Randy Stair (September 17th, 1992 – June 8th, 2017), mostly known by his online pseudonym Andrew Blaze, was a mentally ill American who resided in Dallas, Pennsylvania.
He murdered three of his coworkers in a mass shooting at a local Weis Supermarket and shortly thereafter killed himself. After the shooting, it was discovered Stair had left a big social media footprint, especially on YouTube. He was most notably obsessed with the character Ember from the Nickelodeon cartoon Danny Phantom and even made a fictional group of girls all based on the character called “Ember's Ghost Squad”. Even though Stair did not commit a school shooting, he idolized the Columbine High School shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, wrote about committing a school shooting, made an animated video of a school shooting, and wrote that “Weis Markets is officially Columbine High School.” He said that he would have gone back to his old high school and shoot it up, but it had been demolished the year he graduated.
He also believed he was a woman trapped in a man's body (Transgender) and would often cross-dress when his family wasn't home, according to him in a video. He wrote in his journal and filmed home videos of himself planning the massacre, and discussing his thoughts, which were all uploaded onto his now-deleted Mediafire page. He also planned to put a propane tank on his boss's desk. However, it didn't explode.
Randy Stair was strongly opposed to participating in therapy or seeing a counselor as he believed that doing so “alters who you are”. However, based on Stair's claims and disclosure of significant events in his life, his mental health was anything but such.
Starting from his middle school years, evidence of Randy Stair's disheveled mental state began to emerge. In written stories Stair had presented to his English teacher, the main characters would almost always end up being involved in some deadly incident that would kill said characters. Despite this, Stair claims that his works were never questioned by instructors. It was around this time that Randy's fascination with death and the afterlife became an obsession, but was not a worthy cause of concern until Stair entered high school.
Stair reports that his suicidal ideation intensified by the time he [Randy] started high school. He began pondering methods of suicide, including asphyxiation and burning. On a trip to New York with his family, Randy reported that he contemplated jumping from a skyscraper to his death. In home videos filmed produced by Randy years later, he expressed remorse regarding the decision to not take his life during his teenage years.
YouTube career Early career (PioneersProductions 2008-2014)
Randy Stair, more well-known as Andrew Blaze online, had multiple YouTube channels over the course of nine years. The first of such channels was opened on June 9th, 2008, and was called PioneersProductions. Almost all the videos made on PioonersProductions between 2008 and 2009 were deleted and are lost forever, the oldest video still remaining on the channel is a November 2009 video entitled “Mr. Horse Head”. The video featured a character by the same name, which was a toy horse head on a stick. Over the years, the channel introduced two more characters such as a stuffed whale toy, who was first featured in the video “A Whale of a Party”, and Froggy, who was a plastic toy frog and was first featured in the video “Frogs Are Jerks”. Other characters including “Chip” were also made.
The first video on the channel that was a little more serious than usual was a video uploaded on April 4th, 2012, called “Somber”. It showed Andrew walking around and throwing rocks into a body of water, as well as carving something on a rock. There was no talking in the video.
The search for Remember and the beginning of Ember's Ghost Squad (EGS) (2014)
Andrew was becoming obsessed with Danny Phantom character Ember Mclain. Andrew also had another channel by the name of “WorthlessToaster”. One day, in 2014, he got a comment by a user named “SmileForTheGhost” saying that they had found the HD quality version of the song on the singer's website. Part of the reason that the song took so long to be found via this method is due to the credits of the episode that had the song (Fanning the Flames) misspelled the name of the singer, Robbyn Kirmssé. Andrew uploaded the video on his “WorthlessToaster” channel, where it got over 3 million views over five years.
The PioonersProductions Finale Series
The finale series was a series of five videos uploaded on the PioneersProductions channel, the first one called “Amnesia Rape”, in which a weight falls on Randy's head and then he is tied up by froggy and whale, who film him being raped. The second one called “The Search for Remember”, in which Froggy reveals to Randy that he has the full HD Remember track on a laptop, but then runs away with the laptop and drops it into the water, when then it is revealed to be a dream.
At the end of the video, Randy looks online and see's the HD version. The third video, called “Extinction”, is when Randy Murders Froggy and the whale and puts their bodies into a box. The fourth video, called “Resurrection”, is where Randy, who feels remorse over murdering the whale and Froggy, is chased by their ghosts Ember who uses her powers to stop Froggy and the Whale. The final video in this series, named “Absolution”, is where Andrew puts the toys in a box and burns the box, appearing to cremate the toys. The toys were actually taken out of the box through a hole in the bottom of the box.
Ember's Ghost Squad
The final creative venture of Randy's life was Ember's Ghost Squad, or EGS for short, which was based on Ember Mclain, a character from Danny Phantom. Randy mainly put his focus on the EGS tapes, which were recorded before the characters in the series died. He cites one of the characters, MacKenzie West, as being his soulmate. It was here he adopted his nickname, and what he is mostly known by today, Andrew Blaze.
In late 2016, Andrew began working on what would be his final video, called “Westborough High Massacre/Goodbye”. Which featured Andrew and another EGS character, Rachael, shooting up a high school, likely based on the one Andrew Blaze went to as a teenager. There had been multiple tape episodes called “Conspiring a Massacre” in which Andrew's character in the show and Rachael both conspired to shoot up Westborough High. These 'conspiring a massacre' tapes are not to be confused with Andrew's actual suicide tapes that he uploaded to his Mediafire page and shared before the actual Weis Market shooting.
Weis Market Shooting
At approximately 11:00 p.m. on June 7th, 2017, Stair arrived at Weis Markets for his late-night shift. Before performing his typical store duties, Stair blocked an emergency exit near the building's crew area. Not long after, Stair returned to the crew area and blocked any remaining emergency exits. After securing all the store's exits, including locking the automatic doors located at the entrance, Randy equipped himself with two pistol-grip pump action Mossberg 500 shotguns.
Stair prowled the store, killing three co-workers. Of the five total employees working the store that night, Kristan Newell was the only survivor. Newell, who had been distracted and listening to music whilst the events unfolded, was approached by Stair. Stair remained behind Newell for approximately five seconds before Newell, still unaware of the situation, turned to walk down another isle. Newell became aware of the attack when Stair began shooting at store merchandise, including a glass object, and immediately fled to the crew room where she contacted the police. The shooting concluded when Stair took his own life via self-inflicted shotgun blast to the head near the deli section. Investigators later discovered that, despite arming himself with two weapons, all fired rounds were ejected from only one of Stair's shotguns.
Motivation and Character
Although Randy Stair reportedly endured bullying in his youth, it was, from what can be gathered, not the defining factor behind his actions. Journal entries dated from November 23rd, 2016 through June 5, 2017, contain disturbing revelations about Stair's character. In these entries, Stair expressed an admiration of the perpetrators of the Columbine high school massacre, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. The contents of his journal even reflect those of Eric Harris, the elder of the two Columbine shooters. The first line of Stair's first entry pays homage to Harris with the quote, “I hate the fucking world”, a line from Harris's journal. Randy's revelations, however, were not limited to his journal. Stair dedicated an animated video to the shooting, titled “The Westborough High School Massacre”, which depicts a school shooting similar to that of Columbine. Stair's usage of shotguns and propane tanks, along with three purchased 'Natural Selection' t-shirts, also solidifies an inspiration derived from the shooters.
In loving memory
Victims
Victoria Brong, 26
Brian Hayes, 47
Terry Sterling, 63
