![When the Gunman’s Motive Remains a Mystery: Does It Matter?](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/06/02/us/02motive/02motive-facebookJumbo.jpg)
When the Gunman’s Motive Remains a Mystery: Does It Matter?
The New York Times
Even when they try to explain themselves, perpetrators are unlikely to help make sense out of the senseless.
Two months after 10 people were killed in a mass shooting at a King Soopers in Boulder, Colo., investigators have still not said why the gunman chose that particular supermarket — or why he turned violent in the first place. A similar mystery surrounds the killing of eight people at a FedEx warehouse in Indianapolis. Was the gunman angry because he had been fired? Was he targeting Sikhs, who made up half of his victims? And in San Jose, Calif., the site of the latest mass shooting to grip America, investigators are still sifting through evidence to determine exactly why a longtime transit agency employee turned on his colleagues, killing nine of them. “We are not trained to analyze co-workers,” a local union leader said, adding, “We will never know.”More Related News