News: A lesser sort of madness...

BAILEY, Colorado (CNN) -- As 16-year-old Emily Keyes was being held hostage by a gunman in the last hours of her life, she tapped out one last text message to her family: "I love u guys."

Here we have a 53 year-old loner living out of his car. Nothing serious on his record, but he was a fugitive-from-justice. He shoots an innocent 16 year-old girl in the back of the head when the SWAT team busts in, then shoots himself (the one constant, it seems - not many of these school shooters ever shoot it out with the police). He had reportedly sexually assualted and terrorized them in the standoff. A tragedy all around. And yet...

I wonder what would have happened had this man lived 20,000 years ago (well, for starters, he probably wouldn't be alive - 53 seems a pretty old age for Upper Neolithic humans). Back then, people were hunter-gatherers. With his mental problems, would he have fit in with the small bands and tribes, or would they have abandoned him? Might they even serve as some sort of twisted asset (after all, attacking a mammoth must mean you have a small death wish)?

Nature vs. nurture, mental illness, society's pressures, a handgun, a loner, a teenager, a cell phone - intersect.