on the cell phone the targets and a poster, “The State spies on me” – Corriere.it

Death Sequence Repeated, clike hundreds of other times in America. A man entered his workplace and shot and killed 6 people, including a 16-year-old. The massacre this time took place in a Walmart supermarket in Chesapeake, Virginia. It was 10.12pm on Tuesday and less than an hour before closing when night shift supervisor Andre Bing, armed with a pistol, unleashed his anger on a group of employees. Having accomplished his mission, he took his own life – like other massacres. Survivors say that he had had conflicts, they feared that he might do some dangerous thing. Fears that became reality in the space of a few moments, tragedy accompanied since the conviction of President Joe Bidenfrom the pain of the community, from the anguish of those who have lost friends and relatives. The murderer had leaked disturbing signals in the past.

Aggressive, always abrupt when giving orders, he suffered from paranoia. He was convinced that the state was spying on him, so he had covered the cell phone camera with duct tape and didn’t like it if someone recorded video. Lonely, friendless, he’d threatened retaliation if they punished him or got him fired: so they’ll know who he is, he’d said. A list of targets and a “manifesto” would have been found in his mobile phone, a frequent occurrence on the part of American massacres. In the document he describes an alleged mobbing, accuses the administration of a change of duties, confirms the difficult relations.

The story comes after similar events, in a shortened time frameas if to confirm the thesis of some experts who speak of the contagion effect and not just of emulation. An attack often followed by others, as if the murderer were inspired. Just a few days ago there was an episode involving some players of a University of Virginia – 3 victims – and then the raid against a nightclub gay club in colorado springs, 5 more dead. A hate crime committed by a twenty-year-old with a difficult existence and a background that did not prevent him from equipping himself with an Ar 15 type rifle, with the ammunition kit.

In the 1980s cases like this were referred to as going postal, a reference to a series of post office shootings, with the perpetrators triggered by personal or work matters. Who knows if a new category, going market, will be created. Three years ago in El Paso an assassin shot at the entrance to a Walmart store: the xenophobic killer wanted to kill Mexicans. In September, a man aboard a small plane had threatened to crash again on a supermarket of the same chain. More recently, acts of violence have taken place in the spaces of commercial environments. In some situations it was pure coincidence, in others they represent crowded points that host services useful to the citizen. So for assassins they are the places to look for prey.