Sean Fitzpatrick’s father is misdirecting his outrage

I want to feel Angel Fitzpatrick’s pain. But he’s made it so hard.

Sept. 22 marks the one-year anniversary of the awful day Fitzpatrick’s son, Sean, terrorized Spokane’s Lewis and Clark High School. Fitzpatrick has taken to blaming the police who were forced to shoot the boy when he pointed a loaded handgun at them.

“The SWAT team should have stayed back and kept their mouths shut,” said Fitzpatrick in a recent story that appeared in The Spokesman-Review.

Sorry, Angel. But if anyone should keep his lip zipped, it’s you.

The officers called to LC did what they had to do. These public servants put themselves in harm’s way. They don’t deserve to be second-guessed.

Fitzpatrick should count his blessings, instead of playing the blame game.

His son was struck by three bullets at fairly close range.

It’s a miracle Sean survived.

Spokane County Prosecutor Steve Tucker showed compassion by not trying the youth as an adult. Sean, 16 at the time of the shooting, faced up to 30 years. He instead received a month and a half of home detention and will be monitored until he’s 21.

Fitzpatrick’s finger-pointing strikes me as low and mean.

But if he insists on traveling down the old “could-a/should-a/would-a” road, I have a couple of dandy questions:

Why was it so easy for this deeply disturbed teenager to get a gun?

As the story says, Sean “walked into his father’s bedroom and grabbed the handgun from the top shelf of the dresser.”

Why wasn’t that 9 mm pistol secured in a gun safe or fitted with a trigger lock and the key hidden away?

Fitzpatrick now advocates storing home defense weapons in locked boxes. Surprise. Surprise. Sean, he says, had gun safety training and was not exhibiting any outward signs of his illness.

Whatever the case, the handgun was available for Sean to carry to Lewis and Clark and set off a chain reaction.

He made his stand in room 307. He fired a bullet into a wall. He blocked the doorway with a metal bookcase. The school’s student body of 2,000 was evacuated. Police secured the area and even the freeway around LC.

The SWAT team was called …

Fitzpatrick accuses police of being too aggressive, that they should have waited out his son.

Unfortunately, law enforcement officers are not yet equipped with Ouija boards and crystal balls. Their job is to enter the chaos and confusion of a developing crisis and attempt to restore order.

They spend countless hours training to handle a variety of emergency scenarios. But training situations are never like the real things.

The bottom line is that there was only one person controlling this nightmare – Sean Fitzpatrick.

He had already left a suicide note at home. Despite a negotiator’s best efforts to calm him down, Sean initiated the endgame.

Witnesses say he climbed onto the bookcase. He aimed his pistol at a police sergeant.

Two other officers opened fire, hitting the boy in the face, arm and stomach.

It may sound strange to use the term luck when describing someone who has been shot three times. But Sean was extremely fortunate that day.

SWAT members spend hour after hour on the firing range, honing their marksmanship skills. Having to use a weapon in the line of duty is something no good officer ever wants. But if the situation demands it, well, they don’t call it “deadly force” for nothing.

Maybe it was just the luck of the draw. Maybe it was divine intervention.

But Sean is alive.

He’ll need more surgery to repair the damage to his jaw and face. A psychiatrist and a psychologist are helping him with his emotional problems.

We should all pray that Sean Fitzpatrick gets through this and goes on to lead a full and productive life.

Same goes for his dad.