A school shooting is an armed attack at an educational institution, such as a primary school, secondary school, high school or university, involving the use of a firearm. Many school shootings are also categorized as mass shootings due to multiple casualties. The phenomenon is most widespread in the United States, which has the highest number of school-related shootings, although school shootings have taken place elsewhere in the world.
A drive-by shooting is a type of assault that usually involves the perpetrator(s) firing a weapon from within a motor vehicle and then fleeing. Drive-by shootings allow the perpetrators to quickly strike their targets and flee the scene before law enforcement is able to respond. A drive-by shooting's prerequisites include access to a vehicle and a gun. The protection, anonymity, sense of power, and ease of escape provided by the get away vehicle lead some motorists to feel safe expressing their hostility toward others.
Moulton is a village in the civil parish of The Moultons, in the South Holland district of Lincolnshire, England. It is situated on the A151 and B1537 roads, 5 miles (8.0 km) east from the centre of Spalding and 3.5 miles (5.6 km) west from Holbeach.
A familicide is a type of murder or murder-suicide in which one kills multiple close family members in quick succession, most often children, spouses, siblings, or parents. In half the cases, the killer lastly kills themselves in a murder-suicide. If only the parents are killed, the case may also be referred to as a parricide. Where all members of a family are killed, the crime may be referred to as family annihilation.
On July 2, 2008, an Arab resident of East Jerusalem identified as Hussam Taysir Duwait attacked several cars on Jaffa Road in Jerusalem in a vehicle-ramming attack using a front-end loader, killing three people and wounding at least thirty other pedestrians, before being shot to death. Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said that an inquiry indicated the attacker had been acting alone. A motive for the attack could not immediately be determined, but police at the scene referred to the incident as a terrorist attack. Three copycat attacks have occurred since then.
The Massereene Barracks shooting took place at Massereene Barracks in Antrim, Northern Ireland. On 7 March 2009, two off-duty British soldiers of 38 Engineer Regiment were shot dead outside the barracks. Two other soldiers and two civilian delivery men were also shot and wounded during the attack. A dissident Irish republican paramilitary group, the Real IRA, claimed responsibility.
The Cumbria shootings was a shooting spree which occurred on 2 June 2010 when a lone gunman, taxi driver Derrick Bird, killed twelve people and injured eleven others in Cumbria, England, United Kingdom. Along with the 1987 Hungerford massacre and the 1996 Dunblane school massacre, it is one of the worst criminal acts involving firearms in British history. The shootings ended when Bird killed himself in a wooded area after abandoning his car in the village of Boot.
A mass shooting is a crime in which an attacker kills or injures multiple individuals simultaneously using a firearm. There is no widely-accepted definition of "mass shooting" and different organizations tracking such incidents use different definitions. Definitions of mass shootings exclude warfare and sometimes exclude instances of gang violence, armed robberies, and familicides.
On the afternoon of 22 May 2013, a British Army soldier, Fusilier Lee Rigby of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, was attacked and killed by Islamist terrorists Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale near the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich, southeast London.
Mass shootings are incidents involving multiple victims of firearm-related violence. Definitions vary, with no single, broadly accepted definition. One definition is an act of public firearm violence—excluding gang killings, domestic violence, or terrorist acts sponsored by an organization—in which a shooter kills at least four victims. Using this definition, one study found that nearly one-third of the world's public mass shootings between 1966 and 2012 occurred in the United States, The New York Times recorded the same total of mass shootings for that span of years. Using a similar definition, The Washington Post recorded 163 mass shootings in the United States between 1967 and June 2019. Mother Jones recorded 140 mass shootings between 1982 and February 2023. The Associated Press recorded 59 mass shootings between 2006 and August 2022. The Violence Project of the National Institute of Justice recorded 185 mass shootings from 1966 to December 2022. The Federal Bureau of Investigation designated 61 events as active shooter incidents in 2021.
