I'm not sure what struck me more that first dayI met Evan, his small stature or his shyness. We never made eye contact for that entire visit. He was nothing like the person the newspapers depicted as a cold blooded killer, the child of a father who had been in prison himself for assault of a newspaper editor. I was so confused by the dichotomy between what I'd seen and what I'd read that I returned home and voraciously read every article written about him. I just didn't get it. The boy they wrote about and the young man I'd met could've very well been two different people.

I returned to the Correctional Center a few months later and had the opportunity to meet with Evan a second time. I was there to do research on the commonalities of juvenile indicators that lead to criminal behavior. He came into the office in chains. His legs were shackled allowing for a shuffle of about one foot. His hands were shackled to his waist not allowing for much movement. Seeing his red jump suit, I knew he was in segregation for his own protection.

Before me, sat a killer. A young man who had been given 210 years for killing two people during a school shooting. Dead from his gun was the school's principal and a popular, athletic student. I knew everything that was printed about Evan. Yet, before me once again was a shy, seventeen year old boy with sad, brown eyes. His demeanor appeared so gentle, so different than the other inmates, so different than the newspapers described. I had a nagging feeling that something just wasn't right. It was to be another good year before I'd have all the details, but my head kept repeating "Sue, before you, sits a man who murdered two people. Yet, before you, sits a man who is not a murderer". That phrase haunted me for a year. I couldn't shake it. I'd worked with so many teens and adults who had or were serving time in prison. This just felt different. I tried to bury the nagging, haunting feelings deep in me. As hard as I tried, I just couldn't, I knew with absolute certainty that it was destined for me to continue with this young man. I wasn't sure the exact road we'd take. I just knew I had to keep walking. So was to start, our journey of trust and helping others.

Evan shared with me hundreds of letters from teens who found themselves in the same situation as he had been. They desperately tried to get help from adults and were turned away. Evan conveyed his understanding to these teens but strongly urged them to continue to find another way to get the help they needed so they wouldn't wind up like him. Quote " No matter how bad things may seem, violence is not the answer. It will only make things worse. Sometimes life may seem horrible to us at the moment, but that may not be the case in the future. High school is just four years. It's not your whole life"

At times, when he was so low, I feared he'd kill himself. I drove to see him as frequently as I could. I truly believed his life had a purpose. He just couldn't give up. So together we vowed to get the message heard; It is time to Listen To The Children.

Here I was, just Evan and I, alone in an office. He continued to look down much of the time, even when I asked him questions. His processing was slow, thoughtful, and methodical. I could see he was thinking about what I had asked. And when he answered, he did so slowly, trying desperately to make his words understood. His tone was quiet. I had to strain at first to hear what he was saying and he was only a desk top away from me. His crime, as he referred to it, was told to me as follows. A few of the details I obtained from police tapes, a video, and a fellow classmate's of his.

At approximately 8:40 in the morning, on February 19th, 1997, police were called to Bethel High School for a report of shots fired. Three officers responded to the call. They were quickly joined by two more officers and the chief.

Evan had ridden the bus to school that dark, Wednesday morning, hiding a shot gun down his pants. Evan claims he entered Bethel High School that day with the intention of killing himself in the Commons Area of the school. He wanted his classmates to watch him kill himself, so they would forever have his death etched in their memories. Evan saw that as the pay back he could give them for all the incessant, tortuous grief they had inflicted on him over the previous three years. This grief has a name, bullying; incessant, constant, repeated imbalance of power. Bullying behaviors included others draping him with peeled toilet paper, hocking phlegm on his head, incessant name calling and put downs about his grades and his life, hitting him in the head, and more. He told dozens of people of his plan to commit suicide. No one had stopped him, no one told an adult. He wondered how this got so far. Feeling as though he was part of a slow motion movie, Evan proceeded to finish the plan that had more of a snowball effect then he'd anticipated.

Circling around and around the Commons Area several times, pulling his gun out of his pants, he now had the audience he was after. Those who would forever have his death etched in their minds. Students watched in horror as they realized what was going on. Evan vaguely remembers Josh Palacio standing up from his position at a cafeteria table approaching him. "What are you doing with that gun?" Newspapers repeatedly report, Evan entered Bethel High School that day looking for Josh, seeking him out to kill him. Evan, emphatically denied this allegation, insisting there were other students in the school he would've like to see dead because of the tortuous things they'd done to him. Josh Palacio was not one of them.

