Caution: Do Not Provoke

This is not a trick question. It is merely a puzzled question: What happens when a 22-year-old man gets into an argument with his mother over his not having kept up-to-date in paying his rent to her? Most well-adjusted people would apologize and assure their parent that it is their intention to be more responsible, but having fallen on hard times they need a little measure of space. That what they owe will be paid in due time. And ask for patience.

This evidently does not happen when the young man in question is prone to lack of patience himself. And is given to acting spontaneously, without much thought evidently, of the outcome of his surrender to a nightmare solution. Travis Brandon Baumgartner of Edmonton had been employed with G4S Cash Solutions for two months. He was an armed guard with an armoured car company.

In Edmonton he and his colleagues were dispatched to a cash machine delivery around midnight on June 15, 2012. Travis Baumgartner not only had an argument with his mother about money that day, he had debts of $60,000, with 26 cents holding down his bank account. And before he set off to work he had messaged a friend with his intention to rob the armoured car that night.

Just after midnight on June 15, 2012, students living on campus heard the sound of gunfire through the HUB Mall on the University of Alberta campus. Travis Baumgartner aimed  for the heads of his co-workers; Michelle Shegelski, 26, Brian Ilesic, 35, and Eddie Rejano, 39. Matthew Schuman, the fourth man he targeted was injured but he would recover.

After shooting his co-workers, he drove to a friend's house where he left some cash, then dropped $64,000 on his mother's kitchen table. After which he tried to cross the border into the U.S. Border agents matched his licence plate to an alert and called for assistance. He was taken into custody. $333,580 in cash was found in a backpack

"I did it all I killed those people and robbed their truck" he said to officers in a British Columbia jail cell in June 2012. On Monday, in a packed Edmonton courtroom he accepted responsibility for the killings at the University of Alberta HUB Mall. He pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder, one count of first-degree murder and one of attempted murder.

There were a dozen victim impact statements at the trial. Michelle Shegelski's widower stated that his life had been gutted of joy and he entertains thoughts of his own death. "I just can't bring myself to face the world alone", he said. Eddie Rejano's window with her youngest son beside her said "I never thought of becoming a widow at the age of 32. My heart bleeds for our two boys."

Their loved one's murderer had confided to an Edmonton police detective that everyone at G4S teased him. "I think I was just mad at everybody", he said, describing himself as having been consumed in a "blind rage". Now Travis Baumgartner has 40 years of his life to relive that blind rage and think about the deadly shots he fired at the back of his victims' heads.

Though it's debatable whether he will suffer any pangs of agony over the lives of the living whom his blind rage robbed of a life of happiness.