What Leads Someone To Plan a School Shooting?...The Early Warning Signs Everyone Missed
About this episode
The episode discusses the early warning signs of potential school shootings through the story of Brendan Vaughan, who reflects on his past and the factors that led to his arrest for making terroristic threats.
⚠️ This episode is presented for educational and prevention purposes only. In 2018, Brendan Vaughan was arrested for making terroristic threats against his high school. We sat down with him — and previously with the detective who arrested him — not to sensationalize what happened, but to understand the early warning signs that might help someone intervene before a young person reaches that point. If this helps prevent even one tragedy, it will have done its job. Brendan grew up an only child in Orange County, New York, raised by two alcoholic parents in a home where, by his own account, he never saw human connection modeled. A severe stutter and later-diagnosed autism left him profoundly isolated. His father was physically abusive during his drinking years; his mother later drank herself to death. He speaks candidly about the things that, in hindsight, were red flags: being put on SSRIs young, an escalating obsession with true crime, the empathy problems he now takes responsibility for, and the deep resentment he felt toward peers after an injury took away sports — his one connection to others. He walks through how the planning began, the classmates who reported him (which he now…
People in this episode
Host: Kevin Lanning
Guest: Brendan Vaughan
Topics covered
- school shooting prevention
- early warning signs
- mental health
- youth isolation
- family dynamics
- intervention strategies
Keywords
- school shooting
- warning signs
- mental health
- youth intervention
- Brendan Vaughan
- alcoholism
- isolation
- SSRIs
- true crime
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Orange County, SSRIs, true crime
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