The Why: Experts analyze why Facio stabbed his teacher

Angel Facio says he didn’t know he was going to hurt Carolyn Gilbert that cold January day.

Committing such a random act is not unusual for teens pushed to the brink, experts say.

“That’s how it happens,” said Tim Brown, chief psychiatrist at the Kane County Diagnostic Center, the court’s psychological arm.

Facio’s knife attack on Gilbert was a horrific culmination of his cries to be heard, a psychiatric evaluation conducted after the attack concluded.

Facio, at 16, was trapped. And so, he reacted in a way that, in his adolescent mind, was sure to achieve a result, Brown says.

“I saw a kid once in the jail, a kid that I worked with before, who had committed murder,” Brown said. “I asked (him) what happened. He said, ‘I killed somebody. Because I could.’ And that was it.”

Facio’s explanation for why he stabbed Gilbert — a favorite teacher — shows a similar train of thought.

He wanted to kill someone. The fastest way he could.

Adolescents, Brown noted, “don’t think long term.”

The MacArthur Foundation, which has led research in the psychiatric field of adolescent development and juvenile justice, noted in a 2005 study that “especially in high-pressure crime situations, judgments are made in the heat of the moment. ... In these situations, adolescents’ other common traits — their shortsightedness, their impulsivity, their susceptibility to peer influence — can quickly undermine their decision-making capacity.”

Facio began acting out shortly after family problems began coming to a head — first by assaulting a young neighbor, then a 13-year-old middle school student, then Gilbert.

Even more than 3 years later, Brown says, it’s believable that Facio still doesn’t know why he stabbed Gilbert repeatedly.

The closest we can come to figuring that out, Brown said, “is to ask him to go back in painstaking detail, to ask him, ‘What were you thinking that allowed you to pick up that knife?’”

Asked those questions repeatedly, Facio says he doesn’t remember what he was thinking as he entered Gilbert’s classroom, slid a serrated kitchen knife up his sleeve, pulled it out and lunged at her.

“I remember all the motions of what, like, I was doing,” he said from Lawrence Correctional Center in downstate Sumner. “I can’t remember exactly what was going through my head.”

Facio’s actions landed him in adult prison. John Fallon, a psychiatrist with 30 years’ experience in helping parolees readjust, says Facio’s frame of mind remains that of a teen.

Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice Behavioral Services Administrator Jennifer Jaworski says figuring out the “why” would take about 18 months of intense mental health treatment. In juvenile corrections, that would include working to get a teen to accept that he or she has committed an offense, helping them to understand their history, and developing plans for relapse prevention through therapy.

Lawyer and Northwestern University psychology Professor Gene Griffin says, ultimately, the “why” isn’t nearly as important as the “what next,” which is Facio learning to control himself.

Griffin employs what he calls the four S’s in working with teens who have gone through trauma — making sure they feel safe and supported, helping them learn to self-regulate, and building upon their strengths.

Facio says he volunteered for “seg” — being separated from other inmates for 23 hours a day — because he didn’t get along with his cellmate. He has no desire to get a prison job, doesn’t work out, and says he thinks college courses will take too long.

“If a kid has a mental health issue,” Griffin said, “and you isolate them, they’re much more prone to exacerbating mental health symptoms.”