1992 Bard College at Simon's Rock shooting | |
---|---|
Location | Great Barrington, Massachusetts, U.S. |
Coordinates | 42°12′32″N73°22′48″W / 42.209°N 73.38°W |
Date | December 14, 1992 c. 10:20 p.m. |
Target | Students and faculty of Bard College at Simon's Rock |
Attack type | Mass shooting, school shooting |
Weapons | SKS semi-automatic rifle |
Deaths | 2 |
Injured | 4 |
Perpetrator | Wayne Lo |
On December 14, 1992, a mass shooting occurred at Bard College at Simon's Rock in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, United States. A student and a professor were killed, and four others were injured, before the gunman, Wayne Lo, surrendered to police. He is currently serving two life sentences without the possibility of parole plus 20 years.
On the morning of December 14, 1992, Simon's Rock receptionist Teresa Beavers searched a package addressed to Wayne Lo from the North Carolina company Classic Arms and found 7.62 caliber ammunition inside the package. [1] She notified college residence directors and called for an investigation of Lo's dormitory. Residence director Katherine Robinson went to Lo's dormitory and asked Lo if she could see the contents of the package. [1] Lo refused, and Robinson informed the associate dean of students. Robinson returned to Lo's dormitory with her husband and searched his room but found no weapons or ammunition. Lo told them the ammunition was a Christmas gift for his father; Lo was sent to the dean's office, and later the dean dismissed him, suspecting he was not possessing any weapons on the school campus. Reports were inconsistent, as other students had made complaints about Lo stockpiling ammunition in his dormitory. Chris Lucht, associate dean, had allegedly refused to investigate. [1]
That night, an anonymous person phoned school officials, claiming that Lo was armed with weapons and was going to kill members of the Robinson family. The caller identified himself as another student with whom Lo had dinner that night. The Robinsons contacted the college provost, Ba Win, and went with their children to stay at Win's home in Lee, Massachusetts. There they called the dean to locate Lo; no precaution was taken, however, and the police were never notified. [1]
Lo was hiding the ammunition which he had ordered two days earlier. On December 14, at around 10:00 a.m. Lo travelled by taxi to Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and purchased a SKS semi-automatic rifle at Dave's Sporting Goods store. [1] The shooting began at approximately 10:20 p.m. in the school security area. He shot Theresa Beavers twice in the abdomen, and later fatally shot a Spanish language professor Ñacuñán Sáez while he was driving his Ford Festiva. Lo then fatally shot student Galen Gibson who had left the library to assist whoever had crashed their car, unaware that there was a gunman on campus. Lo also wounded another student. Afterward, Lo walked towards a dormitory where he wounded two freshmen students. Lo's rifle jammed and he dropped his weapon before he walked to the student union building and phoned police to tell them of his actions. Lo surrendered to police without further incident. [2]
Those killed in the shooting were student Galen Gibson, 18, and professor Ñacuñán Sáez, 37. Gibson was a poetry major from Gloucester, Massachusetts, while Sáez was an Argentine-born Spanish professor. Those wounded were the security guard Theresa Beavers, 42, and students Thomas McElderry, 19, Joshua A. Faber, 17, and Matthew Lee David, 18.
In a February 2013 episode of PBS's Need to Know , journalist Maria Hinojosa reported, "In fact, in an interview with Newsweek in 2007 after 32 people were killed in the Virginia Tech shootings ... Wayne Lo said: 'The fact that I was able to buy a rifle in 15 minutes, that's absurd. I was 18. I couldn't have rented a car to drive home from school, yet I could purchase a rifle. Obviously a waiting period would be great. Personally, I only had five days left of school before winter break ... If I had a two-week waiting period for the gun, I wouldn't have done it.'" [3]
Wayne Lo | |
---|---|
Born | |
Conviction(s) | First degree murder, attempted murder |
Criminal penalty | Life in prison without the possibility of parole plus 20 years |
Wayne Lo (Chinese :駱文; [4] ) was born in Tainan, Taiwan, [5] to Chia Wei Lo, a fighter pilot, and Lin Lin Lo, a violin teacher, both Mainland Chinese immigrants to Taiwan. [2] The Lo family moved to the United States in spring 1981, living in a suburban neighborhood in Rockville, Maryland, while Chia Wei Lo was assigned to a diplomatic post in Washington, D.C. [2] While living in Maryland, the 7-year-old Lo became a violinist with the Montgomery County Youth Orchestra. [2]
His family returned to Taiwan in 1983, after Chia-Wei relinquished his position that year. The family later settled in northwest Billings, Montana, in summer 1987. [5] His parents later managed the Great Wall Chinese restaurant at Grand Avenue in Billings. He attended Lewis & Clark Junior High School in Billings for seventh to eighth grade, before attending Billings Central Catholic High School for his freshman and sophomore year. Lo was a violinist in the Billings Symphony Orchestra beginning at age fourteen. He attended the Aspen Music Festival in 1990 and studied under the prominent violin teacher Dorothy DeLay. Lo had a GPA of 3.56 in his sophomore year. [2]
In April 1991, Lo was accepted by Simon's Rock College of Bard in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and given the W.E.B. Du Bois minority scholarship, beginning fall classes that September. [5] He had wanted to attend a boarding school to estrange himself from his father. [2] While attending Simon's Rock, Lo expressed racist and fascist beliefs. [2] He wrote an essay arguing for segregation of homosexuals to prevent the spread of AIDS, and denied the existence of the Holocaust. [2] Other students reported being uncomfortable with his expression of these beliefs. [2]
Lo's month-long trial took place at the Hampden County Superior Court in Springfield MA (it was moved from Berkshire county to adjoining Hampden county at the request of the defense lawyers, in order to avoid jury bias). Although claims were made by the media prior to the trial regarding Lo's supposed racist beliefs, he was never charged with a hate crime, and the racism accusations were never substantiated. Instead, the focus turned to his mental state at the time of the shooting as Lo made an insanity plea. His psychiatrists testified that he was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, while a court-appointed psychiatrist attributed Lo's actions merely to narcissistic personality disorder.
