Paris | Friday
RICHARD Durn, the 33 year-old mass killer who committed suicide on Thursday morning, was a bitterly disappointed depressive who channelled his frustrations into a hatred of the political system in the Paris suburb where he lived, family and acquaintances said on Thursday.
”My son often spoke of killing,” said Durn’s mother Stephania, a 65 year old Slovenian with whom he lived in a bungalow in the working-class neighbourhood of Nanterre.
”Death for him was the only way out, but he did not want to die alone. He wanted to kill as many people as possible. He could have done what he did just as well at a march or a demonstration,” she said.
In fact Durn chose the assembly chamber of the Nanterre town hall as the place to vent his rage. After attending a six hour debate on Tuesday night, he opened fire with two automatic pistols, killing eight councillors and injuring 19 others. Taken into police custody, he committed suicide on Thursday morning by jumping from his fourth floor interrogation room.
People who knew him remembered an unassuming and timid man, with intellectual aspirations, who seemed in desperate search of a cause to which to dedicate himself.
After gaining a degree in political science, he failed to find a teaching position so took a post as monitor at a school in Nanterre. Former pupils said he was an odd and moody person.
”He was extremely thin, with a big nose and glasses. We used to tease him. We called him Mr Bean,” said 15-year old Hamza, referring to the British television character. ”He was two-faced,” said Farouk. ”One day he was nice, the next he’d be handing out detentions.”
He kept the job till three years ago, and had since been living on unemployment benefit. He had no girlfriend or close companions.
Throughout the 1990s Durn involved himself with humanitarian and leftwing political issues. He travelled on an aid convoy to Sarajevo in 1993 and two years later became an activist for the local Socialist party an affiliation he later changed for the Greens.
He was regularly to be seen handing out pamphlets in the town centre, and became a familiar figure in the public gallery in debates of the municipal council. He also became treasurer of the local branch of the Human Rights League (LDH).
”He really had it in for politicians,” according to local LDH president Rosanna Morain.
”Bizarrely the Greens became a kind of obsession for him. He said they didn’t take enough interest in social politics. His work for us wasn’t enough to channel his hate. He loathed the whole world.”
According to his mother, Durn had twice attempted suicide in the early 1990s and took Prozac to combat his depression.
But no questions were asked when he developed an interest in hand-guns, joined a shooting club and in 1997 bought two automatic pistols and a revolver from a central Paris gun-shop. He let his licence lapse in 2000, but again the authorities showed no interest.
”This type of person cannot stand his status as ‘failure,”’ said criminologist Stephane Bourgoin in Le Parisien newspaper.
”He tries to blame his own failures on others, and once he’s identified his scapegoats, he becomes caught in a growing paranoid delirium.” Durn identified those responsible for thwarting his life as the assembled political classes of the suburb of Nanterre. He set out Tuesday night with the aim of committing suicide, taking with him as many councillors as possible.
”He didn’t want to die anonymously,” his mother said. ”He wanted to leave his mark.” – Sapa-AFP