Portrait Of An Accused Jewish Terrorist As A Young Man
Some excerpts and I have it that the incident at the summer camp is absolutely true:-
His fellow students at Akiva Hebrew Day School, a Modern Orthodox yeshiva in the Detroit suburb of Southfield, Mich., had Jack Tytell pegged.
He was “creepy,” one remembered, someone with “crazy eyes.” Another recalled Tytell walking through Akiva’s halls acting out imaginary combat scenes and jumping over tripwires that existed in his head only.
As their “Last Will and Testament” in the Akiva Class of ’90 yearbook, his classmates left him an “Uzi and a grenade ... and a Valium.”
What they may not have known is that three years earlier, at an Orthodox summer camp in Pennsylvania, Tytell ran afoul of the camp’s no-weapons policy. Camp officials confiscated from him a collection of knives, including machetes and a “Rambo” knife, according to one of City Winery his counselors.
...But in interviews with more than a dozen former classmates, camp counselors, teachers and others who knew him and his family during those formative years, a portrait is beginning to emerge of the young Jack Tytell.
Described by some as a “loner” who had trouble making friends...the picture is complicated by the fact that Tytell never seemed to bully anyone or exhibit any violent behavior...Ed Codish, who taught English at Akiva when Tytell was there, wasn’t surprised, he told The Jewish Week. But thinking back to the high school kid he knew in Detroit, Codish concluded that the alleged crimes were probably “pathological, not ideological.”
According to acquaintances of the Tytell family...Mark carried himself with a military bearing...A classmate of one of the younger Tytell children recalls Mark as “a yeller.”...
...Rafi Goldmeier, a systems administrator from Ramat Beit Shemesh, Israel, and author of a popular blog (lifeinisrael.blogspot.com), was an elementary and middle school classmate of Jack Tytell’s at Bais Yaakov–Yeshivas Tiferes Tzvi in Chicago...recalls that Tytell was a “tough kid” who took karate lessons, was physically strong and fond of wrestling, but was not a bully...
In ...1987, the 14-year-old Tytell attended an Orthodox summer camp in Pennsylvania. One of his counselors...clearly recalls some of the challenges that he presented to the staff...The camp had a policy against campers possessing weapons, a policy Tytell violated...Nevertheless, according to both campers and counselors, he never physically attacked anyone and did nothing to warrant expulsion from camp... one of the weapons the 14-year-old boy had with him. It wasn’t one of the knives but something more ingenious: a spring-loaded telescoping billy club, one that, like a switchblade, shot open in a flash. The counselor recalled that Tytell had a name for the billy club, affectionately dubbing it “Sally.”
...Susann Codish, Ed’s wife and a former Akiva teacher who never taught Tytell, nevertheless recalls that “he was a scary guy” and that she made efforts to avoid eye contact when passing him in the hall. Slightly younger students there remember him as being “creepy” with “crazy eyes.” One said, “We were all afraid of him.”...
Maybe this will aid in his defense of an insanity plea?
===========
Title source.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment