ASHLAND — Awaking Friday morning to see the Aurora movie theater massacre reports coming in, the first person I thought of was Jimmy Ryland. Today he’s 35, a devoted husband and father of three, a Kentucky State Police trooper and local real estate agent.

But on the afternoon of Jan. 18, 1993, he was just like all the Colorado kids I see on TV today, shocked and horrified, death-defying lives escaping a bloodbath.

Looking into the smiling face of this highly gifted young scientist and scholar, James Holmes, he’s withdrawn, but ready to leave his desk at the back of the classroom and boldly slaughter the innocent,  a joker in the dark night.

Like Scott Pennington, who now sits at the Kentucky State Penitentiary. The boy the Carter County community fled from that never-to-be forgotten, heartlessly cold, bitter Martin Luther King Jr. day.

He shares the same façade. There’s U.S. Rep. “Gabby” Giffords’ lone gunman, Jared Lee Loughner, who shot Giffords and 18 others at the Tucson Safeway. Revolting Seung-Hui Cho, who singlehandedly executed 32 at Virginia Tech. And, early Friday morning, on the other side of town, at Aurora’s Century 16 theater, open wounds turn back to 1999 Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.

We don’t want to say these assassins are analogous, but, to me, they’re callous spirits akin in sin. I blame Mr. Pennington. I think he began much of the chaos.

That’s why I checked on my friend, Jimmy Ryland, on Saturday. I knew it must flood over him, gruesome recollections of East Carter High School Room 108 — the day 17-year-old honor student Pennington declared war on his devoted English teacher Deanna McDavid and the always kind school custodian Marvin Hicks.

It seems Ryland was the last person to speak to Pennington before the tragedy. In sixth period sociology class Ryland asked him for a pencil. Scott never looked up from his paperback of “The Hugo Winners,” a series of sci-fi short stories by Isaac Asminov.

He handed the pencil to Ryland, never making eye contact or acknowledging him.

The bell rang. Scott went to the school bathroom, pulled a Smith and Wesson six-shot revolver from his duffel bag, quietly placed it inside his jean jacket pocket, and headed to McDavid’s seventh period classroom. He shot her in the head. When Hicks came in the room to help, Pennington fired a bullet into his gut. The 21 kids in class were held hostage until Pennington released them in small groups.

You see the link. No word of warning, vain, unconscionable.

The Colorado movie massacre takes Ryland back, almost 20 years now. He was directly upstairs from McDavid’s class when shots rang out. As police searched outcast Pennington’s jacket pocket two hours later, they found the book Ryland remembers, a thin strip of paper marking page 113.

“It seems any shooting brings back those memories of looking out the classroom window and seeing those kids running across the parking lot,” he said. It makes Ryland wonder if anyone could have stopped Pennington — or Holmes.

“My first thoughts after hearing about the Colorado shooting are what are we missing here? What clues are right in front of us that we don’t see?” he said. “This man did not act on this overnight. This was a well-thought-out, executed plan of attack. What, as a society, are we missing that might prevent this?”

As a young person, Ryland mulled the ECHS murders, an upheaval of our area and nation, a base beginning to school violence. He became a cop. Ryland joined KSP in 2000. He’s exceedingly watchful at work, trying to stay safe.

He says its police training. I say its history.

As our country faces habitual carnage, carried out by frenetic fools on a rampage, Ryland carries a high sense of awareness — the caliber gained only by those who live to tell the tale.

It makes him overprotective of his children. He taught them young if, God forbid, they’re faced with danger, how to stay alive.

“Well, as I always say to my kids, be aware of your surroundings at all times. If something looks out of the ordinary, say something. Know where your points of escape are, and know what you would do in situations like this. It’s no different than planning an escape route at home in case of a fire or so forth.

“I tell my kids that people do bad things and we might have to react to that someday.”

Seeing the Colorado shootings, Ryland runs the scenario in his mind, asking what he would do if it was his family in that megaplex.

“I see things normal people don’t. I also see and even feel the hurt those things cause people. Police officers are human beings; we hurt just like everyone else. It’s just, in our case; we may have to put it on hold till our job is done.”

Ryland doesn’t see it as I do; he refuses to put a face of these types of crimes. He grasps crimes like this could continue across America. But we must be proactive.

“I think it’s an unreasonable assumption to think we can stop these kinds of acts from happening. I don’t believe that a certain gun that’s used, or certain persons, fit the bill to commit these acts of violence,” Ryland said.

“I think, as a whole, we need to be more aware of the clues being presented to us by these individuals and try to thwart these attacks from happening.”

A gray 1993 morning, at a small home on a dirt road in Rush, Este Pennington asked her son a question as he headed off to school:

“Scott, why are you taking a book bag?” she recapped to detectives, as her son rarely carried it to school. He told his mom he had several library books to return and lots of studying to do that night. Mrs. Pennington picked up the satchel. It was heavy, but thought her son’s explanation satisfactory.

He was a good shot, enjoyed target practice with his Papaw, and also owned a Ruger .357 Magnum and a Ruger .27 caliber, single six revolver. His father, Gary, said he was a “good boy,” and both parents didn’t see anything “like this” coming.

Young Scott always did his lab experiments on his own in second period physics. He sat alone in the back of the class and disassociated himself from others. The day of the shooting, as his veteran teacher, Rosemary Littleton called roll, she learned classmate Donnie Malone was absent. Scott piped up, “no big loss.” When he rarely spoke, it was often sarcastic.

Roger Gillum taught Scott in Advanced Topics in Mathematics and AP Calculus — where he carried an A-minus in the college level class. He was a good student, although he typically didn’t show his work. In fifth period math class the day of the shooting, Gillum returned tests and went over problems on the chalkboard. Most of his students did poorly and he planned to give the test over.

Scott read a book during the tutorial. Gillum knew about the teen’s apparent fixation with death and suicide and his dark writings, and was even apprehensive of the kid.

In hindsight who would guess this quiet Carter County kid was calculating a killing? As Holmes attended doctoral classes at University of Colorado-Denver, who knew he might premeditate murders at the “The Dark Knight Rises.” Today 12 are dead with 58 injured.

Every nauseating event and attack brings it back. We must continue to learn from congruent, copycat lives of these portraits of hate. Study what they are, so this never occurs again.