Stunned by the tragic shooting, Bob Geldof, the lead singer of the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, wrote a song titled I Dont Like Mondays. Released just months after the attack, the tune topped the U.K. charts for four weeks, and it also received extensive airtime in the U.S. And according to The Advertiser, the song did not go unnoticed by Spencer. One cannot fully repent or be fully rehabilitated until the restoration process has been complete. As a child, he suffered terrifying nightmares of Brenda Spencer "popping out of the bathtub to finish me off." Major Dabbs eventually resigned his commission in favor of medical school where he delivered 60 babies and occasionally wrung human blood out of his socks. Thanks for another well written, informative article. Spencer was a predictably poor student with truancy issues, but she had a talent for photography. I have always hoped that at least us Americans would have the wisdom to forgo our partisan prejudices and vote-in officials that value the rule of law and do their duty to protect law abiding citizens. A San Diego judge had a defendants 13-year-old daughter handcuffed. Bettmann/Contributor/Getty ImagesBrenda Spencer had a reputation for being a problem child who struggled with numerous health issues. As of 2015, there had been more than seven million copies sold. Were we being completely honest the quickest way to restore peace and harmony to the species would be to just lock up all the guys. Figuring out whether you were a boy or a girl used to seem a fairly straightforward chore. House where Brenda Ann Spencer fired the shots at the Cleveland Elementary shooting. It might have even changed the nation. He noted that Spencer shot people 150 feet away with deadly accuracy, not as one under the influence of drugs or alcohol. I realized shed never have a realistic answer of why she did it.. Although it did not make the Top 40 in the U.S., it still received extensive radio airplay (outside of the San Diego area) despite the Spencer family's efforts to prevent it. Five students were killed and thirty were injured. brenda spencer father, wallace. Related Tags: On the morning of January 29, 1979, children began to line up outside Grover Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego, California. Spencers former attorney, Michael McGlinn, who has represented juvenile offenders for decades, believes his former client didnt know what she was doing and no longer poses a threat to society. In addition to the capacity to carry a child to term, one of the two genders is just a bit more innately rotten than the other. He and other wounded children were hustled to the auditorium to await an ambulance. We will see next year, I believe, that even a super-majority in Congress cannot force a rogue administration to obey and enforce duly enacted laws (as at the border, the Hillary debacle, the Russian hoax, Hunter-Joe, habeus corpus for 1/6 trespassers and on and on and on. In Norway in 2011, a man killed 77 people in a mass shooting. Dan Barnes is now principal at Grossmont High School. A quick pain subsided as she was rushed into the cafeteria, to safety. [31], The 1982 JapaneseAmerican documentary film The Killing of America depicts the incident. Like Cam Miller, she never sought professional help to cope with the trauma's aftermath. And Miller has never forgotten the horror he felt when he lay in an ambulance next to an inert Suchar and, as the ambulance rounded a curve, the custodian rolled on top of him, face to face. His name was Coach Smith. Dad set the direction, and I took the path. Hopefully these kids will get counseling." She had skipped class that day and later claimed that she had washed her epilepsy medicine down with alcohol. She grew up relatively poor and spent most of her early life with her father, Wallace Spencer, with whom she had a turbulent relationship. Born in 1962 in San Diego, California, and raised across the street from the Grover Cleveland Elementary School, by her sixteenth birthday Brenda stood all of 5'2" and sported bright red hair. In addition to being reliable, accurate, and customizable, the 10/22 was also designed from the outset for ease of manufacture. Eleven hit their mark eight children and three adults. As the children lined up outside of the gates, Spencer took out the .22 semiautomatic rifle that shed received as a Christmas gift from her father. We didnt understand why she was shooting at us, Rintoul said. "Dad didn't want me to see a psychologist. Christy Buell, a survivor of the 1979 shooting, said that she was "shocked, saddened, horrified" by the headlines concerning the 1989 shooting. Aged 16 at the time of the shooting, she was 5'2" (157cm) and had bright red hair. Thats because at that time in that place it would have been literally unimaginable to shoot up a school. State prisons are even worse. In junior high, a neighbor went around telling people, `There's Cam, he's shot,' and I'd deny it." I did however spend a couple of years