WHY do parents give their kids guns and allow them to keep them in their rooms? A SHOTGUN no less? Why do parents fear street drugs, yet give their kids the pharmeceutical equivalent of cocaine?
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/new ... news.shtml Teen said he shot mother over drug dispute
By Dolores Orman
Staff Writer
Excerpts:
(July 8, 2004) - GENESEO - A Sparta teenager accused of killing his mother told authorities that he stood "for a few minutes" pointing a shotgun at his mother's head, "waffling back and forth on whether I should do this or not," before pulling the trigger, according to court documents released to the Democrat and Chronicle on Wednesday.
Nathan DeWispelaere, 18, is charged with second-degree murder in the May 22 shooting of his mother, Lizabeth, 48, in their home on Reeds Corners Road.
According to the typed statement, DeWispelaere killed his mother about 10 p.m. in their home after she accused him of using drugs.
The sheriff's office arrested DeWispelaere the next morning shortly after receiving a call from a friend's home. Lizabeth DeWispelaere's body was discovered on the couch in the living room.
In the handwritten statement he allegedly made while sitting in a sheriff's vehicle outside his home that morning, DeWispelaere did not mention an argument. The statement said, "I went in and started getting ready for bed. Mom was lying on the couch watching TV. The next thing I remember is I was standing in my bedroom door holding my shotgun. Just after it went off, I could see my mom on the couch had been shot. I think I shot her in the head."
Sheriff's Investigator Ronald Huff Jr. testified at the preliminary hearing that DeWispelaere told him "at the point that he realized what had happened, he hadn't remembered. He was more or less jolted awake when the gun went off."
But in the typed statement taken later that morning at the sheriff's office substation in Scottsburg, DeWispelaere detailed the events that preceded the shooting:
He was having trouble working on his high school senior paper about doctor-assisted suicide. He has attention deficit disorder and takes the drug Ritalin "to keep me focused." His mother gave him a pill to help him concentrate on the paper. He didn't take it, but kept it.
Eventually, he went into the bathroom to take a shower, taking the pill with him. He had started crushing the Ritalin and snorting it a couple of months before because it had a stronger effect than swallowing it.
He began crushing the pill on a piece of paper in the bathroom when his mother came in and said he had a phone call. He dropped the paper and his mother saw it.
"She didn't really say anything at first," the statement read. "She just started in with the questioning. She wanted to know what it was and whose it was and where I got it from. She is really sensitive about drugs because of what happened with JJ (DeWispelaere's older brother, John J. DeWispelaere, who died unexpectedly in 2003). JJ died of an overdose of drugs and alcohol. We argued about the paper with the Ritalin .
"She said she was having the paper and powder tested and me drug-tested. After the lecture/ argument was done, Mom went in and laid on the couch and was watching TV.
"I went into my room. I was very upset. I was very scared that Mom would be disappointed in me. I knew Mom would not let this just drop. I knew she would now go out and question all my friends. I didn't want her causing trouble with my friends and their parents. Mom is a kind of rabble-rouser. She gets onto something and doesn't let it go. I didn't want Mom blowing this whole thing out of proportion. [Sound familiar to anyone?]
"She wouldn't have let me out of her sight from then on. She would not let this go. She probably wouldn't even let me go to college because she wouldn't want me into the drugs."
DeWispelaere then got his shotgun, according to the statement. "As I was standing there, I don't think that Mom knew I was there. I (pulled) the trigger and Mom was shot in the top of her head."
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"This is because most everything that happens in a public courtroom is public property and is the public's business. For that reason, the highest courts in this state have regularly ruled that courtroom closure will be permitted in only extremely limited circumstances, which did not exist here."
Explaining why he released the court documents, Moran said Wednesday, "I think it's a difficult set of circumstances when you try to balance the rights of the individual with the public's right to know. After close review, it appeared that the public's right to know superseded the rights of the individual in this particular case."
Contacted for comment, Johantgen said Moran had notified him that he was going to release the documents. "I'm still not in agreement with it," the judge said. Johantgen, who is not a lawyer, said he still believes he acted properly in ordering the hearing closed.
DORMAN@DemocratandChronicle.com