School massacre
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A school massacre is an incident of attempted mass murder, involving at least one actual death, that occurs at a school. Unlike other forms of school violence, there is usually no single target; the perpetrator's objective is to kill as many people as possible. Sometimes these events are perpetrated by students; in other cases, expelled students, alumni, or even total outsiders commit them.
In the United States, school violence, especially of the gang-related sort, is more common in poor, inner-city schools, but student-perpetrated school massacres most often occur in affluent suburbs where they receive the most media attention due to severity in a brief period of time.
Like terrorist attacks, school massacres are very rare but traumatic. They receive extensive media coverage and often result in nationwide changes of school discipline and security policies.
The most widely publicized school massacre in the United States was the student-perpetrated Columbine High School shooting in Colorado.
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Epidemics
A secondary danger of school shootings is that, like youth suicide, they have a tendency to inspire "copycat" incidents or even epidemics of the same behavior. After the Columbine massacre, for example, a number of American and Canadian high schools had students plot "Columbine-like" attacks; the vast majority of these plots were half-baked and unlikely ever to be taken to execution; of those attempted, almost all were foiled. The 2005 Red Lake High School massacre (Red Lake, Minnesota, United States) was a notable exception, copying the element of a gunman in a black trench coat.
Although Columbine prompted a number of shooting plots, the majority of successful school shootings took place between 1996 and 1998, before the Columbine massacre. Presently, there are fears that China is experiencing its own epidemic of school violence. In the U.S., most school killings involved firearms; in China, they have mostly involved knives.
Notable school massacres
- Bath School Disaster, Bath, Michigan, United States in 1927
- University of Texas at Austin Tower Massacre, August 1, 1966,
- Ma'alot massacre (Israel) in 1974, by DFLP gunmen (see [1] (http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_1967to1991_terrorism_1970s.php))
- École Polytechnique Massacre (Montreal, Quebec, Canada) in 1989
- Dunblane massacre (Dunblane, Scotland, United Kingdom) in 1996
- Sanaa massacre (Sanaa, Yemen) in 1997
- Jonesboro massacre (Jonesboro, Arkansas, United States) in 1998
- Columbine High School massacre (Jefferson County, Colorado, near Littleton, Colorado, United States) in 1999
- Osaka school massacre (Ikeda, Osaka prefecture, Japan) in 2001
- Erfurt massacre (Erfurt, Germany) in 2002
- Beslan school hostage crisis (Beslan, Russia) in 2004
- Red Lake Minnesota massacre (Red Lake, Minnesota, United States) in 2005
Other primary and elementary school killings
| September 15, 1959 | Houston, Texas | Paul Orgeron detonates a bomb at Edgar Allan Poe Elementary School, killing himself, a teacher (Jennie Kolter), a custodian (James Arlie Montgomery), and three seven-year old boys, including Dusty Paul, Orgeron's son. |
| June 11, 1964 | Cologne-Volkhoven, Germany | A 42-year-old World War II veteran enters a primary school with a flame thrower and a lance. Eight children and two teachers die from his assault, 21 children are injured, most of them have severe and lasting burns. |
| January 1979 | San Diego, California | 17-year-old Brenda Ann Spencer took a rifle that she got for Christmas and headed to Cleveland Elementary School, which was across the street from her house. She fired rampantly, aiming to kill, as evidenced by the fact that the bullet wound in one injured child was mere inches from his heart. Eight children and a police officer were injured, and two men protecting the children died. When the six-hour incident ended, she shrugged, "I don't like Mondays. This livens up the day." She also noted that "There was no reason for it, and it was just a lot of fun"; "It was just like shooting ducks in a pond"; and "[The children] looked like a herd of cows standing around, it was really easy pickings." Soon after, the Dublin punk band Boomtown Rats wrote the song "I Don't Like Mondays", which was based on the incident. |
| January 17, 1989 | Stockton, California | 25-year-old Patrick Purdy fires an AK-47 at random at Cleveland Elementary School, killing five children (aged between 6 and 9) and wounding 29 others and one teacher, before taking his own life. The incident inspires a rash of legislation restricting the purchase of assault weapons. |
| February 29, 2000 | Mount Morris Township, Michigan | A 7-year-old boy shoots 6-year-old Kayla Rolland in the neck with a .32 semi-automatic handgun; Rolland dies, and the 6-year-old boy's father is charged for the crime. |
| June 1, 2004 | Sasebo, Japan | A 11-year-old 6th-grade girl slashes her classmate Satomi Mitarai at Okubo Elementary School in the town of Sasebo, in Nagasaki prefecture. Satomi Mitarai dies. This led to creation of the Nevada-tan meme. |
Other secondary school killings
| March 2, 1987 | Missouri | 12-year-old honor student Nathan Ferris brought a gun to school. He killed a student who teased him before he killed himself. |
