Brenda Ann SPENCER Homicide Juvenile - School shooting 2 January 29, 1979 Same day April 3, 1962 Principal Burton Wragg, 53 and Michael Suchar, 56 Shooting San Diego, California, USA photo gallery The two victims were Principal Burton Wragg and custodian Mike Suchar. Her father went on to marry Spencer's 17-year-old Juvenile Hall cellmate but they later divorced. Cam is 29 now, a strapping, dark-eyed man with scant resemblance to the fourth-grader with a bowl haircut whose picture appeared in the newspapers above the word "victim" so long ago. [13] She injured eight children; she began with nine-year-old Cam Miller, since he was wearing Spencer's favorite color blue. Well behaved. $100. 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. January 29, 1979, was a perfectly normal Monday in America - The birds were chirping, the sky was clear, absolutely noone was happy and people were about to fucking die. Unwanted Holidays For Sale, 2019-01-30 - PAULINE REPARD Repard writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune. She had skipped class that day and later claimed that she had washed her epilepsy medicine down with alcohol. She keeps a scrapbook of newspaper articles and photos, and still has the jacket she wore that day stashed away somewhere. 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Her older brother helped her over a fear of guns by taking her out shooting jackrabbits when she was 11. Not long after Brenda Spencer went to jail, Wallace Spencer, her father, married her 17-year-old cellmate. Meanwhile, San Diego police had raced to the school on reports of gunfire, children shot, then an officer wounded. 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. They had a child, and the little girl attended Buell's preschool. 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. Jan 23, 2018 Magda Origjanska 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. Wallace was not around much. Wallace Spencer got married to a woman younger than Spencer and had a daughter. You may occasionally receive promotional content from the San Diego Union-Tribune. While many gardeners prefer the reliable production and compact size of determinates, others are drawn to the larger fruits and greater yields of indeterminates. Other children lay bleeding on the stage. I felt like letting this person out of her cage would harm my family members even more.. Christy Buell, a survivor of the 1979 shooting, said that she was "shocked, saddened, horrified" by the headlines concerning the 1989 shooting. 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.". She remembers that there was snow in the mountains on the morning of the shooting; her father, Norm (her mother died when she was 3), considered letting his kids play hooky so he could take them up to play in it. Five students were killed and thirty were injured. 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. Business California brenda ann spencer father . Sometimes Wallace Spencer would say hello when he came to pick his . Both have since died, and two surviving sons dont like to speak publicly about it, family members said. 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. "It was frightening. 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 school offered counseling immediately after the shooting, but Cam never went. . Bob Geldof in the Belvedere, Vienna -16 Sept. 2012. 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. I held it in. But whenever she did attend class, she raised eyebrows. Her father, Wallace Spencer, still lives here. 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. Spencer told the reporter she had shot at the schoolchildren and adults because, "I don't like Mondays. Before her parole board in 1999, she said: "I asked for a radio and he bought me . Her statement inspired the musician Bob Geldof to compose the song I Dont Like Mondays for his band, Boomtown Rats. She wrote to me saying she was glad shed done it because Id made her famous, Geldof said. He took a month-long training course to learn how to handle a weapon himself with more confidence. For many gardeners, it starts with tomatoes. According to acquaintances who knew Brenda Spencer, she also dabbled in drug use and petty theft as a teenager. On the morning of January 29, 1979, children began to line up outside Grover Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego, California. Brenda Ann Spencer. Her cousin Valerie Stahl said she grew up not knowing much about Spencer until she hit college and Googled the incident. . 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. Brenda Spencer (born April 3, 1962) lived in the San Carlos neighborhood of San Diego, California, in a house across the street from Grover Cleveland Elementary School in the San Diego Unified School District.Aged 16 at the time of the shooting, she was 5'2" (157 cm) and had bright red hair. A documentary about 16-year-old Brenda Spencer's school shooting of 1979. Brenda Spencer, 57, has been inducted into the Golden Girls club at the California prison where she is serving a life sentence It's been 41 years since the then-16-year-old Brenda Spencer. Her standoff with SWAT lasted more than six hours. Brenda is the youngest child and has one older brother and one older sister. According to the San Diego Police Museum, she warned authorities that she was still armed and threatened to come out shooting if she was forced to leave her house. She said the school victims looked like a herd of cows for gathering around the wounded, making them easy pickings.. The Spencers were divorced, with Brenda and her older brother living with their father. Brenda Spencer was born April 3rd, 1962 to her mother and father, Dorothy and Wallace Spencer. As reported by The San Diego Union-Tribune, she pleaded guilty to two counts of murder in 1980. That shooting probably affected every person on that campus, Ron Avi Astor, a professor of social work and education, said of the San Carlos shooting. Thus, he had first- The Brenda Spencer Murder Case, which was published in 2012, and is the single best source I am aware of regarding Spencer. just thought i would let you know!! . The blaze in the homes on Fairlie Road near Bernardo Center Drive broke out shortly before 8:30 a.m., according to the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department, Police found the suspected assailant on the trolley and arrested him on suspicion of attempted murder, The crash happened just after 11:20 a.m. Thursday on Camino Del Rio North just west of Fairmount, according to San Diego police, Officers are looking for a sedan with front windshield damage that was involved in a fatal hit-and-run crash on Feb. 5 in Fallbrook that killed a 21-year-old man. 