Scottish town mourns loss of little ones
March 14, 1996
Web posted at: 11:50 a.m EST (1650 GMT)DUNBLANE, Scotland (CNN) -- Bouquets of flowers, cards and teddy bears lay outside a school Thursday where a day before a gunman killed 16 kindergartners and their teacher.
The massacre of children stunned Dunblane, a close-knit town of 7,300 on the edge of the Scottish Highlands. (298K AIFF sound or 298K WAV sound) Shops, including the local post office, were closed in mourning and officials closed Dunblane Primary School until Monday. The Irish parliament observed a minute of silence on Thursday in remembrance of those killed.
A class picture of the children smiling sweetly with their teacher ran on the front page of many newspapers. British Prime Minister John Major planned to visit Dunblane, an hour northwest of Edinburgh, on Friday and attend a memorial service in the town's historic cathedral Friday night.
Three of the 12 children injured in the attack remained in critical condition Thursday. One of the doctors treating the children had herself lost a child in the attack. Police are still trying to trace some of the parents of children who were killed or injured. Surviving children who have not been reunited with their parents are in the care of a responsible adult.
Killer described as man with grudge
As families grieved and police combed the school for clues, others tried to piece together what they knew of Thomas Watt Hamilton, the 43-year-old gun enthusiast who killed the children then turned a gun on himself.
Townspeople described Hamilton as an unstable loner who held a longtime grudge for having been removed as a Boy Scout master in 1974 amid allegations of improper behavior. One local father told the BBC he filed a complaint in the 1980s against Hamilton for allegedly touching his son.
Just five days before he burst into the class with four semi-automatic pistols, Hamilton wrote a letter to Queen Elizabeth complaining that authorities were preventing him from engaging in youth work.
Hamilton also was involved in a recent controversy over photographing boys in clubs he had established called the Dunblane Rovers.
Some described Hamilton as an odd man. Others said he was vilified as a local pervert.
"Those of us who knew him always found him a strange individual," said one local woman. "Lots of us ... found him extremely difficult to deal with and we always had a great deal of reservations about the man's character."
"He gave me the creeps," one parent said. "He told me he was married and had children, but I knew it wasn't true."
Hamilton's father was despondent over news of the massacre. "I can't live with this. I can't take it. I brought this monster into the world. How do I tell my two daughters and my two sons that this man is their half brother?" said Thomas Watt, 65.
'Little bodies in piles'
Having found no prior connection between Hamilton and the school, police have no motive for what they are calling a "random attack."
As authorities removed the tiny bodies of the children, witnesses described what they saw Wednesday as Hamilton began his attack.
Laura Bryce, an 11-year-old girl in a class next door to the shooting, said she heard noises that got louder and louder.
"They were really, really loud noises," she said. "I thought the ceiling was falling." Through a window, Laura said, she saw children "dashing around and screaming." Some of the bullets strayed into her own class, one nearly missing a close friend. "I thought we weren't going to see each other again. We were very scared," she said.
George Bundy, 10, also heard gunfire and bullets crashing through windows. He said children in his class didn't know what was going on but were crying. (230K AIFF sound or 230K WAV sound)
"If (Hamilton) were still alive," the boy said, "he should get put in the street and get kicked in slowly for what he's done to the children and the teacher and gym teacher." (213K AIFF sound or 213K WAV sound)
John McEwan, an ambulance driver who was the first to arrive at the scene, told the Sun newspaper, " I can only describe what I saw when I looked as a medieval vision of hell. There were little bodies in piles dotted around the room and items of children's clothing like shoes and (sneakers) around the floor." McEwan said the children's teacher, Gwenne Mayor, 45, looked as if she had tried to shield them from the bullets.
"She was directly in front of a group of children who were all beyond hope," he said.
The town of Dunblane is trying to understand how such a thing could happen in their bucolic town. A message to the children left outside the school, which sits on a winding residential road, read, "May God take better care of you than this world ever did."
Another message simply read, "Why?"
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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