working in a Federal maximum security Penitentiary (USP). A 16-year-old girl, Brenda Spencer, who lived in a house across the street from the school, was convicted of the shootings. The Cleveland Elementary School shooting was a school shooting that took place on January 29, 1979, at Grover Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego, California, United States. It was Jan. 29, 1979, and in a tranquil San Diego suburb, Grover Cleveland Elementary School had just become ground zero in an undeclared war. brenda spencer father, wallaceristorante sardo santa teresa di gallura MANHALNET COMPANY cerco lavoro taranto lama passi e trafori delle alpi scuola primaria At least once a night, he remembers, he would wake his mother and have her walk him around the house, to the back where there was a wall of windows. Wallace Spencer was an enthusiastic gun collector, and his daughter appeared to share his interest in this hobby early on. Principal Wragg rushed into the line of fire to drag children to safety and was shot down as well. He always talked about that blood stain on the principals shirt.. After her parents separated, she lived with her father, Wallace Spencer, in virtual poverty; they slept on a single mattress . McGlinn believes Spencer's accounts that her divorced father, Wallace Spencer, sexually abused her and that under his influence she began dressing as a boy and learned to hunt and shoot with him. Brenda Spencer's father still lives across the street from the old school, and if Brenda were ever paroled, Cam figures, that is where she would return. The young woman eventually left him, but he lived in the same house across the street from the school until his death in 2016. For Christmas 1978 her father, Wallace, had given her a .22 rifle as a present. She grew up relatively poor and spent most of her early life with her father, Wallace Spencer, with whom she had a turbulent relationship. As ours is doing quickly. The school custodian, a 56-year-old Navy veteran named Mike Suchar, also ran to the sounds of battle. She was sentenced to concurrent terms of 25 years to life in prison. He drove it into the parking lot to serve as a shield while officers and school staff removed the wounded. Spencer fired at the school for about 20 minutes and famously told a reporter who reached her by phone that she was shooting because I just dont like Mondays I did this because its a way to cheer up the day.. Nowadays things are a bit more opaque. Spencer shot and wounded eight elementary school kids. The developer installed a memorial, now at the corner of Lake Atlin and Lake Angela streets, to Wragg and Suchar. Brenda Spencer was a young girl turned deadly killer. She said the school victims looked like a herd of cows for gathering around the wounded, making them easy pickings.. He didnt even call the boys parents. (Disturbingly, Wallace Spencer later married one of his daughters 17-year-old cellmates who bore a striking resemblance to her.) The Grover Cleveland Elementary School was demolished in 2018. Since 1979, the United States and other nations have seen a dramatic rise in the frequency of mass shootings and the casualty list. The Archangel Nomad kit is a drop-in polymer chassis that makes the 10/22 into a proper facsimile of an HK G36 assault rifle. Norm Buell found himself on the Spencers' doorstep a couple of months after the shooting. Eventually, Spencer surrendered peacefully. First introduced in 1964, the Ruger 10/22 is likely the most successful .22 rifle ever devised. She resembled Brenda.. Across the street, Brenda Ann Spencer was watching them from her house, which was filled with empty whiskey bottles and a single mattress that she shared with her father. He was not hired to represent Spencer at her parole hearings. Family (1) Spouse Dot Spencer (? Thats about $465 in todays money. Her father went on to marry Spencer's 17-year-old Juvenile Hall cellmate but they later divorced. Gavin Newson rejected the decision in 2022. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Hi, Will. A KB developer sign notes homes available starting at $700,000. [4][5][6][7] After her parents separated, she allegedly lived in poverty with her father, Wallace Spencer. Blank, empty stare. The last time Spencer came up for parole, the district attorney's office contacted the victims it was still able to locate and asked them to write impact statements. Soon after the police arrived on the scene, they realized that the shots had come from Spencers home. . A reporter reached Spencer by phone while she was still in the house after the shooting, and asked her why she committed the crime. We typically left them in gun racks in the back windows of our pickup trucks or in car trunks in anticipation of after-school hunting trips. He was gunned down, too. Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. "When I saw her, the look she gave me -- her whole appearance was very evil and scary. [19] In 2005, a San Diego deputy district attorney cited an incident of self-harm from four years earlier when Spencer's girlfriend was released from jail, as showing that Spencer was psychotic and unfit to be released. This livens up the day",[1][2] which inspired Bob Geldof and Johnnie Fingers to write the Boomtown Rats song "I Don't Like Mondays". Kasinak and Officer Patty Bernathy drove the teen to the homicide unit for questioning. When I was growing up kids brought guns to school all the time. But Haley Wragg, who at age 26 wasnt alive when Spencer killed her grandfather, learned as a child to fear her release from prison. My grandfather and the janitor threw themselves at the kids that were being shot at that morning, to save their lives, and in the process, lost their own, she said. Thanks, Will. He once returned after an outing around the county with both his students and a fresh wild turkey. Daryl Barnes retired from teaching in 2001 and died in 2016. Though she recovered physically she was never quite right after that. Now 72, Olson has kept his report notes from that day. [27] In 2018, the school was demolished to construct a housing development, and the plaque was relocated to the former school's southern edge, at the corner of Lake Atlin Avenue and Lake Angela Drive. Because he never saw his attacker, because he never had a chance to defend himself, however futilely, Cam grew up with an overwhelming fear of leaving his back exposed. San Diego police officers Patty Bernathy and Ted Kasniak escort Brenda Spencer to homicide investigators after the shootings at Cleveland Elementary School in 1979. I remember feeling weird, but no pain. What if they got the idea from what I did?, About the author: Get our email alerts straight to your inbox. Murder, rapes, gang rapes, assaults, forced prostitution, etc, etc. (Barry Fitsimmons/San Diego Union-Tribune). McGlinn believes Spencer's accounts that her divorced father, Wallace Spencer, sexually abused her and that under his influence she began dressing as a boy and learned to hunt and shoot with him. I know you, or whomever moderates the comments, cant be available 24-7. "I didn't talk about it. The teens attorneys considered pursuing an insanity plea, but it never came to fruition. ", Buell was jolted by the casual reference, but managed to muster a benign response. How do you rectify that? Hoffman fired at him, but missed. She was tried as an adult, and pled guilty to two counts of murder and assault with a deadly weapon. A previous version of this story failed to mention that custodian Michael Suchar, who was fatally shot, was survived by a son in addition to a wife, who was mentioned in the article. Twenty-two years later, his son, Dan Barnes, also a teacher, found himself a target of Granite Hills High School shooter Jason Hoffman. She claimed she wasnt trying to kill anybody, she was just shooting, he said. In late January 1979, Brenda Spencer killed two adults and injured eight children and one adult because of her hate for Mondays. According to acquaintances who knew Brenda Spencer, she also dabbled in drug use and petty theft as a teenager. On Monday, January 29, 1979, a journalist from The San Diego Union-Tribune got the quote of a lifetime from 16-year-old Brenda Ann Spencer. Patrol Officer Ted Kasinak halted a garbage truck driver headed into the shooting scene and commandeered the truck. Police Officer Robert Robb. When queried concerning her motivations she said, I dont like Mondays. The standard Ruger 10/22 features a blued finish and walnut stock, though there are plenty of factory options available. 104K views 3 years ago On January 29, 1979, 16-year-old Brenda Spencer opened fired from her home across the street from Grover Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego. She took first prize in a local Humane Society photography contest. As reported by The San Diego Union-Tribune, she pleaded guilty to two counts of murder in 1980. They slept on a single mattress on the living room floor. They had a child, and the little girl attended Buell's preschool. He had wanted to confront her, finally. Based on the pen I was at. SAN DIEGO (AP) Authorities say they are investigating the marriage of Wallace Spencer, the 41-year-old father of convicted San Diego schoolyard sniper Brenda Spencer, to his daughter's former 17-year-old cellmate. He died at age 87 in 2016. As with any mass shooting, Spencers sniper assault on the elementary school changed the lives of the widows, the wounded, their families and a community. Her teachers said that she barely talked to anyone in class but was excellent in the arts, especially photography, winning the first prize in a competition run by the Humane Society. The flippant phrase inspired a hit single, I Dont Like Mondays, by Irish rock band The Boomtown Rats. He still has occasional nightmares about Spencer. She hurt so many people and had so much to do with starting a deadly trend in America, said Richard Sachs, a San Diego County deputy district attorney tasked with formally opposing parole for Spencer on