It has been three weeks since a 19 year old young man with a gun in his hand and hatred in his heart walked into a synagogue in Poway on the Jewish Sabbath.
And in a matter of moments, a longtime member of the congregation was dead and three others, including the rabbi and a young child were wounded.
And then we discovered who police say was the young man who did it. A normal kid people said, a Cal State San Marcos student who people said did well and showed no signs of being able to carry out such an evil act.
Then we learned he had spent time on line, on websites and on social media, in the world of white supremacy and had become filled with hate against Jews and Muslims.
This story is not new. In many of the mass shootings, the person who does it is found to have been turned to the dark side by what they saw and ended up believing and acting upon.
How does someone get that way? How does it happen? And what can we do to help them and most importantly, prevent the same thing from happening to others?
Those are the questions we are asking of law enforcement psychiatrists, mental health counselors and sociologists who study the impact of our cyber and social medial world.
We try to find answers to those questions during our one hour KOGO News special report entitled: “The People Behind the Hate: How Social Media Can Lead to Violent Acts” from 6 p.m. to 7 p,m. tonight.
(Photo credit Getty Images)