School Violence

In the early twenty-first century, the top school violence concern among students, parents, and school officials was shootings, though theft and other crimes were the most common. Before 1995 school shootings were infrequent and usually did not lead to multiple deaths. One early school shooting occurred in San Diego, California, in January 1979. Seventeen-year-old Brenda Spencer used a rifle she had just received for Christmas to shoot at an elementary school across the street from her house.

During a six-hour standoff, Brenda killed two men trying to protect the schoolchildren and wounded eight children and a police officer. Spencer showed no emotion when finally captured. In March 1987 in Missouri twelve-year-old Nathan Ferris, an honor student, grew tired of being teased. He took a gun to school and when teased shot and killed the student and then himself.

The rash of school shootings of the 1990s began in Giles County, Tennessee, on November 15, 1995. Seventeen-year-old Jamie Rouse, dressed in black, took a firearm to school and shot two teachers in the head, killing one, and killed another student while attempting to shoot the school's football coach. Rouse had told several of his classmates beforehand about his intentions, but none reported the conversations to authorities.

Less than two months later on February 2, 1996, in Moses Lake, Washington, fourteen-year-old Barry Loukaitis walked into a mathematics class wearing a long western coat. Under the coat he concealed two pistols, a high-powered rifle, and ammunition. Loukaitis killed two classmates and the teacher while wounding another student. He took the rest of the class hostage. Another teacher rushed Loukaitis, ending the standoff. Loukaitis, like Rouse, had shared thoughts of going on a shooting spree with another student. The same day Loukaitis attacked his fellow schoolmates, a sixteen-year-old in Atlanta, Georgia, shot and killed a teacher.