Grover Cleveland Elementary School Shootings: On 29 January 1979, 16-year-old Brenda Ann Spencer opened fire on children arriving at Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego from her house across the street, killing two men and wounding eight students and a police officer. Principal Burton Wragg was attempting to rescue children in the line of fire when he was shot and killed, and custodian Mike Suchar was slain attempting to aid Wragg.Spencer used a rifle her father had given her as a gift. As to what impelled her into this form of murderous madness, she told a reporter, ”I don’t like Mondays. This livens up the day.”
The “Mondays” comment was not the only eyebrow-raising declaration to issue from Spencer that day. According to a report written by the police negotiators who spoke with her during the six-hour standoff, she made such comments to them as ”There was no reason for it, and it was just a lot of fun”; ”It was just like shooting ducks in a pond”; and ”[the children ] looked like a herd of cows standing around, it was really easy pickings.”
That Spencer failed to kill any of the children she shot at was attributable to luck rather than any reluctance on her part to take their lives. The bullet that struck 9-year-old Charles “Cam” Miller missed his heart by about an inch.
Spencer pled guilty to two counts of murder and assault with a deadly weapon and was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. She has been up for parole four times and has been turned down each time, the last in 2005. At her first parole hearing she expressed doubt that any of the victims were hit by bullets from her rifle and contended they might have been shot by police. She also claimed to have been under the influence of alcohol and hallucinogenic drugs at the time of the shootings and asserted prosecutors and her attorney had conspired to fabricate test evidence showing there had been no drugs in her system. By her third parole hearing she was admitting guilt and expressing remorse but was still contending she had been drunk and high on marijuana laced with PCP the day of her deadly rampage. She also claimed something new, that she had been beaten and sexually abused by her father, an avowal conspicuously absent from previous records.
She is eligible to again apply for parole in 2009 (which will also be the 30 year anniversary of the crime). Those who continue to be troubled by the callousness of Brenda Spencer’s crime and concerned by her continued attempts to shift blame for her actions onto anyone or anything else can draw comfort from the knowledge that murderers are rarely granted parole in California.
Victims
Burton Wragg – School Principal
Michael Suchar – School Custodian
(Also wounded a police officer and 8 school children)
I Don’t Like Mondays (has several stories)
Intermittent Explosive Disorder
I Don’t Like Mondays
This Day in History: School shooting in San Diego
It Was Monday
The Ballad of Brenda Spencer
Wikipedia: Brenda Ann Spencer
School Shootings (at the bottom)
Brenda Spencer up for parole 25 years after school shooting
DA to request parole be denied for Brenda Spencer
San Diego Sniper Is Denied Parole
This is the story that prompted the song “I Don’t Like Monday’s” by the Boomtown Rats.
Lyrics:
The silicon chip inside her head
gets switched to overload
and nobody’s gonna go to school today
she’s gonna make them stay at home
And Daddy doesn’t understand it
He always said she was good as gold
And he can see no reason
Cos there are no reasons
What reasons do you need to be shown
Chorus:
Tell me why
I don’t like Mondays
I want to shoot
The whole day down
The telex machine is kept so clean
and it types to a waiting world.
And Mother feels so shocked
Father’s world is rocked
And their thoughts turn to
Their own little girl
Sweet 16 ain’t that peachy keen
No it ain’t so neat to admit defeat,
They can see no reasons
Cos there are no reasons
What reasons do you need
Repeat Chorus
All the playing’s stopped in the playground now
She wants to play with her toys of death
And school’s out early and soon we’ll be learning
That the lesson today is how to die
And then the bullhorn crackles
And the captain tackles
With the problems and the how’s and why’s
And he can see no reasons
Cos there are no reasons
What reasons do you need to die
Repeat Chorus
And the silicon chip inside her head
gets switched to overload
and nobody’s gonna go to school today
she’s gonna make them stay at home
And Daddy doesn’t understand it
He always said she was good as gold
And he can see no reason
Cos there are no reasons
What reasons do you need to be shown
Repeat Chorus
lyrics and music by Bob Geldof
taken from the album “The Fine Art of Surfacing”
By: Imahologram on January 30, 2006
at 12:19 pm
This bitch is crazy!
By: Donna on October 12, 2008
at 6:36 pm
[...] schon als Profi bezeichnen und wer dann gar noch weiß das Herr Geldof diesen Titel aufgrund einer Schießerei im Jahre 1979 schrieb, der ist Superprofis oder hat auch MDR-Figaro [...]
By: Torsten Flegel » I don’t like Mondays … on November 3, 2008
at 4:50 pm
[...] para sus hijas.. A partir de ahí, la curiosidad me llevo a varias fuentes de la red como ésta, ésta y ésta. Con la wiki de testigo. Las letras de la canción de aquí y [...]
