Newly-released court documents reveal that Fredrick Demond Scott, the 22-year-old African-American man who is suspected of murdering five white middle-aged men in Kansas City, threatened in January 2014 to open fire at a school and "kill all white people."
The Kansas City Star, which has been following the horrific story, reported Wednesday that Scott, who was charged Tuesday with two of the murders and suspected of three more, made the threatening comments at the Center Alternative School, which were recorded in a municipal citation for harassment in 2014.
"I want to shoot the school up, Columbine-style," Scott said according to the citation. He wanted to "kill all white people" and kill himself.
For the alarming threat, Scott was sentenced to 180 days in jail but was never forced to serve any time, instead being offered probation and told to stay away from the school and remain under "intense" supervision. Despite the incident and the court order, Scott eventually graduated from the school.
On Tuesday, Scott was charged with two murders, but the prosecutor announced he was suspected of three more. The Star reports:
Scott, who is black, has been charged with murder in the deaths of Steven Gibbons, 57, and John Palmer, 54. On Tuesday, Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker announced those charges, also naming Scott as a suspect in the killings of David Lenox, 67; Timothy S. Rice, 57, of Excelsior Springs; and Mike Darby, 61, co-owner of Coach’s Bar & Grill at 103rd Street and Wornall Road.
All five were white men between ages 54 and 67. All five were fatally shot, most from behind, in surprise attacks as they walked dogs, visited parks and, in one case, walked down a city street. ...
If Scott is responsible for all five deaths, as Baker suggested, he would meetthe FBI’s standard of a serial killer.
While Scott appears to have targeted white middle-aged men, Baker said she did not see a clear motive, and law enforcement say they are still unsure.
After he was arrested, Scott told detectives that he was angry about the shooting death of his half-brother, Gerrod H. Woods, 23, who was killed in 2015 by Jimmie Verge, a black man.
"He felt like his brother was the only person who loved him," one of Scott's co-workers at Burger King told the Star. "It really damaged him."
Scott's mother suggested that mental illness rather than racism was truly driving his actions, citing his struggles with paranoid schizophrenia, for which she said he refused to get treatment. "As far as I know Fredrick never had a problem with white people," his mother told the paper.
In 2013, she called police on her son after he assaulted her by shoving her repeatedly; she said she hoped the incident would encourage him to get the help he needed, but he refused to address his problems.
"Law enforcement officials close to the investigation described Scott as a loner, saying detectives had struggled to find many people who knew him well," the Star reports. "He had been in trouble with the law before, but not for anything close to murder."
For more, The Star provides a detailed account of the five murder cases here.