Blank, empty stare. Brenda shot the first police officer to respond in the neck with her rifle. Prison should be reserved for those guilty of minor or first time felonies, where there is a chance of rehabilitation. The Union-Tribune regrets the error. Spencer was a predictably poor student with truancy issues, but she had a talent for photography. A 16-year-old girl, Brenda Spencer, who lived in a house across the street from the school, was convicted of the shootings. On the morning of January 29, 1979, children began to line up outside Grover Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego, California. The Grover Cleveland Elementary School was demolished in 2018. On that January day, she woke up, took the gun and, just as the school bell rang to signal the beginning of the classes, Brenda began shooting from her window at the young students who were standing outside the school. In all, the standoff lasted over six hours. Perhaps you should check out the first several verses in Romans, chapter 13. The Spencer family made a concerted effort to keep the song off the air on this side of the pond, but it received fairly extensive airplay regardless. Spencer shot and killed Wragg as he and teacher Daryl Barnes tried to help children. 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. 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. Even though Id be just as sad for her death as for those two men she killed and the many youngns she wounded, it would be justice served and not delayed. Eight of the children were seriously wounded. Brenda's attorney described how Wallace began drinking heavily. 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, in an interview with The San Diego Union-Tribune. Author: Alfred Weidinger CC BY 2.0, When the shooting was finished, Spencer shut herself in her house and stayed there for hours. She grew up relatively poor and spent most of her early life with her father, Wallace Spencer, with whom she had a turbulent relationship. We feel a life sentence is only fair for someone guilty of all those things.. On January 29, 1979, 16-year-old Brenda Spencer killed two people and wounded nine when she fired on San Diego's Grover Cleveland Elementary School with a .22-caliber rifle from her family's house across the street. "I saw the principal in the sticker bush, moaning," she flashes back. by Michael Thomas Barry. See also Other Works | Publicity Listings | Official Sites View agent, publicist, legal and company contact details on IMDbPro Contribute to This Page Edit page He died at age 87 in 2016. Early Life Brenda's parents divorced when she was young and lived with her father. 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. Spencer spent the next several hours barricaded in her house talking to police negotiators. Turn-ons include vintage German machineguns, flying his sexy-cool RV6A airplane, Count Chocula cereal, and the movie Aliens., Previous post: Armed Customer In Philly Kills Would-Be Robber, Your email address will not be published. But whenever she did attend class, she raised eyebrows. B renda Ann Spencer was born on April 3, 1962. I felt like letting this person out of her cage would harm my family members even more.. There were questions he meant to ask: How could you do something like that? 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. I was so young I didnt really understand it. You dont ! Later, during tests while she was in custody, it was discovered Spencer had an injury to the temporal lobe of her brain. He said Spencer told him things like having shot a rabbit in the back of its head from 25 yards. Though she recovered physically she was never quite right after that. Her former defense attorney said the Patrick Henry High School student suffered from a broken home, an abusive father, drug use and hostility toward authorities and society in general. I agree. The morning of the shooting, McGlinn said, Spencer drank alcohol and took her epilepsy medicine, Tegretol. Asked why he had done that, she answered, "He bought the rifle so I would kill myself. She remains imprisoned at the California Institution for Women in Chino. Her father, Wallace Spencer, still lives here. Thanks, Will. 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. Spencer shot and wounded eight elementary school kids. He blacked out briefly. 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.". What she did was so awful, shooting at children. He was only sentenced to the maximum of 21 years (with the possibility of 5 years at a time being added in the future). During the later interrogation, she was asked why she did it and responded: I just dont like Mondays.. Not long after Brenda Spencer went to jail, her father married his daughter's teenage cellmate. Thats because at that time in that place it would have been literally unimaginable to shoot up a school. As 53-year-old Principal Burton Wragg walked out to open up the facility Brenda opened fire with her 10/22. 