Nicholas Prosper's family annihilation (TW: it's very distressing)

[TheSeaOfTranquility]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cn8ld834398t

This is such a horrifying and disturbing case. He says he didn't hate his family but he just wanted to be notorious for having committed the biggest mass shooting. He shot and stabbed his mum and younger siblings and was intending to take out an entire class of children at his old primary school, deliberately targeting the youngest ones.

What makes a young man want to do such things? He has since been dianosed with ASD, but it seems that his lack of empathy went way, way beyond that sometimes found in autism. He was fascinated by school shootings and was a regular on a website that captured people dying in the most horrific circumstances (beheadings, burning to death in car crashes etc). There were other, equally concerning websites too. These must surely have had an influence. But did he seek out these websites because he was already damaged, or did his online activities do the damage?

He also seems to have had an imaginary friendship with a character called Clementine from The Walking Dead.

There are parallels to be drawn with Axel Radakubana: they both had ASD (although in Prosper's case it was only diagnosed after the killings), an obsession with school shootings, and a refusal to interact with medical professionals.

Apologies if there's already a thread on this. I couldn't see one.

The details are incredibly distressing. He is being sentenced now. The judge ordered him to be brought to court as he was refusing to attend.

HIs motivation was a desire to achieve notoriety. Threads like this give him what he wanted.

Notoriety is a matter of fear and fame, this is yet another youngster whose vulnerable mind found a soft landing space on the internet and cultivated a sense of value and worth out of being a violent shit.

And I think it's important that we do talk about it, that or turn the internet off at the wall.

Psychopath, in the medical condition sense of the word.
Thank goodness he was stopped before he reached the school.
Horrifying.

I'm so glad that the judge did insist that he attend court. He lost any right to stay cowering in his cell when he killed his family.

I did consider that (and hope that he won't have access to Mumsnet in prison so will never know that we have a thread about him). But, I think we have to talk about what is going wrong with young men, and reflect on what we as parents can implement to try and keep all our young people empathic, less indivualistic and not deadened to the pain of others.

I hope the Online Safety Act helps, and I hope that horrible websites of people dying is shut down too.

"But, I think we have to talk about what is going wrong with young men."

Some, (thankfully) very rare young men like him. I have sons who are as horrified by this as i am. Please don't tar them all with the same brush.

I agree, but perhaps we can talk about the problem rather than naming individual perpetrators. Or at least let's talk about the victims and remember them over him. His name does not deserve to be spoken ever again once the trial is over.

The role of the internet was striking in Scarlett Jenkins appetite for killing in the murder of Brianna Ghey too.

And then there was the celebratory outpouring for the murder of Brian Thompson by Luigi Mangioni.

I think we have to talk about the perpetrator rather than the victims, to try to understand the problem. Ultimately, we need to understand what makes people like NP (I agree we shouldn't use his name) take such a path.

I will certainly remember his victims, but there's very little in the public domain about them so far (I'm sure more will come out). Just their names and ages, and that the mum used to raise money for charity by running.

In both families, the parents had tried to seek help with/for their son. The son refused to engage with whatever was offered and the authorities didn't make them.

I think this is one of the key things that needs to be sorted out. Many families suffer at the hands of their child but can't get any help, so the story doesn't suprise me.

There's virtually no help for those with MH difficulties. I can easily see how someone who starts off with mild MH issues might end up on the wrong path. No appropriate support, easily led on the internet (especially if they're ND), if they feel cut off from society or different to everyone else (again likely if asd has been missed). They seek a connection to something or someone and who knows where they might find it. Obviously not everyone would end up like this but clearly some do.

Young men with ASD living in their bedrooms and online, then killing people in 'real life'. I feel like I read one of these stories every few weeks recently.