Reporters from across the state were hard at work over the Easter weekend, hoovering up any available details to try to explain Friday's horrifying shooting in Cooperstown.
WKTV in Utica found a parent of a black child who says bullying and racism are a serious problem at Cooperstown High:
As much as there is a social divide, often there is a racial divide, said the mother. She says it is something she and her daughter have experienced.
"I was a senior in high school and I was constantly called a 'n****r lover' because they found out I was pregnant by an African American," she said. "The same thing, my daughter is called a n****r all the time."
WBNG Binghamton says the town has clammed up about the shooting, scheduling and then abruptly canceling a press conference this afternoon.
It seems as though local authorities were told to keep quiet.
In a brief conversation, the village's police chief suggested that this will be a very tense investigation for the village.
The Daily Star digs way back in the archives to figure out when the last shooting was in Cooperstown--1985, apparently. Unless you count the shooting of inanimate objects.
Aside from some shooting suicides, the last event involving gunfire investigated by police was four or five years ago, and that was a domestic dispute which resulted in furniture being struck, she said.
And look who the New York Times sent upstate to investigate! No less a personage than A.G. "Little Arthur" Sulzberger--the wunderkind heir-apparent to the New York Times publishing empire, currently working as a reporter for the paper his father owns. He did a good job on the Cooperstown story, too.
The pastor of St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church, where Anthony and his family are active members, was also disbelieving. He described Anthony as a solid, sensitive child who volunteered regularly at the church and had expressed interest in becoming a priest.
The pastor, the Rev. John P. Rosson, said that Anthony had been a victim of bullying.
“He probably snapped,” Father Rosson said. “You don’t in your right mind just run into a police station and start shooting.”
