Too Close To Home

Wow I can't believe what happened this morning in my neck of the woods. It seems a 17 year old boy went looking for his ex-girlfriend at her school. Someone at the school turned him away. The 17 year old then calls his ex and asks her where she was. She tells him that she is home and he asks her if he could talk to her for a bit. The 17 year old ex-girlfriend has her mother drive her to the school parking lot so she can talk with him. The mother senses something is up doesn't drive away but moves her car away from the two. All of a sudden the 17 year old boy pulls a gun and shoots the girl 4 times. She is hit once in the arm and 3 times in her chest. Then he turns the gun on himself and shoots himself in the head. The mother seeing this drives her car between the two teens. The boy is pronounced dead at the scene and the girl is now listed in serious but stable condition.
Now let me tell you, this is just too close to my neck of the woods. Both my two daughters are graduates of that school. My stepson and his girlfriend live about a block in front of the high school. This is not in some urban jungle. This is an affluent high school. This school is not infested with rival gangs from the hood. It is a high school of mostly middle to upper class students. This is a school where every parent would feel safe sending their child to learn and get a very good education. I feel for the parents of both children, what they must be feeling right now. The mother without knowing the condition of the shooter to put herself in the line of potential danger, all to protect her daughter. The police say that her car ended up over the gun involved. The school went into lock-down-mode until things could be straightened out. The body of the boy laid near the car for hours. No other students were endanger.
What we are now hearing from our local T.V. and radio station is that the boy had another ex-girlfriend previous to this one that he threatened numerous times. He repeatedly told her that if she was to leave him he would kill her. Looking back, was this an idle threat? Yes, she is still alive. What kept him from acting out his threats on her. We will never know.
What is going through the minds of these teenagers now a days? Doesn't life mean anything to them anymore. Why is it that you need to kill because things are not going the way you feel they should? How can we help our youth of today, our leaders of tomorrow? What about the next generation of children? Will they be even more troubled? What is it going to take?