Why? Why did 18-year-old Jacob Robida enter a New Bedford, MA gay bar last Thursday and then proceed to attack its patrons with a gun and hatchet? Why, days after fleeing, did he kill two others in Arkansas, including a police officer? What compelled this young man to engage in such unprovoked violence? From whence came such rage and hatred? At this point, we can only speculate, given that the one person who might offer some insight into such questions is now dead, having succumbed to the injuries he suffered in a shootout with police in Arkansas yesterday. Here is what appears to be known so far about Jacob Robida, as reported by the Boston Globe, SouthCoastToday, United Press International, and PageOneQ:

• He had a website on which there were “many text and graphic references to murder, Nazis, anarchy and antisocial behavior.�
• A police search of his room revealed “homemade posters disparaging gays, African-Americans and Jews; neo-Nazi literature and skinhead paraphernalia; a makeshift coffin, and an empty knife sheath.�
• He lived with his mother and siblings. His mother has diabetes and has been described as “frail� and “going blind.�
• He may not have been close to his father, who reportedly described him as “strange� and not liking anybody.
• He dropped out of New Bedford High School in 2003.
• In 2001, he graduated from the city’s Junior Police Academy, a program to which teens are often (but not exclusively) referred following court involvement.
• In 2000, the state Department of Social Services investigated an allegation of neglect against Jacob’s mother but did not open a case.

What are we left with, other than a sketchy portrait of a disturbed teenager and innumerable lingering questions? Sadly, as in so many tragedies of this sort, we may never have the answers. In a matter of days, the spin of the news cycle will offer us new and perhaps even more troubling tales of woe, which will distract and divert us from ever making sense of the ills that daily befall us. Why?