NV - Active Shooter, University of Nevada LV


Reuters always with the fact-checked detailed story.
That is a good article. Finances seem to be the trigger (though I bet he could have landed a job doing something other than teach at a university, fwiw).

He made others suffer for his own shortcomings in life. He might be called "injustice collector," but "injustice distributer" seems to fit better, imo.

jmo
 

Reuters always with the fact-checked detailed story.

Thank you. Great article which includes additional info about the letters he mailed:

"Detectives learned Polito had visited a post office shortly before the shooting and mailed 22 letters with no return address to university personnel across the United States, and had a list of people he was seeking on the UNLV campus as well as faculty from his former employer, East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina."

and

"Authorities intercepted the letters before any were delivered and found a suspicious white powdery substance in at least one of them, McMahill said at a news briefing on Thursday.

The letters' contents remained under investigation, the sheriff told reporters, warning that anyone in higher education who received such an envelope should exercise caution and contact authorities.

He said officials were working to notify the intended recipients and had contacted nearly everyone on the separate target list to make sure all were safe."

 

Reuters always with the fact-checked detailed story.
Sadly, none of the deceased were even on that list, I believe ?

Monstrous behavior from a person who was by all accounts well educated and should have known better.
Omo.
 
LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) - On Thursday afternoon, the Clark County Office of the Coroner/Medical Examiner released the names of two of the victims in yesterday’s UNLV campus shooting.

The first is Professor Cha Jan Chang, 64, known as “Jerry,” of Henderson. The manner of death was homicide due to a gunshot wound to the head.

The second victim identified is Assistant Professor Patricia Navarro Velez, 39, of Las Vegas. Her cause and manner of death were the same.

The third victim has also been identified but the coroner’s office is still working to identify next of kin.



Updated: 19 hours ago
 
Investigators located the suspect’s 2007 Lexus, which he used to drive to UNLV. A camera onboard revealed that the suspect went to a Henderson Post Office earlier in the day. After combing through over 14,000 pieces of mail, police and postal investigators determined that Polito sent 22 letters with no return address to “university personnel across the country.”


Published: Dec. 7, 2023 at 6:26 PM EST|Updated: 17 hours ago
 
This is the 3rd case
(in the last 2 years)
I have been following on WS concerning staff in US universities/colleges:

- an alcoholic professor who shot dead a female student

- Idaho 4 stabbed by TA

And now this :(

What is exactly wrong??
 
This was so heartbreaking to watch... You could tell the victim was just trying to make it safely out of the building. The officers were understanding and still in defense mode but I can't imagine the kind of mental warfare this creates in young adults to go through this TWICE in the facility you are PAYING TO ATTEND.
 
So he killed three people who had absolutely nothing to do with him not getting a job.

In reference to the Amy Bishop case, at LEAST she killed people who (she felt) denied her tenure. Not excusing it, of course, but at least it wasn't AS senseless. Didn't she also plead guilty to murdering her brother, Seth? And then, sadly, her son Seth was also accidentally killed by a gunshot.

Maybe, just maybe, it's the easy access to guns. Both Bishop and this guy got their weapons legally.
 
I'm honestly failing to see what mental illness there is here that can be fixed by any kind of mental health system. There is no anti-*advertiser censored* medication.

The problem is that our current healthcare system has absolutely zero support system in place when people need it the most. Unemployed? Fine, pay for COBRA. That is a joke.

Maybe the perpetrator would have been helped with intensive counseling, medication, and treatment. We don't know, because none of that is available for many people, until they get in the system, after committing a crime.
 
Based on what we know, there is no indication this is based on any of the conspiracy theories he's posted about, but even if it was, none of those theories fit the definition of mental illness. They're definitely extreme, but conspiracies about real life events (particularly mysteries with no definitive answer, such as the Malaysia Airlines plane) are considered subcultural shared beliefs that are not true/unlikely to be true. These are not mental illness when exogenous, meaning he isn't invoking himself into it. Had he said he was the savior of the MA plane or something like that, that would be more indicative of a mental illness. Delusions are based on inner experiences -- such as they're the savior or they're the subject of something (government bugging my phones, the girl at the coffee shop is in love with me, I'm the love child of a famous figure, etc).

Subcultural shared beliefs are more a reflection of personality and idiosyncratic traits than they are mental illness.
What do you think about lack of impulse control, coupled with entitled thinking? Would Narcissistic Personality Disorder fit here?

Edit: Conspiracy belief is associated with narcissism--an inflated view of oneself that requires external validation and is linked to paranoid ideation (Cichocka, Marchlewska, & Golec de Zavala, 2016)
 
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What do you think about lack of impulse control, coupled with entitled thinking?

Those are symptoms of disorders, but not disorders themselves. It's like chest pain is a symptom of something that may include heart disease, but it's not heart disease on its own. One can have chest pain without having heart disease.

Would Narcissistic Personality Disorder fit here?

We don't know that he had NPD and even if he did, there's great debate on whether or not this is a mental illness.

