NBC 10 in Philly reports:
The father of the 16-year-old who killed himself inside his high school Tuesday over a less-than-satisfactory report card urged students at a candlelight vigil to listen to troubled classmates. His son, Shane Halligan, died after he put what appeared to be an AK-47 to his chin and pulled the trigger in a hallway at Springfield Township High School in Montgomery County Tuesday morning.”It’s a very, very, very tough time,” said John Halligan, the teen’s father. “He was an Eagle Scout. He got it when he was 13. He was a volunteer fireman. He was going for his private pilot’s license. He’s talking National Guard. I don’t know what happened today.”
Shane Halligan, who would have turned 17 in February, is described as a good student, a volunteer firefighter and an Eagle Scout. Halligan had planned to go into the Army and his parents were going to let him take boot camp this summer before his senior year of high school.
Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor said it could have been the end of those hopes that sparked Tuesday’s shooting. Halligan’s grades had been dropping, and after his parents found a report card with grades they deemed unsatisfactory, the 16-year-old was told he would not be able to be a firefighter or go to boot camp early unless his grades improved.
I used to live across the street from this high school (literally) and it’s in a very affluent, high achieving, performance driven suburb of Philadelphia.
Shane wrote a suicide note yet to be released but I hope the pressures of the American Dream didn’t kill him. Hopefully the note will clarify why he killed himself at school. Sometimes I wonder if the underachieving kids, who do so on purpose that is, see the stupidity of getting good grades for the sole purpose of personal ease and comfort later in life.
I wish I could say that Protestant parents did not pressure their children to achieve for future comfort later in life(instead of mission).
Fellas, our younger brothers are dying. . .
Read the full story and watch the videos of his father, fello students, etc. here at NBC 10.
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Reading articles like this scares me. It is the year 2008 when i’m reading this article, and I am a student in college. I have a friend who is sick, over being top student of the school. Someday’s i’m scared she would do the same. She had a panic attack when she got a B+ in an exam, it’s sick even when I tried telling her she could still get an A in the course.
You’re right to be deeply concerned about your friend. The pressure she feels to perform is not only thwarting the true purposes of her college education, but it sounds like it is also endangering her well-being. The best thing you could do for her at this point is try to persuade her to go see the campus counselor.