Family says mace-spraying suspect had begun to change; motive unclear
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ST. HELENS, Ore. – Police still don’t know what led a teenager to allegedly spray mace in a St. Helens Safeway store last week, but her family members say the girl had begun to show a different side in the last year.
Leona Zimmer, great niece of Elisha K. Nicholes, said the 18-year-old had experienced a tough time, including losing her father at a young age.
Once a hard-working student and member of a school rally squad, Nicholes began changing a year ago: She quit cheerleading and started skipping school, her great aunt said.
“Sometimes you see a child or a grandchild and you’re kind of on the outside looking in and you think, ‘Gee whiz, we need to do something here. Something needs to be corrected,’” Zimmer said.
Still, Zimmer said she is mystified what led Nicholes to allegedly set off a can of mace, forcing 100 people to evacuate the store on Wednesday. Thirty-one people were treated by paramedics at the scene.
Now, Nicholes is in the Columbia County Jail on suspicion of 31 counts of fourth-degree assault and criminal mischief. She will be arraigned on Monday.
Whatever may have led Nicholes to allegedly hatch the plot, Zimmer said her family is not giving up on her.
“It’s a terrible thing that happened and we want all the people to be well and recover, and we’d like to get her straightened out and get on her on the right path,” she said.
I still don't believe it was "mace", but pepper spray. Mace is the stuff cops carry, and it's not available to civilians. Pepper spray is everywhere.
@XLRGÂ I have 3 cans of police issue mace that I bought at a swap meet. Â Also I have bear mace which is stronger and you can get them both easily online or at a swap meet.Â
31 counts of assault should equal 31 life sentences or like, 3 death sentences.
The article says that she lost her father at a young age, but doesn't say how young. Was it at the time that her behavior changed or years before? If it was years before, I'm wondering if something really bad happened to her (rap or sex abuse) that she has not talked to anyone about and that is the cause of her sudden behavior change?!?
I was curious too if it might have been rap music that led to this.
@Oregon7812 Oops, LOL.
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Was your dad's name Jesus. I've often been asked if I've found Jesus. I didn't know he was lost;-)
Ian
Did you read this prior to posting?
Oh yeah throw the book at her and then release her early and support on welfare forever.Â
"motive unclear" is a good way to describe her whole generation
@correct well maybe not all of them,,, but enough that it reflects on the current generation.... you know kind of like what proplr said about ANY other generation...
I had a rough life so now I want to make others hurt, where is the logic in that ? Lock this loser up and beat her senseless...
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@Welfair Chick I don't know what point you're trying to make, but I like it.
Good grief. Really, people?
It was a stupid, immature prank. Not very well thought through, and done with no consideration of or for others. She's not been to Afghanistan to train with Al Queda, and I sincerely doubt that this was the start of her mastermind career in chemical weapons. It was a freaking stupid kid thing to do.
 Before the days of 24/7/365 'news' coverage, she'd get her 40 hours of community service and a year or so of probation, and move on with her life.Â
*facepalm*
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@feral @MarkKpic Oh snap!
Umm... What I meant was she is obviously in need of some 'enhanced interrogation techniques' to determine her connections to covert sleeper cells in St Helens.Â
Just please don't send John Brennan!
I'm usually for the let's-hang'em approach. Â but is it possible on this one that this is a 18yr old stupid kid who really didn't know what effect this would have on the store, and the consequences for doing this (Prank gone wrong). ?
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@feral @Fred H Give her Life without parole now so everyone will feel good, and give her a pardon in a year
@boned @Fred H @feral Wow... Little vent session, boned?
@Fred H @feral Boys & drugs=overactive hormones. Either of you have a daughter? One day I have an athletic Amazon and now I have an overweight teenager that lives with her mother. I sure would not be so quick to judge since her father is gone and even though it does not say it, mom keeps dragging home losers just like my ex...
31 people looking for a payday.
@trololol Yeah, and since it's extremely doubtful that Ms Nicholes has enough money in her own bank account, the liars, er rather, lawyers are dutifully busy trying to find a way that it's Safeways fault.Â
Coming soon to a store near you, body scanners and metal detectors!Â
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@feral @MarkKpic @trololol Well, okay. Just as long as it's fer the childruuuuun.
@trololol Aisle 2 next to the Milky Way.
I'll go with my original thought about future crack head in training.
Of course she had begun to change, now that she's in custody! Duh!
She got in with the Occupy Portland crowd, became an anarchist and is now a card carrying Democrat. There's no hope for this bad piece of work. It's the ObamaBucks gravy train for her.
@hankhandsome Which is it, socialism or anarchism? Did you drop out of high school before 10th grade government class? Do you like to slurp on teabags wet or dry?
@Harry Merkin @hankhandsome "Do you like to slurp on teabags wet or dry?"
Straight coffee guy myself. Do you have a problem with that?
@Harry Merkin @hankhandsome You can't expect logic from a Democrat. lol.
@hokeywolf @hankhandsome @Harry Merkin Oh, I don't know. How many years you libs been after gun control?
@hankhandsome Can't expect Republitards to know the definitions of the words they use.
@hankhandsome @Harry Merkin Lets see, the republicons have tried to repeal Obamacare 33 times. And now they are trying for number 34. And you call that logical? Or how about Palin? Do you consider her logical?
