Why Motive Doesn’t Matter in the Columbia Mall Shooting

Three things are known for sure in the tragic shooting at the Columbia Mall shopping center on Saturday.

First, three people are dead: Two victims - Brianna Benlolo, 21, of College Park, Md., and Tyler Johnson, 25, of Mount Airy, Md. -  of a senseless act and the shooter. 

Second, the shooter, now identified as Darion Marcus Aguilar, 19, of College Park, Md., attended James Hubert Blake High School in Silver Spring, Md.

And finally, as is the case in many of these types of events, there is no motive.

The narrative is the same. Aguilar was a quiet kid who didn’t show any outward signs that he might become violent. His mother reported him missing when he didn’t come home and was bereft when she discovered that he had been identified as the shooter.

Something was going on behind those quiet eyes as he worked as a manager in a Dunkin Donuts, as he applied to Montgomery College, as he walked into that mall with the intent to kill. But he’s gone and the motive with him. Thing is, the motive doesn’t matter. The damage is done.

Montgomery County Public Schools quietly admitted that Aguilar was a former student. So did MCPS fail this kid somehow? Perhaps but, again, we will never know. Can MCPS help make sure that another teen-ager isn’t so disaffected that they turn to mayhem as an answer? Yes. Will MCPS do that? No.

MCPS in just the last year has proven time and again that the students are a byproduct of its mission to rake in as much cash from the state and federal officials as possible. The Rock Terrace debacle is a good measure of that as its teachers set up bank accounts for students – something that in the real world would be considered identify theft at best.  Then there’s the fact that a mother and father stood alone at a press conference and wept after a Montgomery County teacher fled the country after sexually abusing her disabled child – and MCPS stood quiet.

MCPS works doubly hard not to support the parents and openly and publicly dismisses the students they are charged with educating. It’s no wonder Aguilar likely didn’t feel like he was part of a community. 

MCPS would distance itself and make the argument that Aguilar lived in Prince George's County at the time the incident occurred and hence, the teen-ager was of no interest to them. But at one time, he was one of us.  He was a county kid.

While the majority of MCPS parents work hard to ensure their children have a moral compass, sense of compassion and love of God (yes, I said it, God) and country, and responsibility to their community, MCPS does its best to beat any sense of those virtues out of them. It fails to teach by example. 

Let's just take the game of Assassin that was a school-wide activity at Montgomery Blair High School with 400 students pretending to target, stalk and kill classmates in an annual game.  School officials purposefully decided not to interfere with the game. Administrators turned a blind eye. I can imagine that anyone who was in Columbia Mall on Saturday would not think this type of training drill was funny.

Which brings me once again to Josh Starr, failed leader at best who has had one foot out of the door. He shows up to events uninterested and put upon that engaging with students and parents is part of his job. He wanted to be the New York City schools chancellor but even they decided that he didn’t’ bring enough to the table to warrant a seat at theirs. So he’s stuck at ours, choking down his daily duties and pushing our kids to underperform so they can head off to a community college that puts more dollars into the county education system. No progressive or forward thinking here.

 

So the candles are lit for the vigils, the tears will be shed and the hand wringing will ensue. But

instead of asking why did a county kid become a shooter, why not ask what the county can do to make sure none of our other kids take the same path. Because as much as we don’t want to admit it, another one is out there percolating below the surface, and who will get to that child in time? Not Josh Starr. He’ll be at a birthday party with a $100 cake, ignoring it all.