GUILTY IA - Coach Ed Thomas, 58, shot to death at Parkersburg high school, 24 June 2009

SuziQ

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Aplington-Parkersburg High School officials said athletic director Ed Thomas was shot in the school's weight room on Wednesday morning and later died at a hospital.

Sue Muller, the district's board secretary, said Thomas, 58, was airlifted to the hospital. A Waterloo hospital spokeswoman confirmed that Thomas has died.
Officials said 30 students witnessed the shooting at 7:47 a.m. (more at link)
http://www.kcci.com/news/19843764/detail.html
 
Unfortunately, it appears this former student may have a drug problem.

Drugs kill.

:(
fran



..................snip.....................

More about the suspect

A review of online court records discloses that Mark Daryl Becker, 24, had been arrested Sunday by Parkersburg police on a felony charge of eluding. The court file relating to the charges against Becker wasn’t immediately available to reporters, according to the Butler County Clerk of Courts office.

That charge was one of four filed against Becker by police on Sunday including charges of speeding, reckless driving and failure to obey a stop sign.

Online court records also disclose that Becker pleaded guilty to charges of assault causing injury, possession of drug paraphernalia and criminal mischief in the fourth degree in Black Hawk County in January and February. His toughest sentence was a four-day jail term with the remaining 86 days suspended on the assault charge. He also was charged with underage possession of alcohol in August 2004 and pleaded guilty to that charge a month later.

<<<<<<<<<<full article at link>>>>>>>>

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20090624/NEWS/90624008
 
So what kind of beef would a 24 year old former student and football player have against the coach? High school would have been more than six years ago.

ETA: I see Ocean and I have the same question.
 
So what kind of beef would a 24 year old former student and football player have against the coach? High school would have been more than six years ago.

The reasons are more and more bizarre, Suzi.

Maybe he wanted to murder someone that everyone loved and admired greatly.

imo
 
He had probably tried to help him and the boy seemed not to respond.
Doesn't sound like the kind of player the coach would have been too fond of.
 
He had probably tried to help him and the boy seemed not to respond.
Doesn't sound like the kind of player the coach would have been too fond of.

I had a friend whose son was cut from a sports team in high school because of his grades. The boy spiraled out of control after that and lost all focus on everything. He always blamed the coach, and I must admit his parent did also but more passively. The boy never recognized how his behaviors really caused his problems. Not sure if that is relevant to any of this but it does make me wonder.
 
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,528925,00.html

Late Wednesday afternoon, authorities say Becker was supposed to be taken to a hospital psychatric ward on Saturday evening after taking a baseball bat to a local home and leading police on a car chase. Police say he was released but the Butler County Sheriff Department was not notified.

more at link

seems as though somebody dropped the ball and now this man is dead.
 
I just don't understand going out of your way to target someone from 6 years earlier. Such a sad case for the coach, the (no doubt) mentally deranged boy, and the family for each.
 
wow muder arrres and conviction in less then 9 months
 
March 2, 1010

[video=youtube;yL7yFZWYT5A]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL7yFZWYT5A[/video]
 
An Iowa jury found Mark Becker guilty for the first degree murder of Coach Ed Thomas today. Sentencing is scheduled for April 14. Thomas was a longtime football coach at Applington-Parkersburg and was active in re3building Parkersburg, Ia after an F5 Tornado destroyed much of the community. Becker had pleaded not-guilty by reason of insanity. The jury rejected this argument.:woohoo::woohoo:
 
Iowa Coach Verdict: Jury finds Mark Becker Guilty of Murder

ALLISON, Iowa (CBS/AP) An Iowa jury took 24 hours, over nearly four days, to find Mark Becker guilty of first degree murder in the June 2009 shooting death of iconic high school football coach Ed Thomas, in Parkersburg, Iowa, about 100 miles north of Des Moines.

more....
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-6262736-504083.html
 
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/st...ker-getting-needed-mental-treatment/15367833/

Now that he's serving life in prison for killing his former football coach, Mark Becker is finally receiving the kind of mental-health care he should have had years earlier, his mother said Tuesday.

"I tell you what, they have been phenomenal in our son's treatment. Phenomenal," Joan Becker said of the staff at the state prison system's mental-health facility at Oakdale.

Becker has become a vocal advocate for improved mental-health care in the five years since her son walked into a Parkersburg high-school weight room and shot Ed Thomas, who was a nationally known coach and a family friend. She spoke Tuesday night at First United Methodist Church in Ankeny about how hard she and her husband tried to find help for Mark, who had shown increasing signs of mental disturbance in his late teens and early 20s.
 
"This week marks 10 years since the man most devoted to Parkersburg’s success was gunned down in a red shed while supervising high school athletes doing some early-morning weightlifting. That’s a decade of anguish for those closest to Thomas, which was seemingly everyone who ever came in contact with him. And 10 years of trying to honor the memory of a beloved football coach and teacher who was so much more than that for this northeast Iowa town of 1,870 people.

Thomas' impact can still be heard in the voices of his former players, who continue to lean on the lessons he taught them so many years ago. Emotions remain raw for the countless friends he made during 34 years of service to Parkersburg. It's a tight-knit community that also includes the family of the mentally ill young man who killed Thomas — a family grateful to be embraced instead of shunned after one of the most high-profile crimes in Iowa history."

A legacy to honor: How Ed Thomas' life, death loom heavily in Iowa communities 10 years after his murder
 

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