Neighbors Shocked, Shockingly

What I love about stories like this one today about the Pottstown teenager accused of plotting a school attack are not just the awesome graphics they inspire from TV news stations. (An example, not from this story, is at right. It’s from ABC on a story I am far too lazy to go back and check.) And it’s not really that I’m happy a school shooting was thwarted, though that’s all well and good.

And it’s not even that these stories are sometimes on Philly.com, which sometimes has awesome side headlines like, “http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/greenliving/Sustainable_seafood_Grocery_chains_still_falling_short.html”>Sustainable seafood: Grocery chains still falling short.”

No, what I really like are the quotes from shocked neighbors, friends, etc., about how they could never imagine said suspect (in this case, 15-year-old Pottstown High School freshman Richard Yanis) doing such a thing:

Neighbors of the Yanises said the young man was a familiar presence who seemed outgoing and friendly with other children.

One young man with whom Yanis sometimes played football, tag and video games said he was shocked by the accusations.

“I really don’t think he is the person who was going to do that,” Nat Creasy, 11, said. “He was always a nice kid.”

Brian J. Steer said that he had known Yanis since the family moved in across the street about seven years ago and that “the idea he would do anything along these lines, to me, is hard to believe.”

These are in every story like this, and in many stories about murders, and yet the quotes could have been pulled from the Random Shocked Quote Generator 10000, available from me for only four easy payments of $45.45. Does someone have to wear a black trenchcoat in order to commit a school shooting, like in that famous one 10 years ago?

I’m not quite sure what reporters should do; interviewing neighbors is part of the game, and I’m sure every once in a while somebody says, “Oh, yeah, that guy just arrested for ax murder was a real asshole.” And so that probably makes it worth it, even though the newspaper will change the quote to “real [bleep].”

In the meantime, act now: The RSQG 10000 has just been slashed to three easy payments of $45.45!

Pottstown teen accused of plotting school attack [Inquirer]