Brenda Sue Spencer

Sadly today it seems that mass shootings are everywhere, especially in schools. Most of us think of Columbine as the first of these incidents but that is far from the truth. One of the earliest recorded was the Bath School Massacre in 1927. However, in 1979 Brenda Sue Spencer perpetrated what many consider to be the first modern day school shooting.

In January of 1979 sixteen year old Brenda Sue Spencer lived across the street from Grove Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego California. As the children were arriving at school that day she opened fire using a rifle her father had bought her for Christmas just a month earlier. She sat in her window using a telescopic scope and having 500 rounds of ammo next to her. By the time she was done, two adults were dead with eight children and a police officer injured. The two men who died were fifty-three year old Burton Wragg, the principal and fifty-six year old custodian Mike Suchar. They were both attempting to shield the children from the gunfire. There seemed to be no mistake where the shots had come from but Brenda would barricade herself inside her home for several hours.

A reporter asked her at some point why she had done it and she simply answered “I don't like Mondays. This livens up the day.” Later musician Bob Geldof would write a song called “I Don't Like Mondays” that would be recorded by the Boomtown Rats.

I found little in my research that discussed anything about Brenda's mother. Her parents had separated and it was said that Brenda lived with her father in poverty. When officers got into the home they found a single mattress on the floor and there were empty alcohol bottles all around the home. Despite this there seemed to be no indication that she was intoxicated upon her arrest.

Authorities decided to try Brenda Sue as an adult for her crimes so she decided to plead guilty to two counts of murder and assault with a deadly weapon. These sort of cases are always nice for prosecutors and the taxpayer but they almost always fail to find motive or even in some cases give a defendant a chance at a valid defense. Initially it was said that she was given an “indefinite imprisonment” time which was something I had never heard of. I had to look into that a bit and basically learned that it means that the length of time they spend was determined basically by their behaviors and actions while they were in prison. Whether that information is completely correct or it was changed to give her a sentence of twenty-five years to life is unclear.

As of August of 2018 Brenda Sue Spencer remains in prison. She has been brought in front of the parole board seven times over the years and has been denied each time although the reason for this is not completely clear. Her next parole hearing is set for 2021.

I have to say that I am unsure that a defense attorney today would recommend that she take a plea deal offered or that a judge would give her the time she received in 1979. It appears that Brenda Sue had a lot of things that would be considered mitigating circumstances and taken into account today.

My research stated that Brenda Sue at some point, seemingly several years before the shooting, had an accident on a bicycle in which she received “an injury to the temporal lobe of her brain.” In early 1978 she was attending a special school that she had been sent to for truancy. A staff member at the school told her parents that she needed therapy and was thought to be suicidal. By that summer she was arrested for shooting out the windows of the same school with a BB gun and for burglary. It is not clear what happened in that case. In December of 1978 a psychiatric evaluation recommended that she be admitted to a mental hospital for depression but her father had refused. Instead he bought her a gun for Christmas. Brenda Sue would later say, “I asked for a radio and he bought me a gun.” She said she felt as if her father wanted her to kill herself.

After the shooting a flagpole and a plaque were erected at the school to honor the victims. The school was closed in 1983 and has housed different charter and private schools over the years. It is not clear whether it is in use currently.

Brenda Sue Spencer has been said to feel responsible for other modern school shootings, such as Columbine and Sandy Hook. Whether this is genuine is only known by her.