On 22 July 2016, a mass shooting occurred in the vicinity of the Olympia shopping mall in the Moosach district of Munich, Germany. An 18-year-old Iranian-German, David Sonboly, opened fire on fellow teenagers at a McDonald's restaurant before shooting at bystanders in the street outside and then in the mall itself. Nine people were killed and 36 others were injured, four of them by gunfire. Sonboly then hid nearby for more than two hours, and killed himself by a self-inflicted gunshot wound when confronted by police.
In the early hours of November 2, 2016, Des Moines Police Department officer Anthony Beminio and Urbandale Police Department officer Justin Martin were killed in separate "ambush-style" shootings in and near Des Moines, Iowa. The perpetrator in both shootings, identified as 46-year-old Scott Michael Greene of Urbandale, Iowa, was apprehended by police hours later. Greene pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder and was sentenced to life without parole on May 20, 2017.
At a June 18, 2016, rally for presumptive-nominee Donald Trump's presidential campaign in Las Vegas, Nevada, Michael Steven Sandford attempted to grab the pistol of a Las Vegas Metropolitan Police officer providing security for the event. Upon arrest and after waiving his Miranda rights, Sandford claimed that he had wished to kill Trump to prevent him from becoming president. Sandford was charged with disorderly conduct and with being an "illegal alien in possession of a firearm" for having previously rented a pistol at a shooting range. On September 13, 2016, he pleaded guilty to both charges. Sandford was sentenced to 12 months and one day's imprisonment, and was released and deported to the United Kingdom after 11 months in custody.
On April 18 and 19, 2020, Gabriel Wortman committed multiple shootings and set fires at 16 locations in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, killing 22 people and injuring three others before he was shot and killed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in Enfield.
The 2020 Jolo bombings occurred on August 24, 2020, when insurgents alleged to be jihadists from the Abu Sayyaf group detonated two bombs in Jolo, Sulu, Philippines, killing 14 people and wounding 75 others. The first occurred as Philippine Army personnel were assisting in carrying out COVID-19 humanitarian efforts. The second, a suicide bombing, was carried out near the Our Lady of Mount Carmel Cathedral.
Mark Saunders was a British barrister who was shot dead by police on 6 May 2008 after a five-hour siege at his home in Markham Square in Chelsea, London. Saunders was a successful divorce lawyer who struggled with depression and alcoholism. He had been behaving erratically and drinking heavily in the hours before the incident. Neighbours called the police after Saunders repeatedly fired a shotgun from a window shortly before 17:00. When armed police officers arrived, Saunders fired at their vehicle and the siege began. More armed officers arrived and took up positions in surrounding buildings and on the street. Saunders fired on two more occasions and the police returned fire, slightly wounding him. Around 20 minutes after the previous round of shooting, just after 21:30, Saunders waved the shotgun out of a window. As he lowered it in the direction of a group of police officers, seven officers fired eleven shots, of which at least five struck him. Police entered his flat minutes later and Saunders was taken to a waiting ambulance where he was pronounced dead.
The Plymouth shooting occurred in Keyham, Plymouth, Devon, England, United Kingdom, on 12 August 2021. The gunman, 22-year-old Jake Davison, shot and killed five people and injured two others before fatally shooting himself. Devon and Cornwall Police have not identified a motive.
Kate Bushell and Lyn Bryant were a schoolgirl and a woman murdered in separate, high-profile incidents in the West Country in 1997 and 1998 respectively. The similar circumstances of the murders led investigators to conclude that there is a high possibility the murders are linked, with both killed with knives while walking their dogs along isolated lanes within 75 miles of each other in south-west England. Bushell, only 14 years old, was found with her throat cut 300 yards from her home, with police saying the killing had been so brutal that the perpetrator may have had prior experience in slaughtering animals. Bryant was stabbed a number of times, and her killer had apparently returned to the scene four months later to place her missing glasses back at the site. The apparently motiveless killings, as well as their particularly brutal nature and apparent links, led to fears that a serial killer was at large in the south-west at the time, which were compounded by subsequent attacks on other women walking their dogs in the area. Detectives had already warned after Bushell's murder that the offender appeared to be the kind who would soon kill again, and shortly after, Bryant was murdered.
