Cleveland Elementary School Shooting
Brenda Spencer was born in 1962 and lived in San Diego, California across the road from Grover Cleveland Elementary School. Her parents had separated and she was said to be living in poverty, sleeping on a single mattress on the floor with her father.
Acquaintances said Spencer had spoken about shooting policemen and doing 'something big' to get on television. She was uninterested in school and was known to not attend at all at times. Spencer also had an injury to the temporal lobe of her brain. She was known to hunt birds and had been arrested for shooting out of windows of her school with a BB gun. Following her arrest, her probation officer recommended her admittance to the hospital for depression but her father refused permission. For Christmas, her father gave her a semi-automatic .22 rifle and 500 rounds of ammunition. Asked why he had done that, she answered, "I felt like he wanted me to kill myself."
On the morning of Monday 29th January 1979, Spencer began shooting at children waiting for the principal to open the school gates, she injured eight children. She then shot at the principal as he tried to help, killed the custodian and injured a policeman who had responded to the incident. Further casualties were avoided when her line of fire was obstructed by police moving a rubbish truck in front of her house.
Spencer fired 30 times before barricading herself in her room for hours. While inside, she spoke to a reporter who had been randomly calling phone numbers in the area, Spencer claimed to have shot at people because "I don't like Mondays. This livens up the day." She told negotiators she was going to 'come out shooting.' But later surrendered reportedly after being offered a Burger King meal.
Spencer was charged as an adult and pleaded guilty to two counts of murder, she was sentenced to 25 years in prison. While incarcerated, Spencer was diagnosed with epilepsy and began receiving medication for her epilepsy and depression. She remains in prison.
The Boomtown Rats famously released a song called 'I Don't Like Mondays,' referencing the case. The lead singer Bob Geldof later mentioned that Spencer 'wrote to me saying 'she was glad she'd done it because I'd made her famous, which is not a good thing to live with.'
