Erin Micklow on LA Fitness Center Shooter: 'George Didn't Seem like a Bad Person'

Last year, Erin Micklow, a 20-year-old aspiring model and actress, was hired to work at a dating seminar attended by George Sodini, the 48-year-old man who shot and killed three women and wounded nine others at the LA Fitness gym in suburban Pittsburgh Tuesday night. In an interview with CNN, Erin Micklow says that Sodini was very quiet and that he didn't seem like a bad person.

Erin Micklow is right. After the aforementioned self-help seminar, which was held in Los Angeles and reportedly attended by a number of lonely men from around the country, Sodini made a YouTube video which was essentially a tour of his house. According to Erin Micklow, Sodini was encouraged to make the video as a homework assignment; it was an attempt to make his home look more presentable to a woman. If you watch the video, you'll discover that George Sodini does indeed seem like a quiet, unassuming fellow; he seems rather gentle, in fact. So Erin Micklow is correct when she says that George Sodini didn't seem like a bad person.

But the truth of the matter is that George Sodini was a bad person. A very, very bad person. Anyone who cold-bloodedly murders innocent people is a bad person. Hello?

I have written two other articles on the LA Fitness shooter and am astonished that some people have posted comments under the articles that actually come to Sodini's defense.

These terribly misguided people are making excuses for Sodini. They argue that "society" shunted him aside for being too nice. One poster says that it's understandable that Sodini snapped. "After being alone for so long, you might snap too," writes the anonymous poster.

One poster named "Mary" writes that she read Sodini's diary and "felt his pain, his loneliness and wept."

I wonder if Mary would have felt Sodini's "pain and loneliness and wept" if one of her relatives had been savagely murdered by him?

It is disrespectful to the people whom Sodini murdered to start making excuses for his appalling act. It's hurtful to their families.

There are literally millions of men out there who are lonely, insecure and are having a hard time getting a woman to go out with them. But for heaven's sake, they don't go out and commit mass murder as a result of their pain and loneliness. (I'm quite sure that many of them are middle-aged men who would love to go out with a beautiful 20-year-old girl like Erin Micklow. Why that is problematic is an important and legitimate topic of discussion; however it is beyond the scope of this article.)

I'll close with the sage words of another commenter, "csy," a person who gets it.

"Sorry, I don't buy the idea that someone somehow has the "'right'" to snap and murder people just because he's tired of being alone."

Sources:

Pennsylvania gym shooter described as quiet, studious, Abi Tatton, CNN

George Sodini Blog Link Reveals the Mind of a Psycopath; Could he Have Been Stopped?, Hartley Engel, Associated Content