"I saw the principal in the sticker bush, moaning," she flashes back. Unfortunately, thats exactly what happened. This livens up the day.. The principal and a custodian were killed; eight children and police officer Robert Robb were injured. In 2001 Brenda accused her father of having drunkenly subjected her to beatings and sexual abuse. But whenever she did attend class, she raised eyebrows. Aftermarket dress-up kits span the spectrum. Brenda Ann Spencer. Daryl Barnes retired from teaching in 2001 and died in 2016. Blue was Brenda Spencer's favorite color, he later heard. Charles Cam Miller sees the scar on his chest every day and remembers how, when he was 9, a bullet from Brenda Spencers .22 rifle pierced him from back to front. 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. 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. 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". [1][5] Although Spencer showed exceptional ability as a photographer, winning first prize in a Humane Society competition, she was generally uninterested in school. Her attorneys continued to argue that the treatment she received from her father which allegedly included sexual abuse was the real reason for her act of senseless violence. Under the terms of her sentencing, Spencer became eligible for hearings to consider her suitability for parole in 1993. The receiver is an investment casting, while many of the components are polymer. "My wife saw her through the window and said, `There she is.' She killed principal. The stories that came out of there are epic. Stahl said her mother, Penny Wragg, never got the right help dealing with the murder of her father at the school. It was attributed to an accident on her bicycle. How do you rectify that? [17] In prison, Spencer was diagnosed with epilepsy and received medication to treat epilepsy and depression. 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Just a few months after the BB gun incident, Spencers probation officer had suggested that she spend some time in a mental hospital for depression. - 1972 (divorced, 3 children) Did you know "[30] Spencer disputes ever contacting Geldof. 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". 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. For Christmas in 1978, her father, Wallace Spencer, gave her a semi-automatic .22 caliber rifle. He felt cheated. Police escorted them to buses to be united with parents at Pershing Middle School. He was wearing his brand-new blue down vest that day, he recalls, and a matching shirt. brenda spencer father, wallace. [15] Ultimately, she surrendered and left the house, reportedly after being promised a Burger King meal by negotiators. [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. TIL In January 1979, 16 year old Brenda Ann Spencer was arrested after killing a principal and a custodian at an elementary school in California. One ripple outward from the shootings sent fear through a third generation in the Wragg family. However, her teachers reported that she fell asleep regularly in class. This livens up the day.. 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. Her father went on to marry Spencer's 17-year-old Juvenile Hall cellmate but they later divorced. As a child, he suffered terrifying nightmares of Brenda Spencer "popping out of the bathtub to finish me off." 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. [18] It was released in July 1979 and was number one for four weeks in the United Kingdom,[29] and was the band's biggest hit in their native Ireland. The school was sold and leveled, and new housing was built on the 9-acre site. Warning: file_get_contents(index.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /nfs/c05/h03/mnt/79130/domains/spitfirevsbf109.com/html/wp-includes/plugin . [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. We talk about it all the time. [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. According to theNew York Daily News, when the police located her home they gave the phone number to a local reporter who called her and asked her if she had any idea where the shots in her neighborhood were coming from. The song was number 1 for four weeks in the UK, though it did not break the top 40 in the US. 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, wallacehavelock wool australia. She grew up relatively poor and spent most of her early life with her father, Wallace Spencer, with whom she had a turbulent relationship. According to History, they were waiting for their principal to open up the schools gates. Miller decided to deliver his in person. Daryl Barnes, who taught fifth and sixth grade at Cleveland Elementary, was having coffee with the principal when they heard gunfire and ran outside. The Spencers were divorced, with Brenda and her older brother living with their father. Its like the ripple in a pond that goes through generations and a community.. "[11], On the morning of Monday, January 29, 1979, Spencer began shooting from her house[12] at children waiting for 53-year-old Principal Burton Wragg to open the gates to Grover Cleveland Elementary. Hi, LeRoy. When another school shooting is on the evening news, be it Jonesboro or Paducah or Pearl or Littleton, Cam Miller finds himself watching for the fearful faces of young survivors. What if they got the idea from what I did?. As reported by The San Diego Union-Tribune, she pleaded guilty to two counts of murder in 1980. "Six months after I got my jacket back, I found a hole in the hood," she recalls, surmising that a third bullet passed through it without striking her. 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. According to acquaintances who knew Brenda Spencer, she also dabbled in drug use and petty theft as a teenager. Spencer pled guilty to two counts of 1st-degree murder and assault with a deadly weapon. I am so glad that we outnumber you. 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. He denied the allegations. Later, during tests while she was in custody, it was discovered Spencer had an injury to the temporal lobe of her brain. He died at age 87 in 2016. When asked why she did it, her reply was "I just don't like Mondays." . I asked for a radio, and he bought me a gun, Brenda Ann Spencer later said. He said Suchar and the principal didnt get along all that well, but that day when Wragg was felled in the parking lot, Suchar didnt hesitate to run out and try to help. Brenda Ann Spencer is the first modern school shooter ever known. She has been formally inducted into the Golden Girls Club, an organization of female inmates aged older than 55. 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. "He said to go away, and I respected that," Norm recounts. One day the little girl announced to her: "My sister's in jail. [5], Further casualties were avoided only because the police obstructed her line of fire by moving a garbage truck in front of the school entrance. The number of young shooters whose first taste of a trigger was that of a 10/22 defies counting. 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. Spencer house. He and his wife drove the hour and a half through the desert to the California Institution for Women, arriving much too early. Will works in his own urgent care clinic, shares a business build-ing precision rifles and sound suppressors, and has written for the gun press since 1989. She fired 36 rounds. Dwindling enrollment forced Cleveland Elementary to close years ago and the place seems small and forlorn now. 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. As one might expect, unfettered chaos ensued. I held it in. She also wandered the neighborhood killing birds with a BB gun. To this day, Cam Miller hesitates before dressing in blue. I realized shed never have a realistic answer of why she did it.. Her next opportunity for a parole hearing will be in 2025.[21][22][23][24]. The ruling was a reversal of the ruling two years ago by a different California parole board that voted to release Sirhan Sirhan. Blank, empty stare. Victoria Frances Fox pleaded guilty to murder in the August 2021 death of 4-week-old Phoenix Grove in San Diego. CAPTION: (Photo ran in an earlier edition) Police rush to the scene of a sniper attack on Grover Cleveland Elementary School in a San Diego suburb 20 years ago. [5][2] Spencer has been repeatedly reminded of these statements at parole hearings. I knew the song. Then, she put the rifle down, barricaded herself inside her home, and waited. 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. 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. We feel a life sentence is only fair for someone guilty of all those things.. This livens up the day. She informed him that she had chosen the kids across the street because they made easy targets. 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