Stopping violence before it starts

Editor's note: The following text is a transcript of a podcast story. To listen to the story, click on the arrow beneath the headline above.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, February 10th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: stopping mass violence before it starts.

Now before we go further, a warning for parents: this story is not suitable for young children, so we’ll give you a second to pause or fast forward.

REICHARD: Mass violence dominates political debates, as incidents have climbed steadily over the past decade. Lawmakers argue over solutions, from gun control to expanded mental health care.

But the solution may be closer to home.

WORLD’s Mary Muncy talked to a man who plotted a mass attack, and how ordinary people helped to change his heart.

MARY MUNCY: Aaron Stark’s very first memory is trying to keep his father from killing his mother with a tire iron.

STARK: He stalked us and chased us from state to state.

That chapter ended when Stark’s mom left his biological dad and married a cocaine addict.

STARK: And it went from Stephen King epic level violence, to crack cocaine and crime, where my stepdad was a criminal.

So, they kept moving every few months—trying to keep his stepfather ahead of the law. By the time he graduated, Stark had been enrolled in 40 different high schools.

STARK: I was dirty, smelly, fat. I was the kid that get, when the kids get picked on, they came to pick on me to make themselves feel better.

In his teens, he developed severe depression and started self-harming. The family started sticking closer to the Denver area. 

Stark developed a group of friends like him: boys with trauma in their past, making increasingly violent plans for the future.

His family bounced between a few different neighborhoods—one had a kid named Mike Stacey.

STARK: He had a totally opposite life than I had.

A big house. Two stable parents. Stark would sleep on Stacey’s couch for a few days or a week at a time.

STARK: If I'm standing up off his couch, his mom's cleaning the stain that I'm leaving. So, he became my home base, so any time I was in Denver, I knew I had some place to stay.

Other times, he slept in a ditch behind a restaurant.

One day when he was 16, he woke up in the snow, feeling like he was going to freeze to death. That pushed him into a mental health office—where they turned him away.

STARK: And when I stepped on out of that porch, that's where I felt my brain snap like a mirror.

The plans crystallized in his head.

STARK: I knew that I wanted to cause a mass attack to kill as many people as I possibly could; to scream out so someone would finally see me.

He’d already worked out the details with his friends. He would fire on his school or the mall, because both of those places had uniformed officers on duty.

STARK: I was going to die by suicide by cop.

But neither the school or the mall were his real targets.

STARK: My target were my parents. I wanted to make my parents deal with the fact that I existed. I wanted to make them deal with the fact that I was the monster that I knew that I was, and they made me, and I wanted them to deal with the fact that I was really me. 

Some boys at school told Stark they could get him a gun in three days in exchange for some weed. Then Stark started saying goodbye.

Stark’s story isn’t unique. 

James Densley worked on the Violence Project, which studied mass shootings over the past 60 years. That project revealed a pattern in the violence.

DENSLEY: It's often rooted in an early childhood trauma that is unresolved, that then over time festers into a grievance and then an existential crisis for the individual.

Densley says most people with unresolved childhood trauma never commit an act of violence, and it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what separates them from those who do. 

He says a lot of the time it comes down to whether they had access to a weapon during a “crisis.” From the outside, a crisis looks like a time-limited change in baseline behavior.

DENSLEY: So as long as you know what the baseline behaviors are, you can notice the change, and when you see the change, you can then reach out and do something about it.

He says violence prevention is a team sport. Coworkers, parents, peers, teachers, and police officers all working together to see their community. And Densely thinks those people’s work is why shootings are still mathematically rare.

DENSLEY: It always seemed to be very simple things that got people off of the pathway to violence. That it was the right person saying the right thing at the right time, that all of a sudden, they decided life was still worth living.

For Stark, it was what he thought would be one last trip to Stacey’s house. He knocked on the door, in tears.

Stacey didn’t ask any questions. They just played video games, ate snacks, and watched movies.

Stark stayed for a week. He never went to pick up the gun.

STARK: I was able to be a regular human again for a little bit… just enough of a shift of my perspective to let me remember that I was a human, and that I could, that I could exist.

His life didn’t change. He still struggled with depression and suicidal ideation. 

But eventually, he separated himself from his family, got a job, and got married. But no one, not even Stacey, knew how close he was to mass violence in his teens.

STARK: I always thought if anybody ever found this really out about me, they would hate me.

But about ten years ago, after a school shooting in Colorado, Stark started to share his story.

STARK: My wife only knew about 60% of my history. My daughter only knew about 20% of my history. They didn't know any of this.

He started traveling and speaking at schools and conferences.

Now he has four kids and still lives in Colorado. Stacey lives down the road, and Stark’s kids treat him like a second father.

If you ask Stacey, he would say he wasn’t doing anything spectacular—he was just doing what friends are supposed to do. 

And Stark says that’s exactly what he needed.

STARK: You never know what little, tiny acts of kindness that you can do that can change someone's entire life.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Mary Muncy.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.