f13.net

neither do I but...

UNION-TRIBUNE BREAKING NEWS TEAM

9:06 a.m. September 27, 2005

SAN DIEGO – The District Attorney's office will be among those opposing parole Tuesday afternoon for Brenda Spencer, who opened fire with a .22-caliber rifle on an elementary school 25 years ago, killing two people and wounding nine.

District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis said her office would petition the state to deny parole for Spencer, who is serving a 25 years-to-life sentence.

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Said Dumanis: "Brenda Spencer remains an unquestionable risk of harm to society if released. She shattered the lives of many innocent people and they are still healing more than 25 years later."

Spencer was 16 when she unleashed a barrage of 36 shots on Cleveland Elementary School from her home in the San Carlos area in Jan. 1979.
Before surrendering, she killed school principal Burton Wragg, custodian Mike Suchar, and wounded a San Diego police officer and eight schoolchildren.

A victim of the shooting, a student who is now a San Diego County probation officer, plans to address the parole board, which is also to review a videotaped statement from Wragg's widow. Other victims and survivors have submitted letters.

Contacted by phone during a 6½-hour SWAT standoff, Spencer said the reason she opened fire was "I don't like Mondays, this livens up the day."

The parole hearing, which is to be held at the California Institute for Women in Corona, will be Spencer's fourth bid for release.

At her last hearing, in 2001, Spencer said, "I'm very deeply sorry for what I have done to my victims and their families and friends. Not a day goes by that I don't think about what I did."

Spencer and her lawyers have argued she grew up in an abusive home environment. She told prison officials she felt unwanted at the time of the shooting and was jealous of children who had someone to protect them.

Wow. She is totally boned.

I loved the song the Boomtown Rats did about that incident.  Of course, this was before school shootings were caused by video games.  Back then you had to be a teenaged gun-wielding psychopath out of your own resources.  Murderous loonies have it easy these days, play a few hours of GTA and off you go to dad's gun cabinet.  Not like it used to be when I was young.  Back then it took years of neglect and abuse to really do something evil.  Kids today, sheesh.

Actually the same political opportunism was being tossed around then.  That was the same year my mom the school teacher caused a local scandal in Houston by going on the local TV news station to defend kids who played d&d and video console games.  Like her son and his friends.  She'd have been less laidback if she knew how much pot we were smoking though.

I'd always assumed that this had happened in GB somewhere, considering it was the Boomtown Rats that did a song about it. Interesting.