Britain shares Scottish town's grief
March 17,1996
Web posted at: 12:45 p.m EST (1745 GMT)DUNBLANE, Scotland -- Four days after a bloody attack on a kindergarten class in Dunblane, Britain came to a standstill Sunday, the country's mothering's day, in a nationwide remembrance of 16 children and their teacher.
Radio and television throughout the United Kingdom observed a minute of silence, shoppers paused in mourning, and busy main line train stations stood still at approximately the same hour the gunman went on a rampage.
In the close knit town of Dunblane, the silence stretched out for five minutes, with parents holding their children a little closer and pedestrians stopping in their tracks as the cathedral bell tolled the half-hour.
Queen Elizabeth and her daughter Princess Anne visited the town Sunday. Looking stunned at the enormity of the tragedy, the two laid a wreath at the school and met teachers, staff and local officials, offering thanks to police and emergency workers who were at the scene last Wednesday. The queen then left to visit a hospital to see eight wounded children and two injured teachers, victims of the shooting.
As the blanket of flowers laid by mourners outside the school grow steadily, Britain is trying to make sense of the shooting and of Thomas Hamilton, the man who shot the children and their teacher before taking his own life.
Newspapers have discarded legal constraints that would apply were Hamilton still alive and facing trial, and have printed lurid details of his past, along with debates about how police should have been aware of his murderous tendencies.
"Although it was mainly children he shot and killed, his target was the adult world," Ray Wyre, a sex crime expert said in the Sunday Times. "He got back at the adults whom he felt had dismissed him as a pervert by denying him contact with those he loved," Wyre said.
Hamilton was fired as a scout master in 1974 for "inappropriate behavior," and then started a private boys' club that folded after the town found out about his fondness for taking photographs of near-naked boys. Several people said they filed complaints about him, but authorities said their investigations did not find enough evidence to act on. A senior Scottish judge, has been appointed to investigate the case.
Funerals are scheduled next week for the victims of Hamilton's violence, and when the school reopens on Friday, teachers and the surviving 700 children will try to find some normalcy in their lives.
The school entrance is piled high with hundreds of teddy bears and other toys sent from the rest of the world with handwritten notes from other children.
Politicians have begged the news media to allow the townspeople of the small community of Dunblane to be left alone with their grief after the queen's visit Sunday, but television cameras and hordes of journalists from around the world are expected to remain for the funerals, and perhaps beyond.
To offer donations:
Make checks payable to: Dunblane PTA Schoolboard Fund
Mail to: Dunblane Appeal Fund C/O Bank of Scotland 63 High street Dunblane, Scotland, FK150EJ,U.K.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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