He emphatically holds that. His mission that day was to kill himself. He felt everything in his life had gotten so bad, he didn't see any hope of change in the future. Evan circled around and around shouting " Why didn't everyone just leave me alone?" Evan recalls Josh continuing to approach him. Evan pointed the gun at Josh and shot. He recalls turning around to find the school principal, Ron Edwards, was approaching him from behind. Edward's came out of his office to see what was going on. Again, Evan fired, shooting Edwards. Evan fled to a nearby stairwell and continued shouting "I don't want to die!".

Evan was taken into custody. Thus was to begin his long process with the court system to be followed by the corrections system.

We will never know for certain all the things that were going through Evan's mind at the moment Josh Palacio and Ron Edward's were shot. But we can be certain of one thing. The warning signs were there again and again, but no one listened.

Evan was born in Anchorage and attended kindergarten and first grade in Bethel, Alaska. He loved school in those early years. After first grade, the children lived with their mother, shuffling between Fairbanks, Manley Hot Springs, Anchorage and Napakiak. The only constant in Evan's life was his transiency. By the time he was in the third grade, he and his brothers were taken by the Division of Family and Youth Services, also known as DFYS. Between third grade and sixth grade, Evan and his brothers were placed in eleven different foster homes. He claims he was physically, sexually, and verbally abused in more than half of them. To add to the instability and transiency, Evan was being ridiculed for being a half breed in bush Alaska.

In sixth grade, Evan and his younger brother, William were placed in another foster home. As happy as Evan was living with Sue, his new foster mother, he was having a vicious time in school. He had just grasped the concept of subtraction and he was in the sixth grade. His classmates were far ahead of him. He was having a hard time comprehending what he read in books but masked it well by doing well at word recognition. For a few years, Evan plugged along. Even though foster mom, Sue Hare, was his favorite of the eleven foster parents, Evan missed his mother terribly. He worried about her drinking. Evan had always been particularly close to his mother. On his last summer to the village of Holy Cross, he was greeted by his mother and he alleges, her abusive boyfriend his mom deeply involved with alcohol herself. Not wanting to leave his mother, he convinced all the powers that be to let him start seventh grade in Holy Cross and live with his mother. He was doing poorly in school. Most of his grades were failing. Sometimes when the boyfriend became abusive, Evan fled the house. With no where to go, he curled up in people's entry ways to escape the severe cold and abusive behavior. The temperatures got as low as -22. He kept begging his mother to stop drinking. Several times, she sobered up and Evan had high hopes their family would be reunited again. But each time that wasn't to last. His mother wasn't able to stay sober.

He returned to Sue Hare and William, entering Bethel High School for the eighth grade. That was the year Sue Hare became legal guardian for both boys. Even though Evan felt good about living with Sue, he was having trouble sleeping at night, worrying about his mom and failing grades. Sometimes he'd fall asleep in his morning classes since he was so tired from lack of sleep. While he'd be dosing, students took turns putting sticky notes on his back. When the teachers backs were turned they would kick him, in class in the hallways, anywhere they could get away with it.

Now there was another constant in his life, papers returned with failing grades. As his classmates were in charge of passing out graded papers, he could always count on a daily smack in the head, a crude comment, along with the failing paper. This happened almost daily along with comments such as "you have shit for brains" after months of this without any intervention by the teacher, he picked up his notebook and hit one of them back. He was caught doing this and sent to the principal's office. Evan insists he tried to explain the on going bullying to the administrator but was told to just ignore it. The principal didn't issue a punishment to Evan that time. He just sent him back to class. Soon after, the comments, the smacking became worse. It became so bad that Evan went to see the principal on his own. Again, he was told they're just teasing you, try to ignore it. He was given further advice "just tell the kids that are bothering you that sticks and stones will break my bones but your words will never hurt me". Evan claims he just looked at the administrator and said "but that's not true. The words really do hurt me". And he returned to class. Evan had little contact with school administrators for being a discipline problem prior to all the "teasing". Evan didn't pass eight grade academically but was socially promoted onto the ninth grade and was told everyone knew he had potential. It was in eigth grade that "teasing" began.

