Story I'm related to a mass shooter..

[AdamArmatic]

Well I originate from Dallas, and to spare myself from giving too much information and from rambling for a while, I'll just break it up.
Patrick Crusius (The El paso shooter) is my 2nd cousin, I haven't talked to him since his incarceration.
I barely saw him, but I did indeed see him more as a kid, I am a bit older than him; I'm 23.
We usually saw eachother at other family member's birthdays, but we never directly went to eachothers birthdays. He always secluded himself and was always kind of socially awkward.
The only time I actually built up the courage to approach him was at a family gathering, I asked him if he was interested in any girls (me being a teenager), he said "no", I tried to carry on the conversation but he just decided to walk away.
Now that I'm looking back, there was many signs that he wasn't really right in the head. I'm starting to blame myself for not trying to talk to him more often, maybe I could have prevented it. I have reached out to some of the victims, offering my condolences.
Oops, meant to post in offtopic. I'm new to this site..

 

[MaisieWilliamsLover]

Nobody is responsible for the shooting other than the shooter himself. Not your fault in any way

 

[PaYo]

society fault

 

[Sinai Silence]

I don't think anyone could ever gauge onto the fact that he would've done what he did without any sort of concrete evidence. What he did was a terrible act but it is no way on you. He acted alone and was incited by sordid beliefs on race; its easy to forget but you and your family are also victims in what he did.

Like you said yourself you hardly ever talked to him, so what could you have done? If he didn't want to talk to you about a something as mundane as high school crushes I doubt he would've had more to say to you.

What you're doing though by reaching out to the victims families is incredibly brave and a noble thing to do. If I was in your situation I would defiantly want to continue with this and help to spread awareness for the victims.

If that is something you'd want to do I'd say go with it, you've clearly got an incredible amount of weight on your shoulders and are compassionate for the families and their victims. All the best

 

[MaisieWilliamsLover]

society fault

Blaming society is also useless. The blame lies with the shooter himself. Nobody else is to blame.

 

[Eren]

First, don't blame yourself, he alone is responsible. And second, was anyone going to imagine that he would do that? As I tell you, it is not your fault.

Blaming society is also useless. The blame lies with the shooter himself. Nobody else is to blame.

completely agree

 

[Giraffey]

I once asked a friend of mine who was a prominent defence barrister, whether or not he ever felt bad when somebody who he helped to acquit of a serious allegation such as rape, went on to commit another crime. Had it not been for his silk tongued advocacy, a young man, woman or child would have been spared the horror that they went through.

His reply was simple - Slow, I'm not a fortune-teller, he may be innocent or he may be guilty, it is not for me to know or judge, but for the jury. I sat and thought about what he'd said and I realised that the entire question was a fallacy.

Many years ago as a young sixteen-year-old I made a bit of extra money teaching an IT class for absolute beginners. I remember one guy came in and he was using a false name, he said he'd just come out of prison and that he wanted to learn how to use the internet, and so without judgement, I taught him. There was a moment where a young boy came into the classroom and sat down next to this man and it was as if time stood still as the man looked and stared at this young boy - it felt like an eternity. I remember thinking to myself how suspicious that was, but I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.

It wasn't until a couple of years later that I discovered he was a paedophile and had been preying on young boys through internet chatrooms. I stopped and asked myself whether there was anything I could have done, had I refused to teach him then perhaps he'd never have acquired the skills to groom children online. But as my dear barrister friend said: "I'm not a fortune teller". I wasn't to know that he was a paedophile who would go on to commit more crimes online.

Blaming ourselves gives us a sense of control over the world and provides us with a framework to make sense of the unthinkable, but it's not healthy. You're not to blame for the actions of your cousin OP, he's not your puppet and however well you steered him through his childhood years that is not to say he wouldn't still ultimately have stumbled off the path later on - only he will know his true motivation, but I would place a heavy wager that your bygone interactions with him are but distant, insignificant memories in his gnarled and twisted mind.

Perhaps hearing from the victim's families will help to assuage your guilt and free you of the misplaced responsibility you're feeling for this atrocity, I hope that it will help you find peace; so too I hope that you will find a way to move on from this man's awful actions - he has destroyed enough lives already, without yours adding to his toll.

Sending hugs

 

[Deleted member 17949]

Problem is with society and the shooter, not with you.

 

[Moonomyth]

El Paso citizen here. I don't have a close connection to any of the victims beyond a generalized sense of outrage that it happened at all, so my head is fairly clear as I say this.

It ain't your fault at all, but it ain't just his fault either.

I hate it when survivors of people who CTB go hardcore existentialist with the claim that X is this person's choice and their choice alone to absolve themselves of any potential responsibility. I don't like it for mass shooters either. A bunch of stuff built him up into the person that made the choices that he made. Could've been family, schooling, too much 8chan, etc., along with whatever mental illnesses he may/may not have had.

But again, whatever else built up Crusius into the particular cocktail of violence he became, an absence of engagement on your part wasn't a factor. Don't feel bad about it.

 

[PaYo]

killing mass amount of people. can help you handle strong emotions. but it will not help you. sometimes is better just to talk about that