Man, 44, who admits he was moments away from becoming a SCHOOL SHOOTER lays bare how ‘violent and depraved’ abuse he suffered as a child lead him to plot deadly attack – and the life-changing moment that made him abandon his plans to gun down kids

Aaron Stark, 44, from Denver, said he was ‘beaten, attacked, and raped’ as a kid
He became homeless at age 14, and two years later, he said his ‘brain snapped’
He planned a mass shooting but a man’s act of kindness changed everything

A man who has admitted that he was moments away from becoming a school shooter has opened up about the harrowing abuse he went through as a child that lead to him wanting to gun down his fellow teens – and the life-changing moment that made him abandon his ‘crystalized’ plans.

Aaron Stark, now 44, from Denver, Colorado, said he endured ‘the kind of stuff they make horror movies about’ when he was a kid.

He said he spent years being ‘beaten, attacked, and raped’ and was constantly surrounded by ‘drug use and fighting,’ before he ran away and became homeless at age 14.

Despite trying to get help on numerous occasions – he once called social services and even reached out to a ‘mental health’ professional – he was continuously returned to his ‘abusive’ parents or ended up back on the street.

A man who has admitted that he was moments away from becoming a school shooter has opened up about the life-changing moment that made him abandon his ‘crystalized’ plans

Aaron Stark, now 44, from Denver, Colorado, said he endured ‘the kind of stuff they make horror movies about’ when he was a kid

Aaron (seen with his wife) spent years being ‘beaten, attacked, and raped’ and was constantly surrounded by ‘drug use and fighting,’ before he ran away and became homeless at age 14

https://youtube.com/watch?v=48EMFcxEuHE%3Frel%3D0

Eventually, Aaron said his ‘brain snapped’ and he decided he was going to ‘attack the school’ because he ‘wanted to make his parents deal with creating a monster’ – but one man’s simple act of kindness lead to him turning his entire life around

Aaron, who is now a father-of-four, a public speaker, and fierce gun control advocate, spoke out about his traumatic journey during a recent appearance on StyleLikeU and Man Enough’s podcast, What’s Underneath: Masculinity.

‘I started life in a really, really dark place,’ he shared. ‘My birth father was the most violent and depraved person I’ve ever met.

‘The abuse, the rapes, the beatings, the attacks that I suffered from my birth father is the kind of stuff they make horror movies about.’

He said that while they were eventually able to ‘escape his father,’ his mom quickly got remarried to a new man who was also bad news.

‘It went from a Stephen King movie to like, Scarface. It went from like a horror movie to drugs and crime,’ he explained.

He recalled moving around ‘constantly’ during his childhood, explaining that he was ‘never in a school for longer than six months at a time’ because his parents would either get ‘evicted’ or someone in the town would get suspicious of them.

‘[We’d move if] the cops tried to show up or social workers investigated,’ he continued.

Aaron, who is now a father-of-four, a public speaker, and gun control advocate, spoke out about his journey during an appearance on the What’s Underneath: Masculinity podcast

He said his main ‘goal was suicide by cop,’ but explained that the real ‘target’ was his ‘parents’ after suffering from years of abuse

‘I would always be getting picked on because I didn’t have clean clothes and I was dirty and I was smelly and I would show up to school filthy.’

He recalled one time when he ‘pooped his pants on the way to school’ and his teacher began to suspect something was wrong.

‘The next day the teacher had brought in a box of stuff like pants and school supplies and a coat and all these new things for me,’ he added.

‘And I come home and I’m really excited like, “Hey, check this out.” But then [we had to move] because it meant that the teacher was looking too close, someone was investigating too much and we needed to get out before problems hit.

‘That really taught me early on that reaching out for help was dangerous. ‘Cause if I reach out for help, if I try to get some kind of support, then my mom’s gonna go to jail and I’m gonna go to foster care.’

At age 14, Aaron said he decided to leave home because he ‘couldn’t take all the drugs and fighting and chaos anymore.’

He started sleeping in a nearby field and hanging out with ‘groupies’ who wanted to ‘see how far into the dark he would go.’

‘Instead of talking about girls or sports or movies, we talked about killing people,’ he revealed.

‘Looking back, it was a bunch of depressed kids navigating their emotion without any kind of adult supervision.’

He admitted that he also ‘started self-harming’ by ‘cutting’ himself with a razor, but when he realized that if he didn’t change something soon he would ‘die,’ he decided to try to get help.

He called social services – but their response would only make things worse.

‘When I got to the appointment, they actually had called my mom and brought her too,’ he remembered.

‘I [told them about my self-harm] but my mom got them to believe that I was just making it all up, that I was just doing it for attention, doing it for a rise.

