The Latest From New York

Details are emerging today about Jiverly Wong, the 41–year–old gunman from Vietnam who killed 13 people and seriously injured more than two dozen others at an immigrant services center in Binghamton, N.Y., yesterday.

Apparently, his actions didn't surprise many of the people who knew him. He may have been despondent about his employment situation — apparently, his last job was terminated in November when the plant closed. He appears to have kept to himself on the job (the textbook loner, perhaps?), but he seems to have done his job well.

There are also reports that — at one time, anyway — he had a cocaine habit. Perhaps his autopsy will yield information that can tell us whether he was under its influence yesterday. And I've heard reports of a "minor" brush with the law.

He seems to have struggled with the language, and he seems to have been taunted for it (shades of Columbine?). But he apparently had made an effort to address that deficiency at the center.

"People close to Wong told police they weren't surprised that the man turned to violence," reports the Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin. "People had made fun of Wong due to his difficulty speaking English, leading him to feel 'degraded,' his loved ones told police."

The Press & Sun-Bulletin editorializes about the anguish the city is experiencing. "There is so much unknown at this point, and it will take time to gather and fit together all the pieces — and even then the picture may never be complete."

The thing that seems to be consistent about these mass shootings is that there are always people — friends or relatives — who always say — after the fact — they aren't surprised that the perpetrator snapped.

When the perpetrators have been combat veterans, it seems that someone inevitably will say something like, "He just wasn't the same when he came home from the service."

These days, it seems that unemployment is a connecting thread — but not always and it doesn't seem to manifest itself in the same way. Wong's rampage ended with his suicide, but his victims may all have been strangers to him; none, at the moment, appear to be friends or relatives. In the vast majority of the mass killings involving unemployed people that I'm aware of, the perpetrator killed the other members of the family, then killed himself.

His family's lives may have been spared, but many of Wong's survivors do not seem to be surprised by his actions. They all seem able to cite incidents in the past that were red flags foreshadowing a tragedy.

And all I can think is, "Wouldn't that have been a good time to tell someone?" I'm not talking about those things that are a little iffy or could go either way. I'm talking about clear episodes of poor anger management or depression.

I guess that is what really frustrates me about these situations. It's the same problem I have with people who will say, after a major event, that it was foretold in the prophecies of Nostradamus.

Nostradamus, as you may know, has been credited with predicting both world wars, several major assassinations and other important events in the last 450 years. It was also alleged, for awhile, that Nostradamus' quatrains mentioned September 11.

It is said that Nostradamus was deliberately ambiguous to avoid detection by the authorities of the day. But there are people who are experts on his writings, and they will tell you, conclusively, that not only did Nostradamus predict, among other things, the Revolutionary War and presidential assassinations but recent events as well in his quatrains.

Now, I don't expect a man who lived in the 16th century to provide details about events three or four centuries before they happened. But if it is so easy to connect the dots, why didn't anybody mention it before it happened?

And if this man was a threat to himself and others, why didn't those closest to him alert the authorities?

Perhaps they did — and perhaps that is something we will learn in the days to come.

But if they didn't ... why didn't they?

And if they did alert the authorities ... why didn't they listen?