Aloof. Angry. Alienated. Robert Lewis Dear Jr. was a dangerous kook, who inspired fear among his neighbors in North Carolina:
“He was the kind of person you had to watch out for,” one neighbor said. “He was a very weird individual. It’s hard to explain, but he had a weird look in his eye most of the time.” . . .
In Anderson Acres, neighbors said they recognized Dear from television news coverage of Friday’s shootings, in which police said he killed three people, including a police officer, and wounded nine others. They said he looked more beaten down than the last time they had seen him, and that his beard was new — but that he was the same aloof, angry man they remembered. . . .
“He complained about everything,” said another neighbor who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying that he feared for his security. “He said he worked with the government, and everybody was out to get him, and he knew the secrets of the U.S.A. He said, ‘Nobody touch me, because I’ve got enough information to put the whole U.S. of A in danger.’ It was very crazy.” . . .
“He was weird. Everyone kept an eye on him.” . . .
“He was really tightly wound. You could see that from the stress on his face, from the way he acted.”
The paranoid weirdo had a record of frightening behavior:
He had a history of run-ins with neighbors and police, including arrests for alleged cruelty to animals and allegedly being a “peeping Tom.” He was not convicted in either case.
Pamela Ross . . . was married to Dear nearly 20 years ago. . . .
Dear’s problems with the law date to 1997, when his then-wife reported to police that Dear had assaulted her, according to reports filed with the sheriff’s office in Colleton County, S.C., where Dear lived at the time. She declined to file charges against him but told police she reported the incident because she “wanted something on record.”
Colleton County police released reports of at least seven other episodes in which Dear . . . had disputes or physical altercations with neighbors or other residents. . . .
In May 2002, a woman who lived next door to Dear in Walterboro, in Colleton County, complained to police that Dear had been “making unwanted advancements” toward her since she and her husband had moved in a year earlier.
The woman told police that she had seen Dear hiding in the bushes next to their house at 5:30 a.m. She “heard her guard dog barking and saw Mr. Dear looking into her house.” . . .
[In North Carolina, another] neighbor said that Dear would carry a stick as he rode his trail bike, and he would slow down and try to bait dogs in the area. He also said that Dear swung the stick at his dog several times.
The neighbors said that Dear’s behavior seemed to change last year, and he seemed angrier.
“The last time I saw him, I waved and smiled. He just stared and glared back at me. It was disconcerting,” one said.
Cruelty to animals, incidentally, indicates a high risk of psychopathic disorder. So, how did this scary nutjob — who had so frequently come to the attention of law enforcement in South Carolina and North Carolina — make his way to Colorado?
Dear moved to Colorado last year, when he bought a five-acre plot of land in Hartsel, about 40 miles west of Colorado Springs, according to Jim Anderson, the real estate agent who brokered the deal. The previous owner said that Dear paid $6,000 for the vacant land.
“He said he wanted a cheap piece of land to put a camper on,” Anderson said. . . .
Anderson also said that Dear arrived with a woman, but he did not know her name. Colorado records show that Stephanie Michelle Bragg was registered to vote at the same address earlier this year.
Her ex-husband, Michael Bragg, said she moved to Colorado with Dear about a year ago. Michael Bragg said he had two daughters, ages 19 and 15, with Stephanie Bragg, who had worked as a waitress at a Waffle House. Bragg said he believed that his ex-wife met Dear online.
Great. A divorced Waffle House waitress goes online looking for love and finds this weirdo loner. This connection somehow leads him to Colorado and now three people are dead. How many times have I warned against “online dating”? Not often enough maybe. But I have repeatedly warned that Crazy People Are Dangerous:
You let enough kooks run around loose — as has been the policy in this country since we de-institutionalized the mentally ill in the 1970s — and people adjust their expectations. People become accustomed to encountering weirdos, freaks and lunatics, jabbering madness to themselves on street corners or posting deranged nonsense on Tumblr blogs. You’re not even supposed to notice there is anything strange about these wild-eyed nutjobs roaming around with facial piercings, tattoos and purple hair.
That was my warning in July after Tyrelle Shaw, a/k/a “Mr. Talented,” was arrested for a series of attacks on Asian women. I issued similar warnings in connection with Dallas shooter James Boulware, mass murderer Aaron Alexis, psychotic professor Deborah Frisch, notorious stalker Diana Napolis (a/k/a “Curio Jones) and many other similar cases. Our society has been persuaded by liberals that the demented and deranged should never be criticized because criticism might hurt their feelings. Wackos and lunatics are very sensitive people, we are required to believe, and deserve our sympathy. We should never be afraid of these psychotic misfits, according to liberals who are eager to convince us that maladjusted loners are perfectly harmless.
Liberals tell us it is heartless and “mean-spirited” to suggest that public safety would be best served if mentally ill people with histories of dangerous behavior were locked up in psychiatric wards. Americans are told that it’s OK to let delusional and antisocial freaks roam around free in our society, because what could possibly go wrong?
When one of these dangerous kooks who roam among us finally commits an act of crazy violence, however, liberals quickly rush to tell us that his insane actions have some kind of political significance and that the proper response to this atrocity is — wait for it — more liberalism. Another crazy killer, therefore, vote Democrat!
Liberalism would be laughable, if it were not so deadly.
