
When 17-year-old Robert Butler killed Vice-Principal Vicki Kaspar, and critically wounded Principal Curtis Case, his motive was unclear.
Police have since discovered that he was suspended from school that morning, after driving his car on the school's football field and track New Year's Day.
Yes, a woman was murdered in cold blood for suspending an errant student.After calmly accepting the suspension, the troubled teen went home to speak with his father and friends. Waiting until his father, a detective with the Omaha Police Department, left home, Butler stole his father's service weapon, a .40-caliber semiautomatic pistol, from the closet and returned to the school to exact revenge.
Butler was called out of class at 8:10 a.m. Wednesday to meet with Assistant Principal Vicki Kaspar. He didn't show any signs of violence as he was calmly escorted out of the school at 9:23 a.m., police said:
"He wasn't acting like an out-of-control student at all," Police Chief Alex Hayes said.
As the story unfolded yesterday, Butler was painted as a seemingly innocent, "normal" student who was well-liked by everyone. Now it has been revealed that he was having disciplinary problems in Lincoln where he resided with his mother, who is divorced from Butler's father and remarried, Hayes said.
According to a statement given to police by Detective Butler, his son did not seem angry or overly concerned by his suspension, which, according to Superintendent Keith Lutz, could not have been longer than 19 days:
"He was disappointed with the discipline, but he wasn't acting angry," Hayes said.
Waiting until his father left home to run errands, Butler broke in to the locked garage (where his car had been kept since the athletic field incident) stole the car, then posted a heart-wrenching status to his Facebook page, apologizing to his friends, family and families of his intended victims in advance for his "evil" actions.
"When we, as police officers, leave our houses, we do not expect our children to commit crimes like this," Hayes said.
Butler returned to the school at 12:45 p.m., methodically signed in at the administrative office and requested to see Principal Kasper.
"He walked in to the school just like a normal student. He was not displaying any firearm or weapons," Hayes said.
Police said he had been in her office about four minutes with the door closed before he shot her. Butler then walked across a hallway and shot Principal Case.
While it was initially stated that Butler fired only at the principals, it has now been reported that he also fired at a custodian and missed. As he was walking away, he pointed the gun at an unarmed security guard, who immediately took cover.
A security officer called police to give them Butler's name and a description of the car, and at 1:35 p.m., authorities received a report of a suspicious vehicle about a mile from the school. That's where officers found the shooter, dead behind the wheel, from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
While Lutz says Principal Case is improving and receiving visitors, Principal Kasper's family is left to mourn on what would have been her 58th birthday.
"She will be missed but certainly not forgotten," Lutz said.
While this story just gets increasingly more tragic as it unfolds, I do not want to minimize the families' grief with speculating on the whys.
I know if some kid walked in to a school and shot my loved one, I wouldn't care what he was going through.
Yet, I can't help but believe there is more to this story.
It is obvious that Butler wasn't as "normal" as everyone thought, but what pushes a child to murder? How alone must he have felt in the midst of his parents' divorce and transferring to a new school?
In less than three months, he not only drives on to a football field at a school he is unfamiliar with, but he also shoots both administrators in cold blood?
How deep was his mental anguish?
Make no mistake, there is no excuse. If he had lived, Robert Butler would be thrown in jail for a very long time after an extremely sensationalistic trial.
Exactly where he belonged.
Whatever perceived sense of injustice he felt he was experiencing, he was still alive to plan premeditated murder.
And Principal Kasper is dead as a result.
Our educators, often on the frontlines where parents fail, should not have to go to one of the most thankless jobs in the world, worried that they might not make it home alive. We must not allow ourselves to romanticize a killer because he took his own life.
Yet we must not underestimate the mental process of a fragile mind. Mental illness carries a stigma that we refuse to address, and it is killing our boys. Killing them.
My cousin, suffering from schizophrenia, committed suicide at the age of 27 years old, believing that there was no other way to free himself from the shackles of his own mind.
When people lose hope, all else is lost. In this case, the lives of two people and the peace in Omaha, Nebraska.
The facts behind Robert Butler's selfish decision may never be known, but this I know is true:
It still takes a village to raise a child, and we must pay attention to our children. If we don't recognize how much our decisions and their circumstances affect them even when they don't say a word, the tragedy in Omaha will continue to happen in schools all across America.


