Unwarranted optimism

The Pollyanna of the Week award goes to the Daily Star and its unnamed teenage sources, for their weirdly chipper Day 5 take on the Cooperstown shooting: "Most students unfazed by Cooperstown shooting."

But for most students, Monday was a normal day, several classmates said after school.

"I'd say about 90 percent of the school didn't notice," said one senior, who was walking with two other students.

Like other students approached by The Daily Star on Monday afternoon, the senior, who didn't wish to be identified, was asked by school officials not to talk about the shooting , which is under investigation as a possible hate crime.

The Daily Star is also the source of the most substantial bit of concrete information concerning the possible prosecution of the shooting as a hate crime: An unnamed official apparently told a reporter that 16-year-old shooter Anthony Pacherille said he "hated black people."

Unanswered, as a commenter on today's story points out, is the question of exactly when Pacherille is alleged to have made this remark -- presumably, at some point after he had already shot himself with a bullet that entered at his chin and exited between his eyes.

Earlier: Cooperstown under the microscope

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