WASHINGTON — A Westside Middle School teacher plans to tell a U.S. Senate committee today that one of the boys accused in the schoolyard shootings near Jonesboro was obsessed with two rap artists.
Debbie Pelley, a seventh-grade English teacher, will testify that Mitchell Johnson, 13, has said he may have been influenced by the violent lyrics of rap artists TuPac Shakur and Bone Thugz n Harmony when he and Andrew Golden, 11, allegedly killed four students and a teacher and wounded 10 others in the March 24 ambush.
Police say the two lured students out of the middle school building with a false fire alarm and hid in nearby woods with guns and ammunition. They opened fire when the students left the building.
The boys are being held in the Craighead County Detention Center. An adjudication hearing scheduled for Wednesday was postponed. A new hearing date has not been scheduled.
Pelley is one of six people who will testify to Senate Commerce Committee hearing about parental warning labels on albums. The hearing, chaired by Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., will begin at 1:30 p.m. CDT in the Russell Senate Office Building. Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., will also preside.
The hearing seeks to determine if parental warning stickers are effective on albums containing objectionable lyrics.
A spokesman for Lieberman said it likely will be suggested that ratings similar to those on childrens' video games and movies be placed on albums, cassettes and compact disks.
Pelley provided a written copy of her testimony to the media over the weekend, stating she was Mitchell's English teacher from Aug. 15 to March 24.
"I never saw him exhibit anger, never saw him commit any hostile act ... that would make me think Mitchell could commit this act," Pelley said. "In fact, he ... appeared to enjoy his many friends, and to enjoy life in general."
Pelley's testimony claims that during the days following the shooting, students began talking about Mitchell's liking "gangster rap music."
"Mitchell brought this music to school with him, listened to it on the bus, tried listening to it in class, sang the lyrics over and over at school and played a cassette in the bathroom about 'coming to school and killing all the kids,' " Pelley said.
Pelley said Shakur's All Eyez On Me, and Bone Thugz n Harmony's E 1999 were Mitchell's favorite albums. Pelley said she plans to tell the committee that while in jail, Mitchell told his mother, Gretchen Woodard, that the music may have influenced him.
"[The music] sort of draws you in," Woodard told Pelley, repeating what her son said to her.
Woodard confirmed in an interview earlier this month Mitchell purchased the albums with Christmas money he received last year in Minnesota. "He listened to them all the time," Woodard said. "But he also listened to gospel and country and western music, too."
Pelley includes lyrics of several songs by both artists in her testimony.
A sample of the lyrics from Bone Thugz n Harmony's "Crept and We Came" include:
"Cocking the 9 and ready to aim
Pulling the trigger
To blow out your brains
Bone got a gang
Man we crept and we came."
"[The] last words of this song are quite revealing considering the way Mitchell and Drew killed the five and injured the 10 so stealthily," Pelley said.
A sample of Shakur's lyrics in the song "I Ain't Mad At Ya" include:
"I can see us after school
We'd bomb on the first mother******
With the wrong s*** on,"
Another of Shakur's songs, "When We Ride," appears to glorify the infamy associated with violence, Pulley said. Some of the lyrics in that song include:
"I'll make you famous mother******
I'm talkin' about Time magazine, Newsweek and all that other good s***
My niggas make the paper, baby
My niggas make the front page."
"Senator Brownback does not want to ban this type of music," Erik Hotmire, Brownback's press secretary, said Monday. "He is not a censor. But there could be a common link with all the school shootings. It may be the music. It's something to look at."
Dan Gerstein, a legislative aide for Lieberman, said Monday the current warning system is not specific enough for parents.
"It's like taking a PG rating and slapping it on everything from 'Debbie Does Dallas' to 'The Wonder Years,'" he said, referring to a pornographic movie and a former ABC television situation comedy.
"We're not saying music put a gun in his hand," Gerstein added. "But it might have been a contributing factor.
"We know it's not the cause, but it's so pervasive, so powerful on its hold on kids," he said. "There were drug and sexual references in the music of the 1960s, but this is not the [Rolling] Stones' 'Let's Spend the Night Together.' This is people advocating mass murder and shooting police."
Others scheduled to testify today include Charlie Gilreath, editor of Entertainment Monitor; George Gerbner, professor of communications at Temple University; Barbara Wyatt, president of Parents Music Resource Center; and Krist Novoselic, president of Joint Artists and Music Promotions Action Committee, and a member of the grunge rock band Nirvana.
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