Anthony W. Case (born 1980) is an American astrophysicist who has designed instruments to study the solar wind on unmanned spacecraft. A native of Oregon, he earned his undergraduate degree in physics from the University of Oregon and a doctorate in astronomy at Boston University.[1] After college, he worked at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics for 13 years, where he helped develop instruments for the Parker Solar Probe, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and HelioSwarm; he has received several awards from NASA. Case is now employed in the private sector by BWX Technologies of Virginia.[2]

While a junior at Thurston High School in Springfield, Case was injured severely in a 1998 school shooting where two students were killed. It took him a year to recover and ended his hopes of playing baseball in college. As a result, he pursued science instead.[1]

Early life

Case grew up in the Springfield area.[3] At Thurston he played trombone in the school's jazz band. He was also an athlete; by his junior year he was a pitcher on the varsity baseball team, and team co-captain.[1][4]

1998 school shooting and aftermath

On the morning of May 21, 1998, near the end of the school year, Case was in the school cafeteria passing out buttons and flyers in support of a friend running for student-body president. As he was doing so, a freshman, Kip Kinkel, having killed both his parents at their home the previous night, entered and began shooting at the 300 students present[5] with the two pistols and semi-automatic rifles he was carrying in the trenchcoat he was wearing. Case took cover under a table, but four of the 51 rounds Kinkel fired struck him anyway—three in the back and one in the leg.[1][6]

Two students were killed and 24 others injured; Case did not realize the extent of his injuries until first responders found all the wounds. He was rushed to Sacred Heart Medical Center in nearby Eugene, where doctors found that in addition to the blood loss he had suffered, the bullet in his leg had become dislodged, causing further nerve and artery damage. They feared he might not survive,[1][6] and that even if he did his leg might have to be amputated.[7] One of the surgeons who operated on him said later that "he was dying before our eyes".[4]

Doctors had to first treat damage to Case's stomach and intestines, where bleeding was heavy due to 14 separate holes. Then they addressed another shot that had pierced both lungs. Only then could they turn to Case's right leg, where the bullet had pierced an artery and vein in the knee and the thigh above it, leaving the portion below without blood flow for a long time. A skin graft was necessary on the leg after the surgery, two days after the shooting. They were unsure whether he could fully recover, although Case believed he would be able to.[4]

The shooting, the latest of several at schools over the preceding 18 months, attracted national media attention due to Kinkel having opened fire in a crowded cafeteria with a semi-automatic rifle, suggesting more serious homicidal intent than the perpetrators of the previous shootings despite the minimal death toll. Life magazine ran a 10-page article about the aftermath illustrated in part by a photograph of Case in his hospital bed. He received get-well cards from all over the country, many sent by elementary school groups or youth baseball teams.[1]

After a week Case was discharged.[1] He started regular physical therapy sessions, hoping eventually to resume his extracurricular activities, including baseball. "It's good to be making progress," he told a local newspaper, "[but] it's frustrating, because I don't know for sure if it's going to come back." His therapist said that while Case was clearly regaining the range of motion in his leg, it was not clear how much of his muscles and sensation would come back. He believed that the intense pain Case was beginning to experience in his lower legs might have been due to compartment syndrome, in which swelling that should have occurred after the injuries did not due to the lack of blood. Two of the bullets remained in his body.[4]

Case threw out the first pitch at a local American Legion game played by his team. His father reported that some pitches he threw to him as a test "still had plenty of zip". But he did not return to school for the rest of the year.[4] By September he was able to, and had resumed playing with the jazz band. He still had no feeling in his lower right leg, could not move the foot, and wore a brace on the leg. But he was eager to resume classes, and felt no hesitation about returning to the cafeteria (now repainted) for the first time since he had been shot there in order to register for classes.[5] By springtime Case, despite still not having any feeling in the right foot, had recovered enough to resume playing baseball, pleasantly surprising his doctors. His coach admitted, however, that despite in one contest striking out nine batters in five innings he was not as good as he had been.[7] Case still hoped to be able to play in college and indicated on the anniversary of the shooting that he was basing his college search around that.[8]