6:15 p.m. Jan. 30, 2019A 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. And some believe that she helped inspire future school shootings in later years, such as the Columbine High School massacre, the Virginia Tech shooting, and the Parkland mass murder. She just sat there and glared at me," Miller says. All I can think was, his military training kicked in. The bullet struck Cam in the back and exited his chest, missing any internal organs. Or purchase a subscription for unlimited access to real news you can count on. We talk about it all the time. Her standoff with SWAT lasted more than six hours. [25] In the ensuing decades, it was leased to several charter and private schools. She was sentenced to 25 years to life on the day after her 18thbirthday. "We just kind of went on with life," she says. Age 16, she was 5'2" (157 cm) and had bright red hair. The Union-Tribune regrets the error. Its quite unfortunate however, to let stand for 24+ hours the comment from LeRoy, without posting the rebuttals it inevitably generated from your more informed readers. Spencer, then 16, armed with the rifle and scope her father gave her for Christmas, started picking off students heading to the elementary school directly across the street from her Lake Atlin Avenue home. She resembled Brenda.. At the time, she lived in a house across the street from the school. I recall one kid bringing a 1911 pistol to show off to his pals. "Dad didn't want me to see a psychologist. And although Brenda Spencer had only been 16 at the time of the shooting, she was charged as an adult due to the severity of her crimes. They had a child, and the little girl attended Buell's preschool. Brenda Spencer was born April 3rd, 1962 to her mother and father, Dorothy and Wallace Spencer. I'm not traumatized for life or anything. [5] A 28-year-old police officer, Robert Robb, had responded to a call for assistance during the incident, where he was wounded in the neck as he arrived. Spencer told the reporter she had shot at the schoolchildren and adults because, "I don't like Mondays. Our drivers ed teacher was a compulsive hunter. Two of the worst before the Spencer shootings in 1966 at the University of Texas, where a gunman killed 17 people and wounded 31, and in 1976 at Cal State Fullerton, where seven were killed and two were wounded involved adult male shooters. [9], In early 1978, staff at a facility for problem students, into which Spencer had been referred for truancy, informed her parents that she was suicidal. [1][10], In December, a psychiatric evaluation arranged by her probation officer recommended that Spencer be admitted to a mental hospital for depression, but her father refused to give permission. She has thus far been before a parole board four times and has been denied each time. [13] She injured eight children; she began with nine-year-old Cam Miller, since he was wearing Spencer's favorite color blue. The stories that came out of there are epic. Both have since died, and two surviving sons dont like to speak publicly about it, family members said. In her 2001 hearing, Spencer claimed that her father had been subjecting her to beatings and sexual abuse, but he said the allegations were not true. Bob Geldof in the Belvedere, Vienna -16 Sept. 2012. brenda spencer father, wallacetraffic signal warrant analysis example. 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. Her next opportunity for a parole hearing will be in 2025.[21][22][23][24]. (Barry Fitsimmons/San Diego Union-Tribune). Why do we continue to house and feed these animals. Unfortunately, thats exactly what happened. You learn to basically cope. She attended Patrick Henry High School, where one teacher recalled frequently inquiring if she was awake in class. As a child, he suffered terrifying nightmares of Brenda Spencer "popping out of the bathtub to finish me off." Thats about $465 in todays money. In 2001 Brenda accused her father of having drunkenly subjected her to beatings and sexual abuse. 5 Jun. Later, Cam went with his parents to court. He was particularly struck by Spencer's claim that she did it because she did not like Mondays, and began writing a song about it, called "I Don't Like Mondays". Five students were killed and thirty were injured. 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. The reason murder rises to the level of a capital crime is because you cant restore what you have stolenanothers life. In Norway in 2011, a man killed 77 people in a mass shooting. Best explanation why the death penalty for deliberate murder is not only just but the society that disregards it deserves to fall. He could see Wallace through the screen door, sitting in front of the TV. Dan Barnes is now principal at Grossmont High School. The family was poor. It was attributed to an accident on her bicycle. Brenda's attorney said that the mother "became like a stone . 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. Related Tags: Buy and Sell on GunsAmerica! 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