This is 20-year-old Dominick Maldonado, the man who decided that his childhood was so difficult that he had to walk into the Tacoma Mall and shoot up the place.
He injured six people including 68-year-old Air Force veteran Frank Stiles, who was shot in the arm. Stiles told the P-I: "It hurt like the dickens. It made me very angry. I wanted to shoot back, and I didn't have anything to shoot back with. As far as I was concerned, I was hoping the cops were going to take him out."
I wish the cops took him out, too - if only for the now paralyzed Brendan McKown, who took a bullet in the abdomen.
After holding four hostages in Sam Goody, Maldonado eventually "melted in a distraught, crying heap on the floor of a music store and surrendered his two guns to his hostages," according to the P-I (which sadly wrote a better story than the Tacoma News-Tribune).
He was apparently "devastated" when he later learned from police that (correction amended) he wounded people. I don't understand how suprised you can be when you fire off 20 rounds at a crowded location and learn you hit people. But if he was stupid enough to do what he did, he can be stupid enough to figure no one would get hurt.
I have no witty, closing statement to make. Many Americans lack an appreciation for the quality of life we can live, compared to other parts of the world. We have a stretched armed forces protecting us from external threats to civilian safety so that all we have to worry about is our "tough childhoods." Thus, tough childhoods seem to be the reason for the kinds of incidents that cause us to be weary of the mall and walking to our cars at night. I guess this is a reminder why parenting is the most important job in America(?).