On January 29th 1979, Brenda Spencer killed two men and wounded nine children as they entered the Grover Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego. Spencer blazed away with rifle shots from her home directly across the street from the school. After 20 minutes of shooting, police surrounded Spencer’s home for six hours before she surrendered. Asked for some explanation for the attack, Spencer allegedly said, “I just don’t like Mondays. I did this because it’s a way to cheer up the day. Nobody likes Mondays.”
Spencer was only 16 years old at the time of her murderous attack. She was a problem child who was widely known as a drug abuser with a violent streak. She repeatedly broke the windows at the Cleveland school with her BB gun. Still, her father gave her a .22 semi-automatic rifle and ammunition as a Christmas gift at the end of 1978.
This seemed to inspire Spencer into more grandiose plans, and she started telling her classmates that she was going to do something “to get on TV.” When Monday morning rolled around, Burton Wragg, the principal of Cleveland Elementary, was opening the gates of the school when Spencer started firing her rifle from across the street. Wragg and custodian Michael Suchar were killed. “I just started shooting. That’s it. I just did it for the fun of it,” explained Spencer.
Spencer’s hatred for the first day of the school week was later memorialized by Bob Geldof, the leader of the rock group The Boomtown Rats, in the song, “I Don’t Like Mondays.”
Spencer, who pled guilty to two counts of murder and assault with a deadly weapon, is currently serving a term of 25 years to life at the California Institution for Women in Corona, California. She has been denied parole four times, most recently in 2009. She will be eligible again in 2019.
I never liked Monday’s myself but I’m beginning to think they aren’t so bad as long as they keep denying her parole. We have enough insane people in office. We don’t need more.
Posted by Donna | January 29, 2012, 09:48It appears she just keeps changing her story to get undeserved sympathy. At various times, it was abusive childhood, sexual abuse, drugs, and so on. She never accepts responsibility; it is always someone else to blame.
Posted by Craig Hill | January 29, 2012, 09:53Was she the first to do a school shooting?
Posted by Donna | January 29, 2012, 10:51No. There were quite a few before her. The most infamous was the 1966 University of Texas Massacre, in Austin, when Charles Whitman killed 16 and wounded 31 in a 96 minute rampage from the university’s observation deck.
Germany had several fatal shootings prior to this: the 1913 Bremen School Shooting left 5 dead; and the 1964 Cologne Massacre left 10 dead. In 1964 at Ma’alot, Israel, 25 were killed.
The first recorded school shooting in the US was the Pontiac’s Rebellion School Massacre in 1764, where four Lenape Indians shot and killed the schoolteacher and nine or ten children.
The first recorded student killing a teacher in the US was in 1853 at Louisville, Kentucky, where a student killed the headmaster in front of the students and was acquitted.
The first known mass shooting involving students was 1891 at Newburgh, New York, causing minor injuries. In 1927 at Bath, Michigan, the school treasurer used a rifle to detonate one of two bombs, killing a total of 44 people, mostly students.
Posted by Craig Hill | January 29, 2012, 12:35Wow, I had no idea. So the school shootings aren’t suddenly starting to happen, just happening more often recently. I really enjoy all of the details you give. You are very thorough.
Posted by Donna | January 30, 2012, 13:33I think we are just more aware of it now, because of the advances in international communication and media.
Posted by Craig Hill | January 30, 2012, 16:56