Aaron (seen with Tamron Hall) said a tender moment with a friend named Mike changed everything. He shared: ‘He brought me inside and gave me some food, gave me a shower’

He explained that Mike’s actions ‘put the tiny granular bits of humanity back on the bottom shelf of hid life.’ He is seen after speaking at the FBI Academy in August

‘And they sent me home with her. When we got like three blocks away from the place she turns to me and she snarls, “Next time you should do a better job, and I’ll buy you the f**king razor blades.”

‘I’m like, “OK, you want me to be a monster, I’ll show you what a monster is now.”‘

After that, Aaron said he had nine more months of ‘personal destruction’ that saw him ‘being as toxic as possible to everybody.’

He was back to living in the field and felt completely ‘alone,’ while surviving off of free samples and food he could steal from a nearby grocery store.

His breaking point came during one extremely cold day. He recalled, ‘I woke up one morning and it was snowing.

‘I wasn’t just shaking, I was seizing. I could barely breathe, like, my whole body was just shaking like crazy.’

In one last attempt to get help, he said he entered a building that had a sign promoting ‘mental health’ workers on the front, but was told by someone inside that they ‘couldn’t help him.’

Defeated, he began to plan a mass shooting. He said on the podcast, ‘When I walked out of that door, my brain snapped like a mirror.

‘And that’s the spot where everything just broke. Right there, all the plans that I wanted to do crystallized in my head.

‘I knew what I was gonna do. I was going to go into either the school and attack the school food court, or I was going to go to the mall and attack the mall food court.’

He said his main ‘goal was suicide by cop,’ but explained that the real ‘target’ was his ‘parents.’

‘I wanted to make my parents deal with creating me. I wanted to make them deal with having a monster,’ he added.

For three days, he formulated his scheme and began saying goodbye to some of the people who had helped him throughout his journey.

But when he went to visit one friend, named Mike, who previously let him crash in his tool shed, a tender moment between them put his plans on hold.

‘Mike brought me inside and he sat me down and gave me some food, gave me a shower,’ Aaron recalled.

‘He kept on telling me, “You’re a good kid in a s**t world.” What he really did was he put the tiny granular bits of humanity back on the bottom shelf of my life.

‘It was like the waves were about to break and crash over everything. And when he did that, it pushed the water back and I was able to, instead of sloshing back and forth in that tsunami, I was finally able to put my feet on the ground and breathe for the first time in years.

‘He saw me at a time when I felt invisible, erased, like a void. Everybody else in my life looked at me like I was a monster.’

28 years later, Aaron said he is still close with Mike and credits him with saving his life, as well as the people he might have killed if he did go through with the shooting.

Aaron also said that becoming a dad was monumental in his recovery.

‘The birth of my first child – that finally gave me something outside of me that I could love and that mattered,’ he shared.

‘It gave me a goal, and the goal was give that kid a life that’s not mine. I took what happened to me and the parenting that I had growing up and used that as an example of how to parent my children. I just do the opposite.

He said he decided to share his journey after the Parkland shooting in 2018 – and he has since received messages from survivors of shootings who told him to ‘please keep going’

He concluded: ‘I hope [my story] can help someone else not go down that path and see that if they are [feeling that way], they’re not alone’

‘I tell my kids I love ’em so much it’s annoying. I’m at every game, I’m at every show, every sporting thing, I’m at all the different class things. Because that, to me, that’s really, really important.

‘Mike, my wife, and my kids, that’s what saved me. And I will do anything to make them proud.’

Aaron explained that he kept his previous plan a secret for most of his life, and it wasn’t until the Parkland high school shooting occurred in February 2018 that he decided to speak out about it publicly.

19-year-old Nikolas Cruz killed 17 people when he walked into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in the Miami town and opened fire.

Aaron recalled watching the news with his wife and one of their daughters, and feeling so ‘angry’ over the tragedy.

That’s when he realized that talking about what he went through might be able to help others.

He decided first to open up about it on Facebook, and his post quickly caught the attention of the media – and the response he received was miraculous.

‘I instantly went from thinking it was a dark spot in my life and [worrying that] if anybody ever found out about it, they’d hate me and I’d get attacked, to getting hit with [positive] responses from all over the planet,’ he concluded.

‘I got a message from the survivors of Columbine, they said, “Please keep going.” I got a message from some kids in Parkland who had seen my story, and they said, “Please keep going.”

‘That’s what really made me decide, “OK, I have this pivot point here. I could either stop, or I can go [forward].” And I decided to go.

‘That meant I had to drop everything from my past, let go of all of the shell that I had before … I needed to rip off the old me and step into who I was.

‘The personal power that I’ve gotten from being able to talk about my truth, it’s mind blowing and weird and exhilarating and powerful all at the same time.

‘I hope [my story] can help someone else not go down that path and see that if they are [feeling that way], they’re not alone.’

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