Osborne, an abused, troubled youth, witnesses say

The grandfather testified today that Jesse Osborne became increasingly withdrawn after his earlier expulsion from an Oconee County school, but the abuse the boy faced was ongoing up until the time the then 14-year-old Jesse killed his father. Tommy Osborne was the leadoff witness on the third day of Jesse Osborne’s sentencing hearing. Tommy Osborne testified that his son Jeff was often violent when he drank, which was frequent, and emotionally and physically abusive to his son. Jesse Osborne had become withdrawn even deeper into himself, Tommy Osborne said, after his expulsion from West Oak Middle School in Oconee County for bringing a knife and machete to the school ostensibly to defend himself and another student from a bully. The boy had no one he considered friends, his grandfather said, except people he encountered on the Internet. Investigators earlier this week testified that before the 2016 killings Jesse Osborne carried out extensive online research about school shootings and communicated the outlines of his plans in online groups. Dr. Donna Schwartz Maddox, a forensic psychologist, testified that Osborne at the time of the shootings did not have the normal emotional development of a 14-year-old and, according to others who know him, had developed an obsession with the Columbine school shooting of some years ago. Her investigation revealed that Jesse Osborne had been subjected to frequent abuse, Maddox said, including beatings with a belt by his father. The abuse, she said, was part of a wider problem in the family. Even though the family was “upper middle class,” she said, it was “broken from top to bottom.”