At one point during Hainstock's video confession, he loudly cracked his knuckles. At another point, he asked what kind of shoes the jail was going to give him.
A bit later, he asked if jail officers would let him keep wearing a plastic bracelet given him by his girlfriend.
He asked about a phone call to which he was entitled. He told investigators he would use it to call his girlfriend or his best friend, not his parents - he told police he didn't want his parents notified.
On the video, Hainstock said he awakened at 6 a.m. that morning feeling like he couldn't take any more insults from his classmates - classmates who regularly called him a fag, rubbed up against him and punched him, he said.
Hainstock said he wanted to talk to Klang and his teachers about the incidents. He told police he ate breakfast, then waited until his parents, Shawn and Priscilla Hainstock, had gone to work before getting two of his father's guns from locked cabinets and loading them. He said he was going to talk to Klang.
"I was just going to hold it (the gun) out," he said on the video.
After school custodian Dave Thompson wrestled the shotgun away from him at the front door of the school, Hainstock said, "I pulled out the handgun, pulled the cock back and fired" at Klang.
During the video interview, state Justice Department Special Agent Elizabeth Feagles pointed out blood stains on Hainstock's pants and shirt. Hainstock said it was "blood from the principal."
With the interviewing winding down, Feagles asked him how he felt. "Tired," the teenager said.
Do you wish this hadn't happened? Feagles pressed.
"I don't wish nothing," Hainstock said. "I'm just tired."
No comments:
Post a Comment