Iowa HS Football Coach shot and killed in weight room

[fro daddy]

Ed Thomas, head FB coach at Aplington-Parkersburg High was shot and killed this morning in the weightroom of his HS right before classes started. There were 50 students in the area, no one else was harmed.

Some of you may remember Thomas from ESPN. His is the coach that has had 4 NFL lineman play for him and had his school and fields destroyed during the tornados last year.

 

No details as of yet on the gun man other than he is an adult male.

 

Story link

 

Very sad story....

[BIGREDIOWAN]

Horrible story and just a sad situation.................

[HuskerfaninOkieland]

This team will play it's first game tonight since their coaches murder

 

Foxnews.com

 

PARKERSBURG, Iowa — As they've done every August for 35 years, the players on Aplington-Parkersburg High's football team are throwing themselves into the familiar, sweaty grind of Coach Ed Thomas' brutal, two-a-day summer workouts.

 

The pop of linemen clashing after the snap still fills the thick, muggy air, as do the rhythmic claps and military barks of teenagers willing themselves through endless push-ups, jumping jacks and punishment laps, their faded red jerseys caked with mud and sweat.

 

All that's missing is Thomas.

 

[GSG]

Update from the trial.

 

Ex-player: I killed coach because I thought he was the devil

»Updated Feb 16, 2010 5:24 PM ET

ALLISON, Iowa (AP)

A tearful former football player told Iowa police that he repeatedly shot his high school coach because he believed him to be a devil who turned students "into dead people," according to an interview with the murder suspect recorded just hours after Ed Thomas' death.

 

The scratchy, muddled audio recording of 24-year-old Mark Becker's confession was played to a packed Butler County courtroom on the second day of his trial for first-degree murder. Becker has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

 

Prosecutors say Becker calmly walked into the weight room at Aplington-Parkersburg High School on the morning of June 24 and killed Thomas in front of a group of teenage students.

 

"I put one in his head, then I put two more in his head, then I put one in the knee," Becker said in the recording of his interview with Division of Criminal Investigation agent Chris Callaway less than two hours after Thomas was shot dead. "I emptied the clip and left it empty."

 

Callaway testified that Becker said during the interview that he felt "no guilt or shame" about the slaying, although he had cried as he confessed to the killing. Becker's voice trembled at times during the recording.

 

Becker told Callaway that as he approached Thomas, his former coach turned and greeted him. "And I shot him," Becker said, adding, "It's a great thing. It's so good."

 

The suspect has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, and his attorneys have said that they will try to show he is a paranoid schizophrenic who had not taken his prescribed medication the night before the shooting.

 

In the interview, Becker spoke in a monotone about why he wanted to kill Thomas, the 2005 NFL High School Coach of the Year and a leader in rebuilding Parkersburg after a huge tornado wiped out about one-third of the town and killed six people in 2008.

 

"He's a devil, he's a devil tyrant, he's suppressing the kids out here," Becker said on the recording. "We can hardly breathe at night. He comes through and he turns us into fish and he turns us into animals and he turns us into dead people. He won't let us be our heavenly selves. He's been doing it forever."

 

Becker said that after the shooting he told the students present that they were free. Six students who witnessed the shooting have already testified.

 

"I walked out and said, 'be free,"' Becker exclaimed. "You go in there and kick him if you want to, but you're free. I said, 'be free.'

 

"It's done, it's done, it's over."

 

During the interview, Becker told Callaway that he saw the devil, "a horned beast," in the room with them.

 

LINK

[holvy83]

In the hands of the jury now, from reading some of the blogs about the trial, a lot of the testimony pointed to the shooter being one disturbed individual... it will be interesting to say the least when the verdict is announced.

[BIGREDIOWAN]

I already have a feeling that this guy is going to be not guilty for reasons of insanity. He's already said several things that IMO say he isn't insane and has reasoning capabilities.