several occasions. [17] In prison, Spencer was diagnosed with epilepsy and received medication to treat epilepsy and depression. Standing 52 tall and weighing 89 pounds, Brenda Spencer was once described as too small to be scary., true stories behind Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. That all changed on January 29, 1979. As one might expect, unfettered chaos ensued. [13] She injured eight children; she began with nine-year-old Cam Miller, since he was wearing Spencer's favorite color blue. Miraculously, none of the children were killed, though eight of them were injured. A 16-year-old girl, Brenda Ann Spencer (born April 3, 1962), who lived in a house across the street from the school, was convicted of the shootings. Though the cops sent negotiators to speak with her, she refused to cooperate with them. Though she damaged the windows, she didnt hurt anyone that time around. Feature Articles, Not only does a murderer steal a life, he/she steals an entire future of life experiences, none of which can restored or given back by the murderer. They had a child, and the little girl attended Buell's preschool. She actually said, It was a lot of fun seeing children shot. She also explained that it was her intent to leave the house guns ablazing. Bob Geldof in the Belvedere, Vienna -16 Sept. 2012. And although nine counts of attempted murder were ultimately dismissed from the case, Spencer was sentenced to concurrent terms of 25 years to life in prison for her crimes. CAPTION: Police help children after a sniper attack on an elementary school in California 20 years ago; for Cam Miller, shot in the back, the nightmares never stopped. Charged as an adult, she pleaded guilty to two counts of murder and assault with a deadly weapon, and was sentenced to life in prison with a chance of parole after 25 years. She killed principal. After learning about Brenda Ann Spencer, discover the true stories behind Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the infamous Columbine shooters. She fired 36 rounds. He wishes he had. Cam saw the principal and the custodian both lying on the ground, and thought, with childlike logic, that if he could just make it out of that square of sidewalk, "it will all go away.". Explaining the motive for her mass murder, Brenda said, Those I shot just made easy targets. Later, at parole hearings, Brenda was reminded of those statements and she said: Maybe I did. On January 29, 1979, in San Diego, California, 16-year-old Brenda Ann Spencer, who lived just across the road from the Cleveland Elementary School, opened fire on the students and school personnel with a .22-caliber rifle. Privacy PolicyTerms of ServiceSign Up For Our NewslettersSite Map, Copyright 2023, The San Diego Union-Tribune |, KB homes were built on the former site of Cleveland Elementary School in San Carlos. The next victim was the schools custodian, who also attempted to bring the children to safety. Brenda's attorney described how Wallace began drinking heavily. (San Diego, California) USA / California / La Mesa / San Diego, California / Lake Atlin Avenue, 6356. B renda Ann Spencer was born on April 3, 1962. Later, during tests while she was in custody, it was discovered Spencer had an injury to the temporal lobe of her brain. Like most true psychopaths Brendas origin story is sordid and broken. She killed principal Burton Wragg and. She remembers how her dad used to walk her slowly through the hospital corridors, and how they would stand in a breezeway and watch the lights of passing cars on the freeway below. [8], Spencer was charged as an adult and pleaded guilty to two counts of murder and assault with a deadly weapon. This livens up the day.. The reason for her fate has less to do with her troubled life and more to do with her troubled genetics. [28], Bob Geldof, then the lead singer of the Boomtown Rats, read about the incident when a news story about it came off the telex at WRAS-FM, the campus radio station at Georgia State University in Atlanta. I stopped following Brendas parole hearings 25 years ago. He noted that Suchar had been in the Seabees, a Navy construction battalion, during World War II and emerged with no battle wounds. Brenda later said of the gift, I asked for a radio and he bought me a gunI felt like he wanted me to kill myself.. I am so glad that we outnumber you. When another neighborhood is on the evening news, and Buell's father sees the stunned faces of parents in Jonesboro or Paducah or Littleton, he finds himself hungry for any scrap of information about the families of these children who kill, hoping, as he still does with Brenda Spencer these 20 long years later, to put all the pieces together and finally make sense of it. She injured eight children and a police officer, and killed the principal and a custodian. If I hear a loud bang or a car backfire, it gets my heart beating, but that's about it.". My question to all of you is, If you are religious at all and believe it is a sin to kill a living person, how in