When an active shooter event occurs there is quite often more than one crime scene. In fact, when you think about it, every victim represents another crime scene. To some extent, for the sake of simplicity, if an attack occurs at a school, the school is considered a crime scene. However, that’s a broad stroke and often has to be redesignated by investigators post event. Also, several active shooters through history have committed murders or attacks at other locations prior to going to the scene of their primary attack. Charles Whitman murdering his parents before going to the Texas Tower is one example. Seung Hui Cho murdering two students in a dorm building across campus before committing his main attack at Norris Hall is another. So when John Zawahri started his attack on June 7, 2013, it wasn’t so much of an active shooter attack as a murder spree that ended up in a campus library.
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The remainder of this article is part of the book "Active Killers and the Crimes They Perpetrated," available in print or ebook via Amazon.
Joshua Borelli
Joshua Borelli has been studying active shooter and mass attack events over the course of the past several years, commensurate with receiving training on response and recovery to natural disasters and civil disturbances. Joshua started to outline this series of articles in an attempt to identify commonalities and logistical needs patterns for response.