I said this on another thread too, but I think it should be said here as well.

In the DSM, where mental health symptoms and disorders are housed, it states the following in the introductory pages of the book (page 25 if anyone wants to look it up):

"However, use of the DSM should be informed by an awareness of the risks and limitations of its use in forensic settings. When DSM-5 categories, criteria, and textual descriptions are employed for forensic purposes, there is a risk that diagnostic information will be misused or misunderstood. These dangers arise because of the imperfect fit between the questions of ultimate concern to the law and the information contained in a clinical diagnosis."

Basically, it's a book for clinicians, not to make determinations of mental illness in response to a crime.

Diagnosis of a personality disorder is not made based on one event, but rather a lifetime (or at least many, many years) of behavior, per the DSM. As far as I know, we don't have information about this guy's lifetime behavior.

Also as an aside, stuttering is also in the DSM as is learning disabilities. I think we'd all agree these are not considered mental illness, so just because something is out of the ordinary or represents a disorder in the DSM doesn't mean it's mental illness that can or should be used to determine criminal motivation, IMO.
 
The problem is that our current healthcare system has absolutely zero support system in place when people need it the most. Unemployed? Fine, pay for COBRA. That is a joke.

I agree and I have always been and still am in favor of universal healthcare. Healthcare, including mental healthcare, should be a right, and not stymied by outrageous fees, like for COBRA.

Maybe the perpetrator would have been helped with intensive counseling, medication, and treatment. We don't know, because none of that is available for many people, until they get in the system, after committing a crime.

I don't think that's necessarily true. We don't know if he even attempted to get care. Access is abhorrent, I agree, but community mental health centers see everyone, regardless, because they're subsidized by the government. So until we hear that he WILLINGLY sought care and was turned away, I'm not prepared to blame this on the healthcare system and as I said above, I'm not aware of any mental illness in this guy yet. Criminality is not always mental illness, even when people are conspiracy theorists. Look at Jan 6th to see what I mean. From what I've seen and read, very few of those defendants have a diagnosable/treatable mental illness, IMO.
 
Here is his personal website.


And LinkedIn:


I’m a college professor. MOO but it’s a pretty odd presentation of self professionally. My guess is that he was managed out of academia in 2017 (his last job as per LinkedIn) for reasons we can only guess. But he definitely isn’t an attractive candidate and I certainly wouldn’t get hired if this was the package I put forward. I imagine the combination of whatever reasons he was out of a job to begin with combined with whatever has happened in the past 6 years plus all the usual reasons we see largely white men creating these sorts of atrocities explain why this happened.

ETA: He’s also added a link to a doc on his LinkedIn with 109 pages of comments from students saying how great he is. This is also odd. And gives the vibes of someone who was disgruntled with university leadership and trying to make a point about something. JMO
Agreed.
A lot of self-promotion going on with this man.
Also didn't make a lasting impression on his fellow members in 'academia land'.
It's possible some cases gain more attention than others, but other people have committed such acts, such as Mauricio Garcia, a Hispanic Latino who was also seething with rage, and an injustice collector.
Some cases receive more msm exposure than others ?
Either way it's equally tragic for the victims and their families.
I don't know that anyone could have predicted what evil acts this former professor was about to do !
Nearly impossible, and that's what makes it so frightening.
Omo.
 
I agree and I have always been and still am in favor of universal healthcare. Healthcare, including mental healthcare, should be a right, and not stymied by outrageous fees, like for COBRA.



I don't think that's necessarily true. We don't know if he even attempted to get care. Access is abhorrent, I agree, but community mental health centers see everyone, regardless, because they're subsidized by the government. So until we hear that he WILLINGLY sought care and was turned away, I'm not prepared to blame this on the healthcare system and as I said above, I'm not aware of any mental illness in this guy yet. Criminality is not always mental illness, even when people are conspiracy theorists. Look at Jan 6th to see what I mean. From what I've seen and read, very few of those defendants have a diagnosable/treatable mental illness, IMO.
Bbm.
Ita and well stated.
Sometimes people do evil things out of revenge, thrill killing (grotesque, I know ! ), or a myriad of reasons we will never understand, as none of us will ever do what this man did !
Omo.
 
I agree and I have always been and still am in favor of universal healthcare. Healthcare, including mental healthcare, should be a right, and not stymied by outrageous fees, like for COBRA.



I don't think that's necessarily true. We don't know if he even attempted to get care. Access is abhorrent, I agree, but community mental health centers see everyone, regardless, because they're subsidized by the government. So until we hear that he WILLINGLY sought care and was turned away, I'm not prepared to blame this on the healthcare system and as I said above, I'm not aware of any mental illness in this guy yet. Criminality is not always mental illness, even when people are conspiracy theorists. Look at Jan 6th to see what I mean. From what I've seen and read, very few of those defendants have a diagnosable/treatable mental illness, IMO.

I am in favor of FREE MENTAL HEALTHCARE for all Americans, because we need to start using everything we have to prevent these shootings.
 

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