RSBM - I thought you may have something to say about this, I guess I should have kept reading.
I think it's obvious that no matter what happened in this case, it had an effect on Bryer, it had to have, right?
Pretty much. There's a lot of missing information but there's enough to piece a good deal of it together, IMO. Plus you know in these types of situations, 90+% of what really happened is under the radar of the legal system, other people they knew, etc. because that's how it always goes.
But, what we can determine from the limited information is, in short, depressing af. We can say there is a high likelihood from the evidence we know that Bryer grew up in an unstable home environment for at least a large part of his childhood, that he was likely exposed to domestic violence (BTW domestic violence doesn't have to be physical, threats and intimidating and really bad arguments count too) from a young age, and had some
very traumatic experiences such as most likely seeing his dad get arrested on both his birthday and Christmas of the same year when he was 8 (according to court records). After that he lost contact with his dad for almost a decade, and shortly after getting back into contact, his dad became long-term homeless while suffering from mental illness and being repeatedly arrested. Apparently even for up to a decade after the divorce, either the fallout of that situation or whatever other situations were going on caused him to be so uncomfortable at home that he even kept a huge buffer zone between his best friend who he was "inseparable" from and his family, and parents around town (and remember, this is a small town where gossip gets around) sort of understood that he came over so much because he didn't want to be at home, and at least one neighbor described his home life as being terrible.
As a result of whatever happened (and I think whatever happened is probably way worse than we currently know, because
it pretty much always is in these types of situations) he developed issues with anger and likely severe depression, maybe even anxiety as well (ie. being extremely introverted, not having a driver's license). He went from a happy-looking kid to a teenager that looked like he was dead inside, engaged in threatening and disturbing behavior towards his peers and possibly mom that seems to directly mirror the behavior his dad was alleged to engage in, and had a bunch of maladaptive social skills that created a vicious cycle of isolation --> mental illness --> acting out --> more isolation --> more mental illness --> etc. And there was a whole internet out there full of negative influences to enforce these thought patterns (controversial to say that I'm sure). There were warning signs for years, some of them about as obvious as you can get (gun in mouth picture) that indicated that on some level he wanted someone to notice and do something. But they most likely were never recognized because of the compartmentalization of his life, where his family and friends had no access to each other. The friends who were aware of this stuff thought it was just a joke or trolling, or just chose to distance themselves from him. He was likely in an incredible amount of emotional pain for years with seemingly no way out (at least 6 or 7 years based on when he first started making suicide threats). Because severe depression can cloud judgment, reduce empathy, and numb emotions, he eventually snapped. And here we are with another totally preventable tragedy. All JMO.
So...I know we can't always agree on a lot, but we can all agree on that much so far and close the chapter on that, right? And remember, this is just based on a limited set of information...the full story is generally always worse in these kinds of things....
Also another random thing I thought of...it's been remarked on that Bryer looked kind of underweight. I know some people are just like that, but also, severe depression can cause a loss of appetite, so I wonder if that was another sign that went overlooked....
I just wonder what happened to Kam. We haven't been discussing him nearly as much because there's so much less information, but I feel like
something had to have happened (not necessarily from his family, as we have no evidence of that so far, but from somewhere). People have remarked on how he had such a nice smile -- how do you go from that to killing three people and yourself? That doesn't happen overnight. I'm feeling like it was probably a similar story to Bryer in some ways and that's why they were so bonded. Based on what his Walmart coworker said, that he seemed uncomfortable talking to anyone except Bryer, I'm pretty sure he had social anxiety at least. I wonder if we will ever know.
