Here it is.
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July 25, 2000
When Grief Wanted a Hero, Truth Didn't
Get in the Way
By WILLIAM GLABERSON
EST PADUCAH, Ky.
-- He was the teenage
hero who turned a horrifying
school shooting into a parable
of good against evil. His name
is Ben Strong, the gregarious
son of a preacher, and he was
said to have displayed
remarkable courage when he
disarmed Michael Carneal, the
14-year-old killer who opened
fire on a prayer group at Heath
High School here on Dec. 1,
1997.
In the days after the shooting,
Mr. Strong, an appealing high
school senior, was a regular on
national television, where he
was portrayed as a symbol of
hope. His inspirational story of
confronting the killer was
repeated in newspapers across the country, including this one. Since
then, he has been the subject of cover articles in magazines and has
traveled the country preaching to young people. Now 20, and working at
his father's Assembly of God Church, he is often introduced as the the
hero of Heath High.
But as new information about the events that morning is starting to
emerge because of a civil lawsuit, some people here are openly
challenging the portrait of Mr. Strong as a hero who rushed up to a killer
as he was firing and persuaded him to drop the gun he had used to kill
three girls and injure five other students. In a brief interview recently,
even Mr. Strong acknowledged for the first time to a reporter that the
heroic picture of him might have been inaccurate.
"Sometimes," he said in the interview, "people get the wrong idea." In
terse answers to questions, he agreed that he had not taken the gun away
from Mr. Carneal, as he sometimes suggested after the shooting, and he
agreed that he might not have influenced Mr. Carneal at all in his decision
to stop shooting.
The Ben Strong story shows how chaos and panic can distort the
accounts that witnesses give of the rampage killings that periodically
horrify the country. It may show, too, how the stories of the killings are
often shaped by the powerful desire of reporters and everyone else
involved to find some good news, even signs of heroism, in horrible,
inexplicable events.
A striking finding from a New York Times examination of rampage
killings, published in April, is that long after the reporters depart, a
different story of the events often emerges. Usually, the first accounts
present inaccurate information about the killer, the crime, the victims or
the roles of bystanders.
After the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, for example, one
student, Cassie Bernall, was widely described as having answered "yes"
when one of the two killers asked her whether she believed in God. She
was killed, it was said, for her faith.
After that account put her in the realm of martyrdom and inspired a
best-selling book, some news accounts last year reported that the "yes"
most likely came from another student, Valeen Schnurr, who survived.
At Heath High School, the press took its lead from Bill J. Bond, the
principal at the time of the shooting.
Mr. Bond was the first person to tell reporters that a prayerful senior
who was a football player, Benjamin Scott Strong, had probably saved
lives, including Mr. Bond's.
"The whole world wants a hero," Mr. Bond said in a recent interview.
"It is natural to look for some goodness in a tragedy, and I probably
contributed to it."
In testimony filed in McCracken County Circuit Court here this spring,
which has received little public notice, Mr. Strong said he had won praise
for his bravery "because of what people said, how things were
portrayed" after the shooting, not what really happened.
The families of the three murdered girls sued Mr. Strong, as well as
school officials, and many other people here they said could have
prevented the killings. In the deposition, Mr. Strong testified this winter
that the killer had discarded the gun on his own. "He just got done, and
he dropped it," Mr. Strong said.
Mr. Carneal, who is serving a life sentence after pleading guilty but
mentally ill to murder, also testified in the suit.
When a lawyer asked whether Mr. Strong had stopped him from
shooting he replied, "No sir."
When Mr. Bond was told in a recent interview about Mr. Strong's newly
released testimony, he said information about Mr. Strong's actions had
come from Mr. Strong initially and had always been somewhat imprecise.
"I asked him what he did," Mr. Bond said, "and he said, 'I told him to lay
the gun down,' and I took that at face value."
With scores of reporters pressing around the school the afternoon of the
shooting, Mr. Bond said, the story of Mr. Strong's actions may have
been exaggerated and "it probably developed a life of its own."
Mr. Strong helped the story along. Within hours of the shooting, he was
giving interviews and standing by as reporters described him as the leader
of the prayer group, a title he no longer claims.
