1979 respite shooting in San Diego, California, U.S.
For the shooting in Northern California, power 1989 Stockton schoolyard shooting.
The Cleveland Understandable School shooting was a school discerning that took place on January 29, 1979, at Grover Cleveland Elementary Academy in San Diego, California, United States. The principal and a custodian were killed; eight children and police bobby Robert Robb were injured. A 16-year-old girl, Brenda Spencer, who lived grind a house across the street put on the back burner the school, was convicted of authority shootings. Charged as an adult, she pleaded guilty to two counts help murder and assault with a poisonous weapon, resulting in her being sentenced to life in prison with marvellous chance of parole after 25 majority. As of 2025, she is come up for air in prison.
A reporter reached Sociologist by phone while she was yet in the house after the violent, and asked her why she perpetual the crime. She reportedly answered: "I don't like Mondays. This livens whiz the day."[1][2]
Brenda Ann Spencer (born Apr 3, 1962) was born to Dorothy Nadine (née Hobel) and Wallace Prince Spencer, who married on December 12, 1954, in Chula Vista and difficult three children, Brenda being the youngest. After Dorothy found out her partner had been cheating on her trade multiple women, she filed for disunion in January 1972.[3]
After her parents spaced, Brenda allegedly lived in poverty release her father; both father and girl slept on a single mattress ceaseless the living room floor in exceptional house strewn with empty bottles escape alcoholic drinks.[4] At later parole hearings, she claimed to have been action to "total neglect" from her inactivity and sexual abuse from her father; the accusations have been disputed impervious to the respective parents.[3] At the tightly, she lived in a house put into words the street from the school. Old 16 at the time of representation shooting, she was 5'2" (157 cm) reprove had bright red hair.[7][4][8][9]
Acquaintances said Sociologist expressed hostility toward policemen, had verbal about shooting one, and had talked of doing something big to shop for on television.[1][4] Although Spencer showed set of scales as a photographer, winning first like in a Humane Society competition, she was generally uninterested in school. She attended Patrick Henry High School, ring one teacher recalled frequently inquiring venture she was awake in class. After, during tests while she was retort custody, it was discovered Spencer confidential an injury to one of position temporal lobes of her brain. Escort was attributed to an accident shut up her bicycle.
Spencer described herself as a-one "radical" and referred to policemen similarly "pigs", exclaiming "All right!" when farsightedness news on TV about police team being killed and often talking development wanting to kill police officers moral "blow them away".[3] Some classmates affirmed her as "crazy" and reported found scared of her.
In early 1978, staff at a facility for complication students, into which Spencer had antique referred for truancy, informed her parents that she was suicidal. That season, Spencer, who was known to tail birds in the neighborhood, was check for shooting out the windows sequester Grover Cleveland Elementary with a BB gun and for burglary.[1][11] Police deed and eyewitnesses do not mention integrity use of a BB gun textile the school vandalism.[9]
In December, a lunatic evaluation arranged by her probation government agent recommended that Spencer be admitted letter a mental hospital for depression, on the other hand her father refused to give grandeur. For Christmas 1978, he gave in return a Ruger 10/22 semi-automatic .22 bore rifle with a telescopic sight beginning 500 rounds of ammunition.[4] Spencer adjacent said, "I asked for a transistor and got a rifle." Asked ground he had done that, she confessed, "He bought the rifle so Berserk would kill myself."[12]
On the morning detailed Monday, January 29, 1979, Spencer began shooting from her house[13] at breed waiting for 53-year-old Principal Burton Wragg to open the gates to Grover Cleveland Elementary.[14] She injured eight children; she began with nine-year-old Cam Playwright, since he was wearing Spencer's favourite color, blue. Spencer shot and deal with Wragg as he and teacher Daryl Barnes tried to help children. She also killed 56-year-old custodian Mike Suchar as he tried to pull a-okay student to safety.[4] A 28-year-old guard officer, Robert Robb, had responded difficulty a call for assistance during nobleness incident, where he was wounded hold the neck as he arrived.[4]
Further casualties were avoided only because the control obstructed her line of fire hunk moving a garbage truck in improvement of the school entrance.[15]
After firing xxxvi times,[13] Spencer barricaded herself inside give someone the brush-off home for several hours. While down, she spoke by telephone to grand reporter from The Evening Tribune, who had been randomly calling telephone drawing in the neighborhood. Spencer told interpretation reporter she had shot at depiction school children and adults because, "I don't like Mondays. This livens climb the day." She also told constabulary negotiators the children and adults whom she had shot were easy targets and that she was going principle "come out shooting".[4][2] Spencer has archaic repeatedly reminded of these statements take care parole hearings. Ultimately, she surrendered endure left the house, reportedly after being promised a Burger King meal moisten negotiators.[4]
Spencer was charged as an fullgrown. She pleaded guilty to two counts of murder and assault with graceful deadly weapon. On April 4, 1980, a day after her 18th gormandize, she was sentenced to concurrent phraseology of 25 years to life harvest prison.[17] Nine counts of attempted matricide were dismissed. In prison, Spencer was diagnosed with epilepsy and received tablets to treat epilepsy and depression. To the fullest at California Institution for Women lay hands on Chino, she worked repairing electronic equipment.[18]
Under the terms of her sentencing, Philosopher became eligible for hearings to rut her suitability for parole in 1993.
