MacLEAN

Posted by Cathy Gowdy on Monday, May 30, 2011 at 07:45:13 :

Independent Journal
Thursday, November 10, 1966
Page 1

San Rafael High Boy, 15, Kills Himself, Leaves Note

“I liked a girl and I can’t have her.”

Rex Alexander MacLean, a healthy adolescent boy, loved by his family, write those words, then snuffed our his life with a .25-caliber bullet at San Rafael High School yesterday, police said.

The 15-year-old high school freshman, son of Mr. and Mrs. Neil MacLean of 50 Fair Drive, San Rafael, stood in a boy’s washroom at the school and fired one bullet from his mother’s .25-caliber automatic pistol into his brain at 11:05 a.m., police said.

A classmate, standing at her locker near the washroom, heard the shot but dismissed it as a firecracker. Another student, sophomore Larry Petersen, entered the room 10 minutes later and found MacLean lying face down in a pool of blood.

The boy was still alive, and the weapon was lying nearby, police said. Doctors at Marin General Hospital sought to revive him for eight hours. At 7:30 p.m. he died.

Searching his clothes later, police found a note scrawled on school binder paper, which read in part: “I killed myself because I like a girl and I can’t have her.”

Police said the note named a girl whom MacLean had never met. He had seen her in a class they attended each day, officers reported.

Mr. and Mrs. MacLean told police that the gun was kept in their house and their two sons, Rex and 14-year-old Lance MacLean, both knew where it was stored.

William C. Bradley, assistant county coroner, said the mother and father were unable to explain their son’s depression.

“They told be the family was very close,” he said. “They never left the house without kissing each other goodbye. They said their son was an average student and loved music. He was sociable and got along with everyone.”

The family moved to Marin from Arizona where young MacLean was born, in July, Bradley said. MacLean is a salesman for a liquor distributing firm in Santa Rosa.

Police said young MacLean bragged to a fellow student that he had a pistol as they walked home the day before.

The boy attended his first and second period classed yesterday, then was not seen or heard from again until the shot resounded at the end of third period.

Funeral arrangements for the youth are pending at Harry M. William Mortuary in San Rafael. His family requests that no cards or flowers be sent, the mortuary said today.