Web site takes ‘last stab’ at Dawson shooter
Victim starts forum to help depressed youth
BY GRAEME HAMILTON for the National Post

MONTREAL - With its stylized skull and the word “Kill” in helter-skelter scrawl, the home page of killthinking.com does not look like a place parents would want their children frequenting. Enter the site, and you quickly come across a photo of a shirtless young man displaying scars left by bullet wounds in his chest.

But that man, Joel Kornek, has launched the jarring Web site in hopes of saving other young people from experiencing what he did on Sept. 13.

In what he calls a “last stab” at Kimveer Gill, the gunman who killed one person and wounded 19 others at Dawson College before taking his own life, Mr. Kornek wants to use the Internet to ensure the shootings leave a legacy of hope.

“Without his hate, I would never have been able to make a site to help people,” he writes in an ironic thank you to the killer on the Web site. “Do not let this become you. I hope you [Gill] roll over in your grave every time someone joins the site.”

Mr. Kornek, 19, a McGill University education student, was visiting his girlfriend in the cafeteria of Dawson College when he turned around to see a man in a trench coat loading ammunition into guns.

He ran, not realizing until later that a bullet had passed in and out of his chest, millimetres from his heart.

His girlfriend, Jessica Albert, was more seriously wounded and spent nine days in intensive care before doctors were sure she would survive.

While his physical injuries were superficial, Mr. Kornek was left an emotional wreck, and after breaking up with Ms. Albert, he fell into a deep depression last month.

Concerned he was suicidal, a friend persuaded him to check himself into a hospital.

“I kept telling myself, I have to get help because otherwise I’m scared this is going to escalate, and I might end up doing something stupid,” he said in an interview yesterday. But instead of help, he was left waiting in a room in the emergency department for two hours. He finally got up and left without seeing a doctor.

“I’d been telling myself, Kimveer Gill is the biggest jerkin the world, he never went for help or anything,” he said. “My eyes were opened wide, going, ‘Wow there’s really no help out there.’

“I realized I had to do something about this for myself and for other people.”

His solution was Kill Off This Thinking, a name inspired by a lyric from the rockgroup 30 Seconds to Mars and abbreviated on the Web to killthinking.com, which he launched one month ago.

Message boards on the site have more than 100 members, and a sister site on Myspace.com has attracted 2,000 people.

“People go on the Web site and read my story and go, ‘Wow, I thought my problems were horrible and I felt like crap because my girlfriend dumped me. Here’s this guy who got shot, everything got taken away in his life and he’s still pushing. He’s still very strong.’ It motivates people to keep going,” Mr. Kornek said.

The site offers a forum where young people can relate their problems and receive advice and reassurance from peers around the world.

“I’ve been clean for 4 years now. I stopped cutting [myself ] about two [years ago] but I’m getting ‘cravings.’ Like life’d be so much easier to deal with if I were slashingmy legs or snorting coke again,” one member posted last week.

There followed a stream of supportive messages, urging her not to give in to her cravings.

Jeffrey Derevensky, a professor of child psychology at McGill University, said peer-to-peer counselling like that provided on killthinking.com can have a very positive effect.

But he said it is important that the site’s administrator recognize which problems might require professional help and be able to refer people to available resources.

“At some time these people have to have a little training to know when to make referrals,” he said.

Mr. Kornek said the site is monitored by a social worker and psychology students, and he has on occasion advised people to consult a psychiatrist. But he is convinced the community at killthinking.com is already helping people.

“I’ve had e-mails from people who say, either, ‘I was going to kill myself,’ or ‘Oh God, I might have done something like this. You’ve really opened my eyes…. It’s not only about stopping school shootings. It’s about saving kids’ lives.”

He said his site’s graphic logo and name have landed one member in trouble at a New Jersey high school where authorities did not understand the site’s mission.

“They saw the name, and they saw that the logo is a skull, and they freaked out,” he said. “My idea behind ‘Kill’ and having a skull and all this was really to attract kids,” he said. Mr. Kornek figured a “lame name like ‘Save Me’ ” would not cut it.

“I don’t care if parents don’t like my Web site,” he said. “As long as their kids like it, that’s what’s important, because the kids are going to be the ones to go on and get help.”