the world can you believe that its OK to kill someone under the premise that it was the law that sanctioned it! 1979 mass shooting in San Diego, California, U.S. For the shooting in Northern California, see, Cleveland Elementary School shooting (San Diego), Cleveland Elementary School shooting (Stockton), "School Sniper Suspect Bragged Of 'Something Big To Get On TV', "Look back in sorrow: in 1979, a teenage girl opened fire on a suburban San Diego elementary school; today, as the nation reels from a rash of similar tragedies, the survivors still struggle to understand why it happened", "Girl Sniper Kills 2, Wounds 9 at San Diego School", "Classmates Say Alleged Sniper Seemed Lonely, Friendless Girl", "40 years ago, Brenda Spencer took lives, changed lives in a mass shooting at a San Diego elementary school", "School Shooter Brenda Spencer Denied Parole", "School rifle attack nets 25 years to life", "No parole granted for 'I don't like Mondays' school shooter", "She didn't like Mondays, they don't want plaque moved", "Tragic past, uncertain present, bright future of Cleveland Elementary", "Victims of San Diego School Shooting Are Forced to Cope Again 10 Years Later", "Watch Deadly Compulsion Full Episode - Killer Kids | Lifetime", "Killer Kids - Season 3 Episode 19 Deadly Compulsion", "Deadly Women | Season 2 Episode 1 Thrill Kills", "40 Years Ago, Brenda Spencer Took Lives At Elementary School", "1993: Convicted school shooter Brenda Spencer speaks with San Diego's News 8 - PART 1", "1993: Convicted school shooter Brenda Spencer speaks with San Diego's News 8 - PART 2", "1993: Convicted school shooter Brenda Spencer speaks with San Diego's News 8 - PART 3", "1993: Convicted school shooter Brenda Spencer speaks with San Diego's News 8 - PART 4", Murder Historian - I Don't Like Mondays Blog, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Liberty Point International Middle School, Central Visual and Performing Arts High School, "'No Way to Prevent This', Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens", List of school shootings in the United States by death toll, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cleveland_Elementary_School_shooting_(San_Diego)&oldid=1142198805, Attacks on buildings and structures in the United States, Elementary school killings in the United States, Elementary school shootings in the United States, Articles with dead external links from August 2022, Short description is different from Wikidata, Pages using infobox person with multiple parents, Articles with dead external links from November 2021, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Students and faculty at Grover Cleveland Elementary School, This page was last edited on 1 March 2023, at 01:42. . [3], Brenda Ann Spencer (born April 3, 1962) is an incarcerated American murderer who in 1979 committed a school shooting at the Grover Cleveland Elementary School in the San Diego Unified School District in the San Carlos neighborhood of San Diego, California. Geldof said in the same interview, She wrote to me saying she was glad shed done it because I made her famous, which is not a good thing to live with., Related story from us:The 1972 Olympic Games were called The Peaceful Games until they turned into the Munich massacre. The morning of the shooting, McGlinn said, Spencer drank alcohol. When challenged she claimed the words were actually Unforgiven and Alone. She is currently 59 years old and resides at the California Institution for Women in Chino. The standard 10/22 rifle comes with quality iron sights. Whenever she drives past the hospital, Buell automatically looks for the same window on the second floor. "I don't like Mondays," 16-year-old Brenda Spencer calmly explained to a reporter who reached her by phone during a siege that would last six hours. But this argument has never swayed the parole board. By this, she was referring to the fact that she had just fired 30 rounds of ammunition into a San Diego elementary school, using a semiautomatic rifle. Her mother discovered the bullet hole through her jacket zipper and in her side. Rintoul suffered nightmares and got counseling. Now 30, Christy is a sunny preschool teacher who is reluctant to talk about the shooting, because she considers it just "part of my life," and has moved on. Katie Serena is a New York City-based writer and a staff writer at All That's Interesting. [14], After firing thirty-six times,[12] Spencer barricaded herself inside her home for several hours. In 2009, the board again refused her application for parole, and ruled it would be ten years before she would be considered again. school shootings. Therefore, the murderer must be held fully accountable. The shootings took place over 20 minutes with 36 shots, 11 hits. It's used mostly for teacher workshops. He does not mention Brenda Spencer by name but the connection is clear in the lyrics: And nobodys gonna go to school today/Shes going to make them stay at home..
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