His descriptions of the shooting varied in the early interviews. But in
some accounts he suggested there had been a tug-of-war over the gun.
"And then I went for him and I grabbed him, you know," he said on
ABC's "Good Morning America" the day after the shootings, "and he put
down the gun and everything."
Sometimes, he simply stood by or denied he was a hero, which some of
his new admirers took as humility. On CNN's "Larry King Live" a week
after the killings, Mr. Strong listened silently while another guest, the Rev.
Jerry Falwell, called Mr. Strong a "major hero" and repeated the
widespread story.
Mr. Falwell described how Mr. Strong "literally walked right up to the
young man in the face of a firing gun and said, 'Give me the gun.' "
In Mr. Strong's deposition, on Jan. 20, a transcript shows, the lawyer for
the victims' families, Mike Breen of Bowling Green, Ky., read him a Time
magazine article published the week after the shooting.
Time, which had interviewed Mr. Strong, said that Mr. Strong "turned his
eyes" on the killer "and, forcefully said, 'Put down the gun.' " In his
deposition, Mr. Strong said he could not guarantee that he had actually
said any of that out loud. "Now the forcefully part," he added, "that was
written by them."
Mr. Strong was questioned under oath by the lawyer for the victims'
families, partly because they had sued him. Mr. Strong has always
acknowledged that Mr. Carneal warned him not to come to the prayer
group that Monday because something was going to happen.
But Mr. Strong has denied that he had any reason to suspect that Mr.
Carneal would commit murder. The judge dismissed the case against Mr.
Strong and most of the other defendants.
It is clear from the deposition testimony that Mr. Strong did eventually go
to Mr. Carneal while some other students ran away. He might have
reached Mr. Carneal the same time as Mr. Bond.
Mr. Carneal, according to the testimony, had by then stopped shooting,
discarded his gun and was slumping to the ground, perhaps in tears. It is
undisputed that when Mr. Strong and Mr. Bond arrived, Mr. Carneal
was distraught and asked Mr. Strong to "kill me, please kill me."
Mr. Carneal said in his testimony that Mr. Strong did speak as he
approached. He quoted Mr. Strong as saying: "What are you shooting
people for?" Then, Mr. Carneal said, Mr. Strong groaned, gritted his
teeth and took Mr. Carneal by the shoulders and shook him.
Mr. Strong ended two brief interviews recently by saying that he was not
comfortable talking about the subject any longer. But he was accepting of
the idea that the story of what happened the day of the shooting might be
different from the one that is widely known. "Truth is truth," he said very
quietly. "That's a good thing."
In his deposition, Mr. Strong suggested that he wanted to be brave. But
in shock, he said, "Your body doesn't function like it normally does."
After the first days, the story of Mr. Strong as a hero might have been
beyond his ability to control it. In large ways and small, the story was
being used by other people who wanted a hero in a tragedy, including the
news media. But in West Paducah, the families of the murdered girls
seethed as they said they believed Mr. Strong was profiting from their
daughters' deaths.
"I think he's got some problems, some reason he has to think of himself
as a hero," said Joe James, whose daughter Jessica was killed in the
shooting. The parents of the three girls who were killed all said they were
infuriated by a Web site, bstrong.com, which advertised a CD with a
song by professional artists titled "BStrong" and included remarks from
Mr. Strong. In the recent interview, Mr. Strong said he had not received
any proceeds from the sale of the CD. The producers of the CD have
said it was a fund-raising effort for the victims' families.
Whatever part Mr. Strong played in perpetuating his story, his public
image has quietly divided people here. To some, he remains a young man
who, no matter what, represents positive values in stark contrast to those
of the killer.
But some here say the Ben Strong story has overshadowed the tragedy
itself and they are bitter about him. In May, about 30 students from a
parochial school near here, Christian Fellowship School, traveled to an
intramural event at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Okla.
In a large meeting for all the high school students, a speaker told the
assembled crowd that teenagers today should be more like Ben Strong,
the student who confronted the killer in Paducah, said Cathy Davis, a
parent from here who was with the group as a chaperone.
Quietly, the group from here rose and left the room, said some who were
there. "Some of the kids were terribly offended," Mrs. Davis said,
"because they know Ben Strong is not the hero he was played up to be."