On February 3, 1994, Lo was found guilty on all 17 charges against him and sentenced to two consecutive life sentences without possibility of parole. [6]
Lo spent nine months at a maximum security facility at Walpole, Massachusetts, from February to November 1994. He was later transferred to MCI-Norfolk, a medium security prison in Norfolk, Massachusetts.
In 1999, Gregory Gibson, the father of victim Galen Gibson, wrote Gone Boy: A Walkabout, a detailed book recounting the shooting. The book spurred correspondence between Gibson and Lo, which was detailed in a New York Times article, [7] as well as a German TV documentary film. [8] In December 2017, Lo was interviewed by Gibson. [9] In the video, Lo explains how easy it is to legally obtain a semi-automatic rifle in the United States.
Lo wore a sweatshirt with the name of the New York City hardcore punk band Sick of It All during the shooting. This spurred the band to issue press releases denouncing Lo's crimes. The journalist Chuck Klosterman wrote a passage in his book, Killing Yourself to Live , in which Wayne Lo writes Klosterman a letter from prison contemplating what questions might have been raised if Lo were arrested wearing a T-shirt with the bands Poison or Warrant instead of Sick of It All.[ citation needed ]
Jonathan Fast’s detailing of the shooting in Ceremonial Violence: A Psychological Explanation of School Shootings led to Gibson publishing an article regarding allegations of plagiarized passages taken directly from Gone Boy: A Walkabout. [10] [ better source needed ]
Through an intermediary, Lo sold art he made in prison, donating proceeds to The Galen Gibson Fund. [11]
Lo was an inspiration for the 2019 feature film Cuck by director Rob Lambert. Rob rode the school bus with Wayne while they both lived in Billings, MT. [12]
The Columbine High School massacre, often referred to as simply Columbine, was a school shooting and attempted bombing that occurred on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado, United States. The perpetrators, twelfth-grade students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, murdered twelve students and one teacher. Ten of the twelve students killed were in the school library, where Harris and Klebold subsequently died by suicide. Twenty-one additional people were injured by gunshots, and gunfire was also exchanged with the police. Another three people were injured trying to escape. The Columbine massacre was the deadliest mass shooting at a K-12 school in U.S. history, until December 2012. Columbine is still considered one of the most infamous massacres in the U.S. for inspiring many other school shootings and bombings; the word "Columbine" has since become a byword for modern school shootings. As of 2024, Columbine is still the deadliest school shooting in Colorado and one of the deadliest mass shootings in the United States.
In the United States, assault weapon is a controversial term applied to different kinds of firearms. There is no clear, consistent definition. It can include semi-automatic firearms with a detachable magazine, a pistol grip, and sometimes other features, such as a vertical forward grip, flash suppressor, or barrel shroud. Certain firearms are specified by name in some laws that restrict assault weapons. When the now-defunct Federal Assault Weapons Ban was passed in 1994, the U.S. Department of Justice said, "In general, assault weapons are semiautomatic firearms with a large magazine of ammunition that were designed and configured for rapid fire and combat use." The commonly used definitions of assault weapons are under frequent debate, and have changed over time.
Bard College at Simon's Rock is a private liberal arts college in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. It is part of Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.
The North Hollywood shootout, also known as the Battle of North Hollywood, was a confrontation between two heavily armed and armored bank robbers, Larry Phillips Jr. and Emil Mătăsăreanu, and police officers in the North Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles on February 28, 1997. Both robbers were killed, twelve police officers and eight civilians were injured, and numerous vehicles and other property were damaged or destroyed by the nearly 2,000 rounds of ammunition fired by the robbers and police.