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. 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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. Cam Miller was wearing the down vest he had just gotten from Santa Claus. Reportedly, Brenda later said that she asked for a radio instead but he insisted on a gun as a present. Police Officer Robert Robb. Brenda Spencer was born on the 3rd of April 1962 in San Carlos, California. Unfortunately, thats exactly what happened. Eight students ranging in age from 7 to 10. We talk about it all the time. 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. His widow, Karen Barnes, said her husband always believed that the Lord had protected him from Spencer during the shooting. [13][20] In August 2022, Spencer and the Board of Parole Hearings agreed that she was not suitable for parole and that she would not be eligible for another hearing for another three years as a result of this parole suitability denial. 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. Brenda is the youngest child and has one older brother and one older sister. It's that time of year again when gardeners all over the world are planning what to grow in their gardens. I remember that fear; you dont know whats going on. (Disturbingly, Wallace Spencer later married one of his daughters 17-year-old cellmates who bore a striking resemblance to her.) 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. Young Sheldon's Season 4 finale marked a turning point for the Big Bang Theory prequel, which has set the deck or in this case, racked the pool table for George Sr.'s downfall. On April 4, 1980, a day after her 18th birthday, she was sentenced to 25 years to life. It took a few shots before students, parents, and school staff realized that someone on the opposite side of the road was using them as a target. Brenda Spencer began shooting at 8:30. Blue was Brenda Spencer's favorite color, he later heard. Wallace Spencer "We used to target shoot in the mountains." Brenda brags to her friends that she's "going to do something that will be on tv." 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. Get Ready for a New Season of Gardening -Choose from Tomatoes, Peaches, Corn, Zinnias & More! This livens up the day.. . In 2001 she accused her father of having drunkenly subjected her to beatings and sexual abuse. Father and daughter shared a single mattress on the floor for a bed and the place was littered with . He and his wife drove the hour and a half through the desert to the California Institution for Women, arriving much too early. There were questions he meant to ask: How could you do something like that? [31], The 1982 JapaneseAmerican documentary film The Killing of America depicts the incident. In 20 minutes she had shot: Principal Burton Wragg. [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. 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. Brenda alleged that her father Wallace both beat and sexually abused her. The debate is further complicated by the fact that some tomato varieties can be either determinate or indeterminate depending on their growing conditions. [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. They had one mattress that both Brenda and her Father would sleep on and the house was trashed with beer cans. At her 2016 parole eligibility hearing, she cried frequently demonstrating emotional instability, Sachs said. [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. January 29, 1979, was a perfectly normal Monday in America - The birds were chirping, the sky was clear, absolutely noone was happy and people were about to fucking die. I'm not traumatized for life or anything. Now 56 years old, she remains in the California Institution for Women in Corona. They slept on a single mattress on the living room floor. The principals widow, Kathe Wragg, and daughter Penny made sure the parole board heard their opposition to releasing Spencer from prison. Brenda Spencer killed two, wounded nine in horrific shooting at a San Diego elementary school 40 years ago. Mentally she plots an escape route, how she will get the children to safety. For Christmas in 1978, her father, Wallace Spencer, gave her a semi-automatic .22 caliber rifle. After her parents separated, she lived with her father, Wallace Spencer, in poverty. The young woman eventually left him, but he lived in the same house across the street . . Hoffman fired at him, but missed. An Excerpt From The Culture Code Answer Key, 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". 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. Brenda Spencer (born April 3, 1962) lived in the San Carlos neighborhood of San Diego, California in a house across the street from Grover Cleveland Elementary School in the San Diego Unified School District. Not long after Brenda Spencer went to jail, her father married his daughter's teenage cellmate. There are emotional scars, as well. SWAT Officer Marty Duitz aimed his rifle at the front door, from the safety of a school room. I know there was a lot of turmoil in the family every time Brenda was up for parole, she said in a recent interview. Born in San Diego on April 3, 1962, Spencer purportedly took an early liking to guns and to stories of violence. The developer installed a memorial, now at the corner of Lake Atlin and Lake Angela streets, to Wragg and Suchar. And I dont today.. [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. we have been doing it in drama that is how i know. He blacked out briefly. Though she damaged the windows, she didnt hurt anyone that time around. He felt cheated. Investigators said the .22-caliber rifle the girl lay down as she was arrested was a Christmas present from her father, Wallace Spencer, a supervisor of technical services at San Diego State University. 