Could the attack on Elgin teacher have been prevented?

Interestingly, for all the words in last week’s three-part series exploring the unprovoked assault on an Elgin High School teacher, the passage that seemed to spark the most conversation was made up of five almost obscure paragraphs that largely repeated three-year-old news.

Could the attack in 2008 on teacher Carolyn Gilbert have been prevented? At the conclusion of the trial of 16-year-old Angel Facio, Judge Paul Stralka said as much. Stralka pointed out that a guidance counselor had found the troubled youth’s journal but that when he’d encouraged the boy’s mother to read it and get him help, she did not want to violate her son’s privacy.

Stralka also noted that a week before the attack, Facio had been disciplined for writing profanities on another student’s face but unfortunately “this unusual conduct had not incurred a school investigation.” In addition, Facio had been charged with sexually assaulting an 8-year-old five months earlier and with attempting to abduct a 13-year-old just a few weeks before his attack on Gilbert — but school officials were unaware of those cases.

As Stralka asked, could the brutal assault on Gilbert have been prevented?

An intriguing question. There were so many points along the way when something could have been done but for one reason or another wasn’t.

Frequently, it seems, we look back after a tragedy and see missed signals, signs of trouble that either were overlooked or weren’t acted upon.

This is the story of life, isn’t it? It’s not just major horrors like the September 11 attacks a decade ago. It’s the little things in life too. Haven’t all of us on countless occasions made mistakes only to look back and say, “I should have known better” or “if only I’d listened to the voice in the back of my head.”

Human life is made up of error so it’s natural that it shows up in tragedies as well as in inconsequential things.

It’s good to be demanding of ourselves, but good also to be at least a bit forgiving, to see ourselves as imperfect beings always striving to get better. That’s not to say that we should never judge. Judgments sometimes must be harsh. Sometimes that’s the only way to ensure that lessons will be understood. But more important here than assigning fault is learning what can be done so similar tragedies can be avoided in the future.

And what is to be learned here?

That communications on crime must be timely and complete. That disciplinary problems must be addressed quickly and thoroughly. That follow-throughs cannot be put off for tomorrow.

These are not exact sciences. The right or wrong response is not always clear.

But perhaps the biggest signal is the pause. So often when a mistake occurs, we’ll look back and realize that something had given us pause because it hadn’t seemed right, but then our daily rush pushed us to move on.

That’s the lesson: Pay heed to the pause. It must be acted upon.