Comments: (13)
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By: ADMR on 1/07/2011 11:29AM
REMINDER: SEErazy Amongst Many - SOH
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By: R.I.P RBJ on 1/08/2011 4:11PM
you guys don't know Robert like i did. he was not the one to do this. he was obviously pushed way to far over the edge and couldn't deal with it. yes, what he did was wrong but he also had his reasons. he was the nicest/coolest/funny/most loving person at lsw and everyone will miss him and the thought of why he did this will always run through my head but like i said, he obviously had a reason. so any of you that are judging him, just remember that he was a very good kid and something over the top pushed him to do this and we shall never no..
~Forever Remember, Robert Butler Jr.
R.I.P my friend -1/5/11-
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By: Karen on 1/08/2011 11:40PM
Is that all you can say, he was a good person, he was a cool person. What about the good people who's live he took from them. They didn't deserve to be apart of his warped mind! You're just as crazy as he was. May the principle and vice-principle rest in serious peace.
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By: Rayna on 1/10/2011 7:13PM
Apparently nobody knew the REAL Robert and that he was capable of murder. Unfortunately, there are so many "walking time bombs" in this world. Nobody can predict when they're going to go off. When people do this cold blooded killings and then turn the gun on themselves I often say that if they'd offed themselves in the first place, innocent people wouldn't have been murdered! Those other people DIDN'T want to die! They didn't have a choice! Robert did!
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By: Tiff on 1/07/2011 1:32PM
This is just sad. So many questions? Little answers. Why did they suspend this young man for 19 days? Why does a suspended student get to leave the school and put into the community to get into God knows what? It's obvious this young man had very deep rooted issues and suffered from depression, or other mental health disorder, to do something like this. WHat else was really going on in this town that the public does not know? I think there is a lot more to this story that what is being told here. Sadly, we may never know the truth.
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By: James Gadson on 1/07/2011 9:42PM
I had heard about this but this is the first time I took time to read about it and get to see what the young man looks like.
This is a terrible tragedy squeezed in among bigger more terrible and terrifying tragedies here and abroad. (Government Official found in a landfill,dead birds, contaminated water. Millions dying in unjust wars, torture. Stolen wealth, lost jobs, Government conspiracies for example.)
There are many things going on now that even the youth can tell are wrong and affect their lives in very vicious and negative ways. We hardly think about the issues that affect us politically and how they may be affecting the youth who are aware of the dilemmas in our society. There are truly enough things happening to drive an average person insane, let alone a young immature person. Too many problems, too many questions and not enough answers, if any.
So much pain and misery that is unaddressed.
We've experience the housing bubble, the banking bubble, the stock market bubble, etc. It's only a matter of time before we see the people bubble burst!
My condolences to all concerned.
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By: Dana on 1/10/2011 3:11PM
Condolences to all of the families directly affected and the communities in which they live. The larger public now has an opportunity to learn from the mistakes made in this case to ensure we don't repeat them.
Stability is important to be maintained for children/teens. The offending young man was struggling with multiple life altering events which occured in a short time span. I suspect this young man's parents were focusing more on their own needs - leaving him to sink or swim on his own which produced tragic results. Additionally, parents leaving their guns accessible to children continues to be a problem - - - more troubling in this case because the parent is an officer of the law.
Its odd a SUSPENDED student would be allowed to re-enter the school in less than 24 hours! Perhaps the principal issuing the suspension had not yet communicated this student's new status to school security?
SYSTEMIC PROBLEMS NEEDING TO BE ADDRESSED: 1.) Schools allowing suspended students to leave their premises UNACCOMPANIED BY A PARENT. 2.) Delayed communication between principal/security regarding staff and student status changes. 3.) School security allowing the re-admittance of suspended students w/o administrative approval. 4.) Parents ( particularly officers of the law ) must be dilligent with their firearm's safekeeping AT ALL TIMES.
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By: JD on 1/07/2011 1:55PM
Wow...so true...so true.....needs to be posted on all sites.....
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By: lnyk on 1/08/2011 12:03AM
We don't allow prayer in the Schools,but someone can smuggle in a gun.What happened to metal detecters?
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By: marie on 1/08/2011 1:19PM
I've lived with secret for 50yrs I know what that young man was going through. If you are not able to get you mind in a better state. The thought of murder will consume you. Its long story but I've been there when I was about his age. I've started writing a book about it this will make me finish. Because I have keepit inside to long. thank you for listening.
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