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.. And despite her efforts to downplay her own crime, Spencer herself has admitted that her actions may have indeed led to other similar attacks. The song was released the same year and topped U.K. music charts in the summer of 1979. A custodian, Michael Suchar, was also killed as he attempted to pull a student to safety. It might have even changed the nation. He bizarrely married Brenda's 17-year-old prison cellmate after her release, and they had a daughter together. $50. "He said to go away, and I respected that," Norm recounts. The Union-Tribune regrets the error. A 16-year-old girl's deadly attack on a San Diego elementary school ended two lives and changed others. She grew up relatively poor and spent most of her early life with her father, Wallace Spencer, with whom she had a turbulent relationship. But Officer Paul Olson, primary negotiator, talked to Spencer on and off by phone for hours, urging her to throw out her gun and surrender. Dwindling enrollment forced Cleveland Elementary to close years ago and the place seems small and forlorn now. Because there was no trial, few details about her family or her past ever came to public light. Family (1) Spouse Dot Spencer (? Brenda Spencer was aged just 16 when she killed two adults and wounded eight children at Grover Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego in 1979. . 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. After her parents separated, she lived with her father, Wallace Spencer, in virtual poverty; they slept on a single mattress . Sometimes Wallace Spencer would say hello when he came to pick his daughter up, and Buell is certain that he knew who she was, and she wonders now what he thought. He was an alcoholic and verbally abusive towards Brenda. Monika Selvig was shot. You learn to basically cope. (San Diego, California) USA / California / La Mesa / San Diego, California / Lake Atlin Avenue, 6356. The principal of the school, Burton Wragg, was killed during the attack. When asked why she did it, Brenda Spencer said "I just don't like Mondays." Then, she put the rifle down, barricaded herself inside her home, and waited. Eleven hit their mark eight children and three adults. Her father, Wallace, still lives in the house on Lake Atlin Avenue from where Brenda took aim at the playground opposite. Wallace Spencer, later married his daughter's former cellmate, a 17-year-old girl named Sheila McCoy, whom he met while visiting Brenda in prison. 35 years later, Brenda Ann Spencer, who killed two and wounded eight, faced her victims in a parole hearing. [8], Spencer was charged as an adult and pleaded guilty to two counts of murder and assault with a deadly weapon. Brenda Spencer Her father, Wallace Spencer, still lives here. Charles "Cam" Miller, age 9 was shot. Brenda Spencer was born in 1962 and lived in San Diego; well, San Carlos more specifically. Brenda Ann Spencer (born April 3, 1962) lived in the San Carlos neighborhood of San Diego, California in a house across the street from Grover Cleveland Elementary School, San Diego Unified School District. He just said we'll deal with it as a family. Barnes was narrowly missed by bullets as he dragged several children indoors. He had wanted to confront her, finally. Whenever she drives past the hospital, Buell automatically looks for the same window on the second floor. Brenda Spencer was born on April 3, 1962 in San Diego, California, USA. A 16-year-old girl's deadly attack on a San Diego elementary school ended two lives and changed others. Brenda's attorney said that the mother "became like a stone . [5][7] Spencer later said, "I asked for a radio and got a rifle." Hart was a private investigator involved in the case and interviewed Spencer's mother, father, brother, sister, friends, and neighbors within months of the attack. Suddenly all the kids were gone. A reporter reached Spencer by phone while she was still in the house after the shooting, and asked her why she committed the crime. I remember feeling weird, but no pain. [5][2] Spencer has been repeatedly reminded of these statements at parole hearings. [dead link][5][7] [8], Acquaintances said Spencer expressed hostility toward policemen, had spoken about shooting one, and had talked of doing something big to get on television. The house was a depressing sight to behold. . A plaque and flagpole were erected at Cleveland Elementary in memory of the shooting victims. Officer Robb, wounded in the neck by a round from Spencer, was huddled behind a tree with other officers, Kasinak recalled. Since 1979, the United States and other nations have seen a dramatic rise in the frequency of mass shootings and the casualty list. Age 16, she was 5'2" (157 cm) and had bright red hair. Director John Dower Writer John Dower Stars Brenda Spencer Richard Sachs Gene Cubbison See production, box office & company info Watch on Freevee Watch Free on Freevee More watch options Add to Watchlist 8 User reviews Photos Add photo Top cast Edit Brenda Spencer Self [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. The smallest victims are grown now, their lives changed in ways both subtle and searing. Police later found half empty alcohol bottles throughout the house. One day the little girl announced to her: "My sister's in jail. 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. Two saplings planted in their memory took root in the bloodstained earth and have grown into trees now, sentries that stand tall and strong over an empty playground. A 16-year-old girl, Brenda Spencer, who lived in a house across the street from the school, was convicted of the shootings. After her parents divorced, Brenda lived with her father, Wallace Spencer, in poverty.