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The Story - 2005-02-19 21:56:32
What kind of a person is Billy Hardesty, suspected in the shooting of seven persons�five fatally�Thursday? To find out, Ypsilanti Press reporters talked to his teachers and neighbors, and also those in the criminal justice system with whom he had already come in contact. Here are their reports.
School: Cars, wrestling
Billy Hardesty was a poor student who had serious discipline problems, and whose only real interests were cars and wrestling, say his high school teachers.
But the contradiction about Billy, says Lincoln High School principal James Martin, was that he also was determined to be the only one of the four children in his family to graduate from high school, even after dropping out in tenth grade.
�He was in and out,� Martin said Thursday. �He took four years to graduate, he graduated with his class. But to do that he took some classes at the Ypsilanti Adult Education Center to make up his deficiencies.�
�The significant thing is that he may be the only person I�ve seen since I�ve been here who was a dropout and who came back and actually graduated,� he said.
Billy had a long history of reading problems, and that made regular academic courses difficult for him.
But, Martin said, his grades during his first semester of high school were not too bad and he offered no problems until the second semester began.
The troubles at the school came to a head in February 1973, when Martin began expulsion proceedings against Billy for assaulting another student. To avoid expulsion, which would have prevented him from returning to the school, Billy voluntarily dropped out.
In August, he came and asked for a second chance. School officials allowed him to return, and he also enrolled part-time in auto body courses at the Regional Career Technical Center. Billy made As in those courses.
�He actually did a pretty good job here, and had only a minimum of discipline after that,� Martin said.
During his senior year, 1975, Billy joined the wrestling team, his only extracurricular activity during his high school years, except for a semester on the junior varsity football team.
�In terms of wrestling, he had to be a good wrestler, but he didn�t have the skill to really go any further,� said Ron Mulka, Billy�s wrestling coach.
Mulka also taught Billy in a consumer math class that year, and said that while Billy was a very weak student, he did not cause problems in the classroom.
�With him, in terms of discipline, it was just when he got around other people,� Mulka said. He also recalled that Billy was quick-tempered.
Billy returned to the high school in March and had been ordered off the campus by Martin, after Martin learned he had sold marijuana to a student.
Because of that incident, Martin said he was surprised last Tuesday when Billy turned up at the school again, talking about students with readings and about the possibility of his helping the reading specialist at the school.
Billy also stopped by to see Mulka before he left.
�I asked him if he was working. He told me he was working at Ford and said everything was going alright,� Mulka said. �After that, we just talked about wrestling and how was my team.� �Brenda English* * * * * * * * * * * *
Laura - 2005-02-20 01:31:29
One wonders who's driving the cars he built.* * * * * * * * * * * *
Laura - 2005-02-20 10:26:07
To me the fact that he showed up at the school the Tuesday before the shootings is a telling detail. It suggests he was going through some sort of crisis. Maybe he had examined his life and found it wanting, and was desperate to try and turn over a new leaf. This is the guy, after all, who came back to school after dropping out and did extra work to catch up with his class. One gets the impression he was straining to change but just couldn't pull it off & snapped. But what do I know.* * * * * * * * * * * *
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