In September of that year Kinkel abandoned plans to mount an insanity defense and pleaded guilty to four counts of murder and 26 of attempted murder that had been brought against him for the shooting. "I'd kind of like to know exactly why he did it," Case told a newspaper. "But we're never going to find out."[9] The plea included sentences for the murders that could have led to Kinkel being eligible for parole in 25 years, if no further sentence was imposed for the attempted murder charges. At the sentencing hearing on those counts two months later, Case, by then studying at Lane Community College, was among the last of the victims and family members to make a statement. Recounting how it was still extremely painful for him to walk without shoes, he said "Because I will be affected for the rest of my life, I feel that he should be, too." Judge Jack Mattison sentenced Kinkel to another 87 years for the attempted murders, bringing his total sentence to nearly 112 years, effectively a life sentence without parole.[1]

Academic career

Case later decided that the long-term effect of his injuries precluded him playing baseball at the college level, and turned to scientific study.[1] After his year at Lane, he studied at Oregon State for two years, then transferred to Oregon, closer to home, where he earned a B.S. degree in physics in 2004. Following that, he began graduate study in astronomy at Boston University (BU), receiving a doctorate in 2010.[2] During that period he worked as a research assistant for Harlan Spence, analyzing data from CRaTER, the Cosmic Ray Telescope for the Effects of Radiation on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which informed his dissertation, "Galactic Cosmic Ray Variations at the Moon". Case also worked to quantify the ambient solar wind's effect on coronal mass ejections (CMEs) using global magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) models to quantify the solar wind's effect on CME transit times.[10][11] This led to his research focus on particle measurement in space.[12]

After BU, Case began a postdoctoral fellowship at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge under Justin Kasper. He continued to analyze CRaTER data and began preliminary work on the solar cup for the Parker Solar Probe, scheduled to launch in 2018. In 2012 he became one of CfA's staff astrophysicists, working on Faraday cups, a device used to capture particles in a vacuum, for space probes. He was test lead on re-certifying the Deep Space Climate Observatory's cup and co-investigator on the Plasma Instrument for Magnetic Sounding (PIMS), a cup included on the Europa Clipper[10] probe scheduled to launch in October 2024 for a 2030 rendezvous with the similarly-named moon of Jupiter.[13]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Gonnerman, Jennifer (November 27, 2023). "What Happens to a School Shooter's Sister?". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved January 11, 2024.
  2. 1 2 "Anthony Case". ORCID. Retrieved January 11, 2024.
  3. ↑ Bull, Brian (January 4, 2022). "Springfield native turned astrophysicist part of historic solar mission". KLCC-FM. Retrieved January 11, 2024.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Associated Press (June 11, 1998). "Shooting victim recovering from bullet wounds". Albany Democrat-Herald. Albany, Oregon.
  5. 1 2 Cain, Brad (September 1, 1998). "Classes resume at Thurston High". Albany Democrat-Herald. Albany, Oregon.
  6. 1 2 Bull, Brian (May 5, 2022). "24 years after Thurston School Shooting, Tony Case's life has taken on a remarkable trajectory". KLCC-FM. Retrieved January 11, 2024.
  7. 1 2 O'Brien, Keith; Shipley, Sara (May 16, 1999). "Recovery Comes Slowly". Statesman Journal. Salem, Oregon.
  8. ↑ "A year later, Thurston victims are remembered". Albany Democrat-Herald. Albany, Oregon. May 21, 1999.
  9. ↑ O'Brien, Keith (September 25, 1999). "Plea avoids long trial". Statesman Journal. Salem, Oregon.
  10. 1 2 Brown, Anthony W. (September 30, 2020). "Curriculum Vitae" (PDF). Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Retrieved January 12, 2024.
  11. ↑ "CRaTER, Cosmic Ray Telescope for the Effects of Radiation". University of New Hampshire. 2015. Retrieved January 12, 2024.
  12. ↑ "Case, Anthony". Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved January 12, 2024.
  13. ↑ Foust, Jeff (February 10, 2021). "NASA to use commercial launch vehicle for Europa Clipper". SpaceNews. Archived from the original on February 16, 2021. Retrieved January 12, 2024.
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