Cognition Neuroscience Study on YouTube Killer’s Case
This article is some research on why a killer is standing behind the fourth ‘supposed victim’ for five seconds but turning around and sparing a life.
Coffeehouse Crime discussed the case of Randy Stair, a supermarket worker/ YouTuber killer, who turned his dark fantasy into reality while going on a spree kill based on his fate test of flipping a coin.
I was wondering why he didn’t kill the fourth colleague before turning the gun to himself.
After Randy shot down unmercifully three encountering colleagues, he saw the next ‘target’ wearing a headphone, oblivious of the harrowing unfolding around her, after standing behind her for five seconds, Randay walked down to the Dehli section and put the gun into his mouth and pulled the trigger.
Three reasons why he didn’t kill everyone on that night:
- Novelty interrupts violent cognitive state:
Someone calmly listening to music and organizing the products stood out as unexpected ‘everyday life’ ringing in Randy’s death-ridden cartoon world. The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) is crucial for self-regulation and logical decision-making.
This peace on a battlefield stopped Randy’s self-imagining cognitive flow, activating the higher brain regions, DLPFC to influence behavior. Without sensational triggers, the DLPFC makes people ‘remember’ that no one should be a gunpoint target.
- The absence of fear:
People who are in a sickening mental state absorb other people’s fear and hysteria to intensify their aggressive actions.
As Randy had walked into the staff room in the supermarket and saw (even in peripheral vision) wide-eyed, terrified expressions from his colleagues, the thalamus sends unfiltered sensory information straight to the amygdala, a key player in operating a threat-detection network in the brain.
The amygdala is hyperactive in detecting emotionally salient stimuli, such as fear. It interprets facial expressions, body language, and tone of voice. These unnerving emotions trigger Randy’s threat detection system, reinforcing his instinct to pull the trigger without hesitation.
In contrast, the unaware colleague, wearing a headphone and enjoying the music, expressed no fear stimuli, reducing his activation of the threat detection system and lo and behold disrupting his violent behavior loop.
Mirror Neural System:
The mirror neurons in the premotor cortex, a place to make us mimic the emotions of others, were triggered as he faced the escalating response from the three victims, like the piercing sound of a heated stove, intensifying his disturbing aggression.
Fear and anger fuel each other, fanning much more flames to the already tensions. Three victims’ fear heats Randy’s anger of a suicidal mission, making him pull the trigger in devastating succession.
Notes:
As Coffeehouse mentions Randy Stair’s case is worth society paying more attention to mental illness, and I also think his case is a clear warning of the danger of internet threats.
During the pandemic, the downstream of socialization became anonymous hatred, and we still expect nothing will really happen until we are mourning for lost lives.
The media coverage of Randy Stair’s case is surprisingly, or unsurprisingly, low, perhaps it directs to too many sensitive issues, gun violence, the regulation of online speech, teens’ mental health, and so on.
As an average person in Taiwan who writes English articles to learn English in my spare time, I know there’s more voice we all need to hear and more we need to speak up.
