Accused Arkansas shooter's mom: He didn't mean to hurt anyone

Mitchell Johnson

April 5, 1998
Web posted at: 9:31 p.m. EDT (0131 GMT)

(CNN) -- The mother of one of the two boys accused of killing five people and wounding 10 others in a sniper attack at a Jonesboro, Arkansas, schoolyard says her son didn't mean to hurt anyone.

Gretchen Woodard, the mother of 13-year-old Mitchell Johnson, told Newsweek magazine that her son was only trying to scare his schoolmates when he and 11-year-old Andrew "Drew" Golden allegedly opened fire March 24, killing four young girls and a teacher.

"He says it over and over. 'I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hurt nobody. I never meant to hit anybody,'" Woodard told Newsweek in the issue on newsstands Monday.

Woodard also said in an interview with Time magazine that her son told her Golden planned the attack.

Golden asked Johnson to help him the day before the shooting, when they were riding home from school on the bus, Woodard says in the issue of Time on newsstands Monday.

However, Golden's grandfather, Doug Golden, has said that Johnson instigated the attack. His grandson admitted firing some shots but not targeting anyone, he said.

Woodard told Newsweek it was "so hard" living with the memory of what happened.

"I can't escape it. At night, when I close my eyes, I see these mothers that'll never hold their little girls again, and it just tugs my heartstrings," Woodard said.

"And I realize that I've lost my baby, too. Not in the same way, but Mitchell will never be the same again," she told Newsweek, sobbing as she spoke.

In her interview with Time, Woodard said Drew Golden had never visited her home. "The first time I heard his name was when this all happened," she said.

She also told Time that Johnson and his 11-year-old brother Monte had BB guns and hunter-education cards, but that real guns were barred from the family's home.

Woodard denied allegations that Johnson abused a 2-year-old girl at his father's house in Minnesota last year.

Johnson and Golden face juvenile charges in the killings. Unless federal charges are brought, they face incarceration until their 18th birthdays, at which time they will likely be released.

Jonesboro doctor: Youth violence a 'societal cancer'

Meanwhile, a pediatrician who treated the victims of the shootings recalled the trauma while speaking at the American Association of Pediatrics conference in Atlanta.

"There was just a horrendous, chaotic scene in the emergency room," Dr. Warren Skaug said Saturday. "I truly believe good medicine was done, or we would've lost more children."

He is treating four of the injured victims as they recover from bullet wounds, and he predicted that many of the survivors will suffer from post traumatic stress disorder and will need extensive counseling.

Skaug also is the doctor for one of the two boys charged in the shooting, although he would not specify which one.

"I don't feel like I am totally absolved of guilt," he said.

"With regard to ferreting out trouble in the family, there may have been more ... that we could have known," he said. "Yes, we looked over that chart with care, but if you look in retrospect you wished you'd asked more questions sometimes."

Skaug's most haunting memory was when doctors had to identify two of the children who had no ID.

"Hospital staff and clergy had to go to the holding area for desperate parents and call for wallet-sized photos of their children ... then go back and tell those parents whose children were dead," Skaug said. "That's one of the most cruel forms of Russian roulette I could have ever conceived."

Skaug said youth violence is "a sort of societal cancer," and that he and other pediatricians have begun looking into ways to prevent further incidents.

"I think the one legacy of our Jonesboro tragedy should be the realization that prosperous, functioning communities can be powder kegs waiting for a random spark from an angry child to explode into violence," he said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

CNN Community:

• Message Board: Arkansas School Shooting

Related stories:

• Source: Alleged Arkansas shooter accused in molestation case - March 30, 1998
• Counselor: 'It sounds like a middle school' - March 30, 1998
• Jonesboro pastors urge forgiveness - March 29, 1998
• Last of Jonesboro victims laid to rest - March 28, 1998

Related sites:

Note: Pages will open in a new browser window

• Jonesboro Public Schools
• Arkansas Department of Education
• State of Arkansas
• The National Organization for Victim Assistance
• Westside Fund
• The Jonesboro Sun
• CNN Affiliate: KATV News, Little Rock, Ark.
• American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
  • Children and Firearms

External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.

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