Cops love needlessly spraying people with "bug spray". Â Give her a taser and test her out on that she may just have the dis-associative personality that defines a really good Portland cop.Â
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@feral @Icarus When did they raise the bar so high?
"Once a hard-working student and member of a school rally squad, Nicholes began changing a year ago: She quit cheerleading and started skipping school, her great aunt said." Â (from the story)
Seems like negative changes like that would have been a "wake-up call" to the family - especially the parents - and prompted some serious investigation into what was happening with Miss Nicholes... Just on the face of it, it sounds like either getting in with the wrong kind of crowd, or drugs... or a combination of both... Â Some 17-18 year-olds are very mature; others are many years away from it... and some teens, by virtue of their personality, are much more impressionable than others...Â
@margay1Â i've always thought of teen agers as adults in training... they don't relly know what it is all about yet. and are still learning what works and what they should not have tried... for some ,, the learning process lasts all thier mlives,...
@margay1 HPV can cause these sort of behavioral changes. Skank cancer effects the brain.
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@feral  Does the cheerleading squad count as a cell?
@Harry Merkin @margay1 ~  Many things can cause behavioral changes like that, especially in teenagers... All I'm saying is that it should have triggered some kind of inquiry into the reason / source for it; preferably when it was first noticed...
"Leona Zimmer, great niece of Elisha K. Nicholes, said the 18-year-old had experienced a tough time, including losing her father at a young age."Â
KATU, do you mean great aunt instead of great niece? How can a teenager have a great niece?
@QuandoQuandoQuando Maybe she has an older sibling who had a baby before she was born, and her niece is actually older than her, and that niece had a baby who's now giving interviews? Or maybe the person who wrote this is an idiot.
Bet this is an underlying act that was done against her, and this is her way of acting out, screaming for help. Either that, or like Rob said - Drugs...bath salts...ecstasy...zip...whatever you want to add there. Time for a major psych evaluation.Â
Motive unclear: She might've just woke up one day and looked at the world around her. Better if she had chosen to volunteer in a soup kitchen or something, though.
"Zimmer . . . said the 18-year-old had experienced a tough time, including losing her father at a young age." Not to sound insensitive, but my father was killed instantly in an airplane crash when I was nine. Neither my brother nor I have ever committed a crime, and we both were honor students in high-school and college (and graduate school). I doubt that her father's death had anything to do with her criminal behavior.
@felines99 I completely agree. Some people are always looking for an excuse rather than hold people responsible and accountable for their actions. We have a society full of people using all kinds of excuses with a built-in support group of psychologists, psychiatrists, and "mental health professionals." We are creating a society of mentally weak, underperforming and underachieving individuals who are looking for the easy way out. When we begin to hold people responsible and accountable for their actions we will begin to return to the type of society that built this country into the greatest country in the world. Hopefully that will occur before our current downward spiral accelerates to a point of no return.
@felines99  I agree. The more likely scenario is that she started hanging with the wrong crowd and found the world of drugs.  When she changed a year ago, why didn't the family pursue the problems then? Perhaps a case of the "not MY child" syndrome where parents don't want to believe that their "little darling" would ever do anything bad.
@felines99 Maybe she didn't hate her father like you did.
@Harry Merkin @felines99 ---- wow, that was completely uncalled for. You are one Harry jerk.
@feral @Harry Merkin @The Resistance ---isn't a hair merkin another word for pubic wig?
@feral I was going to, but ihatemydeaddad.org was inexpensive to secure, and I'm going to find some therapists to provide cheap help to peeps like 99 for a tidy profit.
@The Resistance Wow, what's with the personal attacks? What did I ever do to you to make you hurt my feelings like that? =(
@Khre'Riov Ael i-Mhiessan t'Rllaillieu @The Resistance @Harry Merkin @felines99 No, I think Harry came up out of the basement only to find that he had used up all the lotion & tissues in his mommy's house.
@The Resistance @Harry Merkin @felines99 Right on and well said Resistance.. I totally agree with you.. Â
Someone must have p'd in his cheerios..
@Harry Merkin @felines99 WTF gives you the right to claim that I "hated" my father??? You know nothing about me! What is your problem, scumbag???
@Harry Merkin @margay1 ~  Harry Merkin, I have read some off-the-deep-end stupid (not to mention cruel and inappropriate) posts before... but yours really tops the charts..!  Â
@Harry Merkin @felines99 It has nothing to do with "PC", idiot. It has to do with the fact that you know zero about me and even less about my relationship with my father. And where, exactly, did I state that I did not grieve, or care, for that matter??? I stated that I did not turn to crime as a response to losing my father. You have proven yourself to be a first-class dunce.
@margay1 It obviously wasn't a traumatic event for her, since she doesn't think it could bother this girl either. Most normal little girls would find it somewhat distressing, some might even have emotional difficulties. Not 99. The only logical conclusion is that she hated her father and wanted him dead. I won't start proposing reasons why. She knows.
@Harry Merkin @felines99 ~  Just curious, but what in felines99's post gave you the idea that she "didn't care" that her father died..?  People, whether they're kids or adults, grieve in very different ways... and just because felines didn't burst into tear-jerking hysteria in an on-line public comment forum is no indicator of her feelings one way or the other...Â
@felines99 Oh I'm sorry, I guess the correct response, as given by contestants #2 and #3 was "I agree" ("completely" optional). Guess it's not PC to point out that this girl cared when you didn't.