| May 1, 1992 | Olivehurst, California | 20-year-old Eric Houston killed four people and wounded 10 in an armed siege at his former high school. He shot up the school in retribution for failing a grade. He was given the death penalty for the shooting. |
| January 18, 1993 | Grayson, Kentucky | 17-year-old Scott Pennington shot his English teacher in the head and a school janitor in the abdomen, killing both. |
| November 15, 1995 | Giles County, Tennessee | 17-year-old Jamie Rouse walks into the Richland School dressed in black and with a Remington Viper. He shoots two teachers in the head, killing one of them. He then attempted to kill the football coach, but a female student in the way was hit in the neck instead. |
| February 2, 1996 | Moses Lake, Washington | 14-year-old student Barry Loukaitis, dressed up as a wild west gunslinger, turned a hunting rifle on his algebra class at Frontier Junior High School, killing two classmates, Manuel Vela and Arnie Fritz, and a teacher, Leona Caires. |
| February 2, 1996 | Atlanta, Georgia | 12-year-old David Dubose kills a teacher in the hallway of his school. |
| January 27, 1997 | West Palm Beach | 13-year-old Tronneal Magnum shoots and kills another student in front of his school. |
| February 19, 1997 | Bethel, Alaska | 16-year-old student Evan Ramsey opens fire with a shotgun at Bethel High School, killing the school principal and one student, and wounding two others. |
| October 1, 1997 | Pearl, Mississippi | 16-year-old Luke Woodham stabbed his mother, then took a rifle to Pearl High School where he opened fire, shooting nine students. Woodham's ex-girlfriend, Christina Menefee, and Menefee's friend, Lydia Kay Dew, died. Six other boys were later accused of conspiracy. |
| December 1, 1997 | West Paducah, Kentucky | 14-year-old Michael Carneal carried five fully-loaded guns to Heath High School, shot at a prayer group, killing three (Jessica James, Nichole Hadley, and Kayce Steger) and wounding another five teenagers. Five of the victims were shot in the head, and three were hit in the upper torso. One of the wounded girls was paralyzed for life. |
| March 1998 | Jonesboro, Arkansas | 13-year old Mitchell Johnson and his 11-year-old cousin, Andrew Golden, steal three rifles and four handguns from their grandfather's house and shoot 5 dead and injure 10 at Westside middle school "just to scare his [Mitchell's] classmates". |
| April 24, 1998 | Edinboro, Pennsylvania | 14-year-old Andrew J. Wurst went to the school graduation dance where he shot and killed a popular science teacher. He subsequently opened fire on more students, wounding another teacher and two classmates before he ran out of ammunition. |
| May 19, 1998 | Fayetteville, Tennessee | three days before graduation, 18-year-old honor student Jacob Davis allegedly confronted, then shot and killed 18-year-old Nick Creson the parking lot of his school. Creson was dating Davis' ex-girlfriend. Davis allegedly then put the gun down and put Creson's head in his hands. |
| May 21, 1998 | Springfield, Oregon | Two boys, Ben Walker and Mikael Nickolauson, were killed and more than 20 other students were injured when 15-year-old Kip Kinkel opened fire in the school cafeteria of Thurston High School. Two bodies, believed to be (and later confirmed as) the youth's parents, were later discovered at the boy's home. Kip is now serving life in prison, without the possibilty of parole. |
| April 28, 1999 | Taber, Alberta | A 15-year-old boy, who had recently been withdrawn from public school to escape bullying, walked into W.R. Myers High School and shot two students with a .22 rifle, killing one (Jason Lang) and injuring the other. |
| October 20, 1999 | Houston, Texas | A 14-year-old boy named Estanislao Balderas stabs a 13-year-old boy named Samuel Avila in the head with a screwdriver in a fight at Deady Middle School. Samuel Avila dies. |
| November 20, 1999 | Deming, New Mexico | A boy shot 13-year-old Aralecy Tena in the back of the head in the lobby of Deming Middle School. Tena dies after being taken off of life support. |
| March 2000 | Brannenburg, Bavaria, Germany | A 16-year-old student at a private boarding school shoots a 57-year old teacher dead, before shooting himself. He had failed a cannabis test. |
| March 5, 2001 | Santee, California | 15-year-old Charles Andrew Williams opens fire in a boy's bathroom at Santana High School, killing two students (Randy Gordon and Bryan Zuckor), he then opens the door of the bathroom and shoots out into the commons area, wounding thirteen. |
| April 24, 2003 | Red Lion, Pennsylvania | 14-year-old James Sheets shoots dead his middle school principal Eugene Segro in the busy school cafeteria before committing suicide. |
| September 24, 2003 | Cold Spring, Minnesota | 15-year-old Jason McLaughlin shoots Aaron Rollins and Seth Bartell at Rocori High School. Rollins dies the same day; Bartell dies October 10 of injuries sustained in the attack. |
| January 13, 2004 | Den Haag, Netherlands | Murat D. kills Hans van Wieren, a 49 year old teacher at Terra College. |
| February 2, 2004 | Washington, D.C. | At about 10:30 a.m. EST, a teenager(?) opens fire at Ballou High School, killing one 16-year-old boy and wounding an 18-year-old. |
