More details are emerging of the now-dead Alexandria shooter, James T. Hodgkinson, and it’s not a pretty picture.
Like the fact he beat his adoptive daughters.
He was the foster father of at least two girls. The first, Wanda Ashley Stock, 17, committed suicide in 1996 by pouring gasoline on herself and setting herself on fire after a few months of living with the Hodgkinsons, the Belleville News-Democrat reports. The Hodgkinsons gave an interview to the paper after her suicide, calling her a “very practical, level-headed girl.”
Privacy laws do not allow the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services to release foster records.
In 2002, Hodgkinson became the foster father of another girl whom he allegedly abused, according to police records.
In 2006, he was arrested for domestic battery and discharge of a firearm after he stormed into a neighbor’s home where his teenage foster daughter was visiting with a friend. In a skirmish, he punched his foster daughter’s then 19-year-old friend Aimee Moreland “in the face with a closed fist,” according to a police report reviewed by The Daily Beast. When Moreland’s boyfriend walked outside of the residence where Moreland and Hodgkinson’s foster daughter were, he allegedly aimed a shotgun at the boyfriend and later fired one round. The Hodgkinsons later lost custody of that foster daughter.
“[Hodgkinson] fired a couple of warning shots and then hit my boyfriend with the butt of the gun,” Moreland told The Daily Beast on Wednesday.
Hodgkinson was also “observed throwing” his daughter “around the bedroom,” the police report said. After the girl broke free, Hodgkinson followed and “started hitting her arms, pulling her hair, and started grabbing her off the bed.”
Moreland said Hodgkinson’s daughter “told me a lot of stories that he was really awful to her.”
“According to his foster daughter, he was always angry,” Moreland said. “She was really unhappy there. She had come over to get away from them.”
When Moreland tried escaping with Hodgkinson’s daughter in a vehicle, Hodgkinson reached inside and “turned off the ignition,” the report said.
“We were panicked and when I tried to reverse, I hit neutral instead and he opened my car door and hit me, and then came to her car door and pulled out a knife and cut her seatbelt and dragged her out,” Moreland said. “She was only 15 or 16, I think. She was so tiny.”
Mr. Hodgkinson was also not big on observing Rule 4:
Hodgkinson may have practiced before the attack, a neighbor told The Daily Beast.
On March 24, neighbor William Schaumleffel called the St. Clair County Sheriff’s Office to complain that Hodgkinson had fired approximately 15 shots outside. A responding officer found Hodgkinson shooting into nearby trees and advised him to stop, according to a sheriff’s report, which added that Hodgkinson had a valid firearm license.
“I thought, my God, what is that guy shooting?” Schaumleffel recalled.
He told The Daily Beast that he was out in his backyard with his grandchildren when the shooting started. He heard one shot, then another, and then three in rapid succession.
Hodgkinson held the gun to his shoulder and fired across Schaumleffel’s field, he said. Schaumleffel said he yelled to him to say that there were houses in that direction and that he should stop, but wasn’t sure if he heard him.
The shooting started again, in what Schaumleffel now calls “target practice.”
“I told my wife, ‘hey, I’m gonna call the sheriff. He’s liable to turn the gun on us,’” Schaumleffel said.
(Hat tip: Jim Geraghty.)
Hodgkinson had other minor brushes with the law, including a DUI and resisting arrest charge dismissed in 1993.
The question remains of why a resident of Belleville, Illinois, who still had a wife and home back there, was living out of a van down by the river near Washington, D.C.? “The gunman’s brother told The New York Times that the man was upset about Trump’s election and recently went to Washington to protest, but Michael Hodgkinson said he didn’t know why the man stayed in the area.”
Unless he was living in D.C. with the express purpose of shooting Republicans, and just looking or an opportunity to do it…
