A Shooting: What Role Do the Friends and Family Members Play?
Usually, our blogs are fact-filled and talk to unethical deviations or a lack of ethical training. The purpose of this post is to ask some serious questions to a sad chain of events that ultimately murdered seven people and injured 25 in a shooting. There are many ethical considerations here, if society is prepared to look at them.
It’s not a matter of…
The details are easily available online. His name was Seth Aaron Ator, and after being fired from his job for an oil company he went on a shooting spree. It is pointless to drag many of the usual arguments into this post, from his skin color to his politics to his access to a firearm. For the record, he acquired the weapon legally, though the police are actively investigating if all of the proper procedures were being followed. It was a semi-automatic weapon.
However, we can start with where and how he lived. He was a loner who lived in a ramshackle dwelling that was said to reflect his mental state. It was supposedly strange and bizarre.
Said the FBI agent, “He was on a long spiral of going down. He didn’t wake up Saturday morning and go into his company and then it happened. He went to that company in trouble and had probably been in trouble for a while.”
According to an article in the New York Times (September 2. 2019):
“He had been living a kind of drifter’s life in the West Texas oil fields, estranged from many relatives, grappling with the suicide of his older sister and ditching apartment life for a secluded shack-style building where he shot his firearms outside late into the night.”
People interviewed for the article I referred to above said he liked to party, disturbed the neighborhood, and when he finally left the apartment for a shack, the apartment landlord found a huge stash of pornographic material.
On the morning he was fired he called the police and made rambling, incoherent statements. The police are quick to point out that he made no direct threats, just complaints against his boss. In turn, his boss called the police apparently worried about Ator’s mental state and the potential for violence (leading to the shooting).
The Journey
Those who worked with him and those who knew him saw him spiral down. If he had neighbors, they most probably saw him spiral. His family knew of this spiral – and at least some of the reasons why.
Yet, they all saw him go into a free fall. No one seemed to have interceded. Journey Oilfield Services is not a sole proprietorship, one-person shop. It is an oilfield organization that provides services over several states.
Ethically, I begin to wonder how many “Seth Aaron Ator people” drift through our lives, generally shunned, generally watched and often, even mocked and isolated? If Seth Aaron Ator had lung cancer rather than mental illness, would anyone have come to his assistance? I believe they would.
Ethically, what role did the co-workers, family and friends of this man have in the deaths of seven people? In no way do I ask this question in an off-hand or light-hearted manner. It is a question we must all ask ourselves, starting with the stigma our society still places on those with mental illnesses.
Do these questions exonerate the actions of Ator? No, not at all. Then again, if in his state he became so disconnected, so psychotic and so out-of-control, was he even aware of how crazed he had become?
The “prognosticators” will undoubtedly follow the usual narratives. Our society has become so divided and angry over political and social issues, that “we” often rationalize this type of behavior through our own lenses. However, an ethical truth remains. Why have “we,” as a society, turned our backs on mental illness?
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