In ninth grade he struggled again. Evan still couldn't read in terms of comprehension. This time, no way a social promotion was possible. His classmates moved on to tenth grade while Evan repeated ninth. Evan struggled with his academics and struggled with the continued bullying. He went to his Art and Yearbook teacher telling her about what was going on. She spoke to the bullies hoping that would make a difference for Evan. It did for awhile but they started back up again. Evan barely passed ninth grade the second time with C's and D's.

Before starting back up to tenth grade, Evan once again went to se his mother in Holy Cross while Sue and William went to Atlanta to visit her relatives. The summer turned into a nightmare for Evan. The bullying from Bethel seemed extended into Holy Cross where he was again ridiculed and bullied about being a half breed. This time though, the bullies walked their talk and beat Evan up on several occasions. When Sue and William returned to Bethel, Evan left Holy Cross returning to Bethel ready to start tenth grade.

As tenth grade moved forward, the bullying escalated. Kids passing him in the halls or in class would refer to him as a "stupid mother fucker", "a homo", "a faggot". Evan said it was the same six kids who kept picking on him. They hung together and refused to stop. According to Evan, Josh Palacio was not one of the six students. Evan watched as another student was picked on in school. The difference was the other kid who was bullied was real smart so the kids picked on him more for his "nerdy looks" than for anything else. One day, when the same six kids continued to throw things at him, he turned around and simply asked, "Why do you keep picking on me?" They just smiled at him and refused to answer his question. Looking back, Evan recalls how they did everything humanly possible to push his buttons just to get him to react. He tried to make believe it wasn't happening. But then the spitting started. They'd hock on him and laugh. "I was picked on seven hours a day everyday and the teachers didn't do anything to help me".

After a few months, Evan started fighting back but still the bullying continued. In early February of his tenth grade year, Evan came up with a plan. He decided to kill himself.

He felt there was no more he could do to stop the bullying and his life just seemed too painful to be worth it. Evan was convinced that no one really cared about him. He told numerous students he was going to kill himself. Maybe they just thought he was joking, but no one told an adult. About three days before the scheduled shoot, he told a dozen or more people of his plan expecting someone would tell an adult. Again, no one did. Evan didn't have any experience with a gun. He didn't own one, but he knew Sue did. He knew where she kept the gun and where she had kept the gun and where she had kept the ammunition. One of his friends told his older sister. She telephoned Evan the night before the scheduled event making him promise he would not carry it out. He promised her, but said it was only lip service.

The next morning, February 19th, Evan woke up and carried out the plan that had been on his mind those two weeks, to die.

"I told Sue Hare and Ron Edwards more than a dozen times about all the bullying I was subjected to. They never did anything to help me," he said sadly. "If I can prevent someone from having the experience I went through, I want to do that. I killed people. Don't you respond with violence even if you're provoked. There's no hope for me now but there is hope for you. I used to care about what people thought. Now Iv'e realized that what counts is what I think of myself. That's what's really important. Sometimes it's easy to forget that not everyone's words counts. Stop and ask a bully why they do what they do to you. They will probably answer "I don't know". They know it's wrong but they keep doing it. Observers don't step in because they're afraid they'll be treated the same way. Why don't adults help kids with this? People think it's not a big deal, that victims blow these things out of proportion. Some adults are just afraid to get involved. I tried to get help so many times in my life, but no one helped me."

Evan has gotten an estimated 700 letters from young people all over the world. The issue is always the same. They are being bullied. Evan replies that young people can be so shallow they don't look beyond what they see. Other kids won't associate with kids who are picked on themselves. What seems bad now, won't always be that way. You'll graduate from high school, things will get better and you can live a sucessful life. Even though days now can seem stressful, it will get better. Evan's appeal was denied. The finding of the lower court was upheld. Evan is still facing 200 plus/minus years in jail. We are hoping to find him a private attorney who is willing to help Evan with his appeal to the Alaska Supreme Court. And in the meantime, we're hoping to one day start an anti bullying hotline like the one's that exist in Australia and Great Britian. If your path crosses with teens who are experiencing some of the same things Evan faced, please remember to take the time and Listen To The Children. You can make a difference.

If you know of an attorney or law school professor who might be interested in working with Evan, please notify me at sulamaestra@gci.net

Ifyou know of a youth who is a victim of bullying, contact me at (907) 336-2665 or (907) 529-7151 or e-mail me at sulamaestra@gci.net. There are skills they can learn so as not to be a victim.