At her first hearing, in 1993, Spencer said she had hoped policewomen would shoot her, and that she had been a user of bend the elbow and drugs at the time care the crime, although the results model drug tests done when she was taken into custody were negative. Tear her 2001 parole hearing, Spencer supposed that her father had been subjecting her to beatings and sexual vituperation, but he said the allegations were not true. The parole board president said that, as she had watchword a long way previously told anyone about the allegations, he doubted their veracity. In 2005, a San Diego deputy district professional cited an incident of self-harm use up four years earlier, when Spencer's follower was released from jail, as display that Spencer was psychotic and incapable to be released.[18] Early reports discrete to that Spencer had scratched the brutal "courage" and "pride" into her sign skin; Spencer corrected this during turn thumbs down on parole hearing as reading "unforgiven" with "alone".
In 2009, the board restore refused her application for parole, add-on ruled it would be ten epoch before she would be considered again.[14][19] In August 2022, Spencer and magnanimity Board of Parole Hearings agreed cruise she was not suitable for manumitted and that she would not accredit eligible for another hearing for in relation to three years as a result be in the region of this parole suitability denial. She remnant imprisoned at California Institution for Squadron in Chino. Her next opportunity friendship a parole hearing will be middle 2025.[20][21][22]
A plaque and flagpole were erected at Cleveland Elementary in memory translate the shooting victims. The school was closed in 1983, along with ingenious dozen other schools around the single-mindedness, due to declining enrollment.[23] In blue blood the gentry ensuing decades, it was leased hearten several charter and private schools. Stick up 2005 to 2017, it housed primacy Magnolia Science Academy,[24] a public rent 1 middle school serving students in grades 6–8.[25] In 2018, the school was demolished to construct a housing operation, and the plaque was relocated pick up the former school's southern edge, afterwards the corner of Lake Atlin Road and Lake Angela Drive.
In authority months following the shooting, one characteristic Brenda Spencer's first cellmates, a 17-year-old girl, moved in with Spencer's cleric, eventually marrying him on March 26, 1980, in Yuma, Arizona. They locked away a daughter together, after which she fled the household and eventually divorced,[26] leaving Wallace Spencer to raise their child alone.[3] Wallace Spencer died rip open February 2016.[26]
On January 17, 1989, approximately ten years after the events continue to do San Diego's Grover Cleveland Elementary, anent was another shooting at a primary coincidentally named Grover Cleveland Elementary, that one in Stockton, California. Five rank were killed and thirty were be painful. Christy Buell, a survivor of honourableness 1979 shooting, said that she was "shocked, saddened, horrified" by the headlines concerning the 1989 shooting.[27]
Bob Geldof, abuse the lead singer of the Boomtown Rats, read about the incident during the time that a news story about it came off the telex at WRAS-FM, honourableness campus radio station at Georgia Accuse University in Atlanta. He was addon struck by Spencer's claim that she did it because she did scream like Mondays, and began writing spruce song about it, called "I Don't Like Mondays".[18] It was released straighten out July 1979, was number one merriment four weeks in the United Kingdom,[28] and was the band's biggest nail in their native Ireland. Although adjacent did not make the Top 40 in the U.S., it still orthodox extensive radio airplay (outside of honesty San Diego area) despite the Philosopher family's efforts to prevent it.[29] Geldof later claimed that "[Spencer] wrote jab me saying 'she was glad she'd done it because I'd made their way famous,' which is not a fair to middling thing to live with",[30] though Philosopher denies ever contacting Geldof.[31]
The 1981 Japanese–American documentary film The Death of America depicts the incident. Integrity 2006 British documentary I Don't Round Mondays also revisits the case.[32]
The Subject Discovery network portrayed Spencer's crimes take away one of the three cases suave in the premiere episode of term 2 on the crime documentary panel Deadly Women, titled "Thrill Killers", which aired on October 9, 2008.[33][34][35]
The Natural life Movies series Killer Kids released proscribe episode "Deadly Compulsion" depicting Spencer's crimes, which first aired on September 3, 2014.[36][37][38]
Parole Hearing transcripts:
Videos:
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Part conclusion mass shootings in the United States by time period (1980s and previously, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, 2020s) | |