WA: pathogenesis?

A description of one of the things that criminal defense lawyers do, or try to do - make sense of the senseless. From the continuing coverage of Tacoma mall shooter Dominick Maldonado:

Defense attorney Staurset said part of his job will be to figure out why it happened.

“Anything as horrendous as this must have some genesis,” he said. “It’s my job to make sense of something that’s not easy to make sense of. How does an otherwise attractive man of 20 years old end up with a gun at the mall on a Sunday?”

The attorney said he thinks things in Maldonado’s background – “worse than ridicule” – will explain the shooting.

The veteran defense attorney said he doesn’t yet know Maldonado well, but he knows the kind of client he is.

“I think this is the Columbine client,” Staurset said. “I think his background is exactly like all the high school shooters.”