Missouri Southern State University is a public university in Joplin, Missouri. It was established in 1937 as Joplin Junior College. The university enrolled 4,087 students in Fall 2023.
"Cain Rose Up" is a horror short story by American writer Stephen King. It was originally published in the Spring 1968 issue of Ubris magazine, and collected in King's Skeleton Crew in 1985. It deals with a depressed and homicidal college student, Curt Garrish, who goes on a murderous sniper rampage from his dormitory room.
The Heath High School shooting occurred at Heath High School in West Paducah, Kentucky, United States, on December 1, 1997, when 14-year-old Michael Carneal opened fire on a group of students, killing three and injuring six.
The W. R. Myers High School shooting occurred on April 28, 1999, at W. R. Myers High School in Taber, Alberta, Canada. The gunman, 14-year-old school dropout Todd Cameron Smith, entered the school and began firing at students in a hallway, then went to the central hub of the school in front of the band room, killed one student and wounded another. It was the first fatal high-school shooting in Canada since the St. Pius X High School shooting, 24 years earlier.
The Richland High School shooting was a school shooting that occurred on Wednesday, November 15, 1995, in Lynnville, Tennessee, a small community located in Giles County. Seventeen-year-old James Ellison "Jamie" Rouse, a senior student at the school, murdered one teacher and one student, and seriously wounded another teacher.
George Dennis Keathley was a staff sergeant in the United States Army who received the Medal of Honor for his actions during World War II.
Gregory Gibson is an American author.
On May 21, 1998, 15-year-old freshman student Kipland Kinkel opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle in the cafeteria of Thurston High School in Springfield, Oregon, United States, killing two of his classmates and wounding 25 others. He had killed his parents at the family home the previous day, following his suspension pending an expulsion hearing after he admitted to school officials that he was keeping a stolen handgun in his locker. Fellow students subdued him, leading to his arrest. He later characterized his actions as an attempt to get others to kill him, since he wanted to take his own life after killing his parents but could not bring himself to.
Reports regarding the longest recorded sniper kills that contain information regarding the shooting distance and the identity of the sniper have been presented to the general public since 1967. Snipers have had a substantial history following the development of long distance weaponry. As weapons, ammunition, and aids to determine ballistic solutions improved, so too did the distance from which a kill could be targeted. In mid-2017 it was reported that an unnamed Canadian special forces operator, based in Iraq, had set a new record of 3,540 m (3,871 yd), beating the record previously held by an Australian sniper at 2,815 m (3,079 yd). In November 2023, the record was once again broken by 58-year old sniper Viacheslav Kovalskyi of the Security Service of Ukraine, who shot a Russian soldier from a distance of 3,800 m (4,156 yd) during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Christopher Miner Spencer was an American inventor, from Manchester, Connecticut, who invented the Spencer repeating rifle, one of the earliest models of lever-action rifle, a steam powered "horseless carriage", and several other inventions. He developed the first fully automatic turret lathe, which in its small- to medium-sized form is also known as a screw machine.
On December 14, 2012, a mass shooting occurred at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, United States. The perpetrator, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, shot and killed 26 people. 20 of the victims were children between six and seven years old, and the other six were adult staff members. Earlier that day, before driving to the school, Lanza fatally shot his mother at their Newtown home. As first responders arrived at the school, Lanza killed himself with a gunshot to the head.
On June 7, 2013, a spree shooting occurred in Santa Monica, California. Its catalyst was a domestic dispute and subsequent fire at a home, followed by a series of shootings near and on the Santa Monica College campus. Six people were killed, including the suspect, and four injured. The shooter — 23-year-old John Zawahri — was killed by police officers when he exchanged gunfire with them at the Santa Monica College library.
The Parkland high school shooting was a mass shooting that occurred on February 14, 2018, when 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz opened fire on students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in the Miami metropolitan area city of Parkland, Florida, killing 17 people and injuring 17 others. Cruz, a former student at the school, fled the scene on foot by blending in with other students and was arrested without incident approximately one hour and twenty minutes later in nearby Coral Springs. Police and prosecutors investigated "a pattern of disciplinary issues and unnerving behavior".
On June 21, 2014, a mass shooting perpetrated by Lim Do-bin that began around 20:15 p.m. in the 13th outpost of the 55th Regiment of the South Korean army's 22nd Infantry Division in Goseong County, Gangwon Province, South Korea.
Hugh Gibson was an American pioneer and a Pennsylvania frontiersman. In 1756, when he was 14 years old, his farm was attacked by Lenape Indians and he was taken prisoner. He was adopted as a brother by Pisquetomen, a Lenape chief, and lived for three years with the Lenape, moving to several different communities. In 1759 he escaped, together with three other captives.
On October 24, 2022, a mass shooting occurred at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School in the Southwest Garden neighborhood of St. Louis, Missouri, United States when a 19-year-old former student opened fire on students and staff, killing two and injuring seven before being fatally shot by police.