June 3, 2019
VIRGINIA BEACH — The city manager has not said his name in public. The police chief snarled it just once.
They have called him “that 13th person,†“the suspect†and “the perpetrator.†But since DeWayne Craddock killed a dozen people when he opened fire at a Virginia Beach government office on Friday, top local officials have observed a self-imposed, near total silence about his identity.
“We’re going to mention his name once, and then he will be forever referred to as ‘the suspect’ because our focus now is the dignity and respect to the victims in this case and to their families,†the police chief, James A. Cervera, said on Friday night, hours after the attack.
The intentional effort to deny killers attention represents a sharp departure from how information about mass shootings was disseminated in the era before they became so common. It reflects the growing evidence that perpetrators are driven by a desire for fame. And it is also one of the few concrete steps public officials can take to avert what is known as the copycat effect, especially as new data confirms that many assailants are influenced by information about previous attackers.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/03/us/dewayne-craddock-va-beach-shooting.html