| February 3, 2004 | Palmetto Bay, Florida | Fifteen minutes prior to the start of classes, at about 8:45 a.m. EST, 14-year old Michael Hernandez stabbed and slit the throat of 14-year-old classmate, Jaime Rodrigo Gough, while in a restroom at Southwood Middle School, a public music magnet school in Suburban Miami. Hernandez was tried as an adult, and sentenced to life in prison without parole. A search of his home revealed he had concocted plans to murder several classmates, and even his younger sister. His journal revealed he was obsessed with perfection, admired Nazi Germany, Hitler, and Fascism. |
| March 30, 2004 | Gary, Indiana | Neal Boyd IV is shot in the parking lot of Wallace High School. |
| August 4, 2004 | Beijing, China | Xu Heping, a 51-year-old doorman with a history of mental illness who feared that he may be made redundant, stabbed 15 children and three teachers while they were playing in the schoolyard at the nursery in Beijing University's Number One Hospital. One child was killed. |
| September 28, 2004 | Carmen de Patagones, Argentina | A 15-year-old boy killed three classmates (two girls and a boy) and wounded another five in a high school in the city of Carmen de Patagones, in Buenos Aires Province. The boy, known by the initials R. S. and nicknamed Junior, shoot a 9 mm pistol belonging to his father, an officer of the Prefectura Naval (Coast Guard), inside the classroom after the ceremony of flag hoisting. The boy was arrested and taken to Bahía Blanca. In December 2004 he was transfered to a penal institution for young offenders in La Plata |
| November 26, 2004 | Ruzhou, China | At around midnight, an intruder stabbed 8 students to death and injured 4 others at Ruzhou's Number Two High School. There was no obvious motive. This was the sixth such incident in China in four months. A suspect was later arrested after he tried to commit suicide. |
Other post-secondary school killings
| August 24, 1992 | Montreal, Quebec, Canada | Disgruntled and delusional professor Valery Fabrikant murders four colleagues and shoots a secretary. |
Attempted murder
- 8 July 1996, Blakenhall, Wolverhampton, England: Horrett Campbell, a 33-year-old man with paranoid schizophrenia, invaded a teddy bears' picnic being held St Luke's Primary School and slashed three young children and four adults with a machete. Lisa Potts, a 20-year-old nursery nurse, was awarded the George Medal for her actions, saving children's lives despite suffering severe injuries.
- June 15, 1998, Richmond, Virginia: 14-year old Quinshawn Booker fires a pistol in a crowded hallway of Armstrong High School as other students take final exams, injuring two adults.
- May 20, 1999, Conyers, Georgia: 15-year-old Thomas J. Solomon injures six classmates at Heritage High School.
- 1999, Bridgman, Michigan: Bridgman, Michigan school shooting plot
- 2002, China: A kindergarten doctor confessed to putting rat poison in salt at a rival nursery. 70 children and two teachers became seriously ill.
- May 7, 2004, Randallstown, Maryland: 18-year-old Matthew McCullough and 24-year-old Tyrone Devon Brown shot four students from Randallstown High School following a brawl with football players in a parking lot. One of the victims is left partially paralysed.
- September, 2004, Suzhou, near Shanghai, China: A man armed with a knife and homemade explosives attacked 28 children at a kindergarten.
- September 20 2004, Shandong, China: Jia Qingyou stabbed 24 children with a kitchen knife at the No. 1 Experimental Primary School. He was executed on November 24 2004
School shootings in popular culture
Films about school shootings
- The Deadly Tower starring Kurt Russell
- Elephant directed by Gus Van Sant
- Bowling for Columbine directed by Michael Moore
- Zero Day
- Bang Bang, You're Dead
- Heathers
- If...
Films with school shootings
- The Basketball Diaries starring Leonardo di Caprio
Songs about school shootings
- "Kinslayer" by Nightwish
- "The Ballad of Charles Whitman" by Kinky Friedman
- "Sniper" by Harry Chapin
- "The Homecoming Queen's Got a Gun" by Julie Brown
- "Jeremy" by Pearl Jam
- "I Don't Like Mondays" by The Boomtown Rats (also covered by Tori Amos)
- "Youth of a Nation" by P.O.D.
- "Educated Hate" by Rorshack
Novels about school shootings
See also
External links
- Website about Rachel Scott - vicitim of Columbine (http://www.RachelScott.com)
- Sidebar to "Killing Our Future" (http://www.9-1-1magazine.com/magazine/1998/0798/feas/22rigg/24riggSB.html)
- Start 'Em Young (http://www.vpc.org/studies/start3.htm)
- Columbine High School shooting, then and now (http://columbine.free2host.net/)
- Schoolboy killing stuns Canada (http://www.guardian.co.uk/massacre/Story/0,2763,204724,00.html)
- Timeline of Kip Kinkel ordeal (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/kinkel/kip/cron.html)
- Crime Library article about School Shootings (http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/weird/kids1/index_1.html)
- BBC timeline of US school shootings (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4371403.stm)
- List of school shootings from 1974-2000 (http://www.secretservice.gov/ntac/chicago_sun_20001016/case15.htm)
- Indianapolis Star: School violence around the world (November 2004) (http://www.indystar.com/library/factfiles/crime/school_violence/school_shootings.html)