By: “I don’t like Mondays” « Kurioso’s Weblog on November 17, 2008
at 4:47 am
i hope she dies in prison
By: JDV on December 14, 2008
at 2:38 pm
i agree with jdv that u should stay and die in jail i’m a kid i don’t want to die and i love mondays not like u
By: gaven on December 16, 2008
at 1:07 am
she always looked like a good little girl i think she didn’t like school like me somtimes tachers are to mean
By: gaven on December 16, 2008
at 1:13 am
I think Brenda Spencer should be happy to be alive and just stay in prison. I mean “C’mon, what world is it when we let people out whom are killers?” She is alive just like me and eating daily and breathing like me, yet I never shot a child or a cop. She should just be praying she is even aware also. I mean with that type of crime she is just lucky to be even news. I would stay in prison if I was her because those 8 kids she shot are all grown up and probably waiting for her LOLLOLLOLLOL!
By: Bryant L. Mastrangelo on April 23, 2009
at 12:12 am
I think she should have her nails pulled out and stuff like that (a slow nad painful death) because people let alone children shouldn’t do that she’s sick and tormented i actual want ot kill her. So what if your father abused you don’t have to do what you did, haven’t you heard the song run away love fool
By: amy on May 14, 2009
at 1:11 pm
Dykesville!!! Had she of learned to appreciate Mondays, she’d probably be married with children right now.
By: Shauncey on May 14, 2009
at 3:40 pm
This woman (now) has made my name a nightmare. I can’t tell you how many times people say, not the Brenda Spencer. I know that is the very least she did. Can’t even imagine what could have happened to make someone do what she did. Out of my realm of understanding. About her getting parol this year, I say when the people she killed rise from the dead, we will talk about it……
By: Brenda Christine Spencer on May 30, 2009
at 5:28 pm
I grew up two blocks from Brenda and went to Cleveland Elementery school. She was a few yrs older than me but i remember her . Do any of you ever stop to think that something MUST have happened to this girl to make the event unfold as it did? All I am reading is stuff like “she should have her nails pulled out” , or “she deserves to die” . The old testament went out years ago people >
By: Dennis Demers on June 29, 2009
at 8:18 pm
Obviously to commit a crime of this nature she either had some life altering experience (like the sexual abuse she claimed she suffered) or else she was messed up in the head naturally, but 1 thing is for certain, u don’t go n commit an act like this cos u don’t like mondays r cos it was fun like is widely claimed. She was very young and quite senseless when she committed these crimes but if she was messed up in the head before hand she is most certaily f**ked up now. She should be released from prison n monitored in a mental institution for a number of years n if found fit to re-enter socity freed totally. What good is it doing keeping her locked up anyway
By: G Dizzle on August 27, 2009
at 3:03 pm
I’ve been writing to Brenda for years. She’s not once sought to excuse her actions, not once. Those of you who think “she should have her nails pulled out” and that “she deserves to die” should ask yourselves why such thoughts are fitting for any human being to think. If you think you are better than her, then please do not speak in a manner that Brenda would never think of doing. Yes, her actions took lives and hurt many. But they were not premeditated but the actions of a girl who finally snapped and who sadly had a gun to hand…that her Dad bought her. She has been paying for that tragic day for 30 years now and it will be 40 years by the time she has her next parole hearing. To me, all that she has ever said is that the hardest of all is not to be able to apologise enough for the harm and suffering and that no time served can bring back those lost.
But does this mean that we can’t show compassion for her and say that it’s time she came out to, in her own words, “Give back to the community.”
By: Irene on September 7, 2009
at 4:15 pm
My husband was one of the children who was shot by her. We both went to Cleveland Elementary and passed her home every day….I forgive her. My husband is reminded of her often when he sees any X Ray that is taken, for the bullet she gave him is still in his body as a reminder of that terrifying day.
By: Teresa on September 8, 2009
at 10:47 am
Irene: You’ve got to be kidding! Forgiving somebody doesn’t mean paroling somebody into a world where they would ’snap’ again. Forgiveness does not mean putting somebody back in an enviroment where they can do it again. She can ‘give back to the community’ in jail. She can be forgiven and stay in jail. Her sentance was 25 to life. Last time I checked, her life wasn’t over yet. From everything I’ve read and seen, she’s still a loaded gun.
By: Mordicai on September 20, 2009
at 2:17 pm
I knew Brenda in 1979, I was in juvenile detention with her and with Sheila, the girl that would eventually become her stepmother and the mother of her little sister. This was BEFORE Brenda was convicted. I have read countless stories of what happened to her and how she “claims” things years later. I know firsthand that the things she “claims” later were not sudden revelations, these were KNOWN things then, they were just ignored. That is just how it was then. My claims of child abuse landed me in juvenile hall, because once I informed the authorities of what my mother was doing, my mother told them to take me away because she couldn’t handle her out-of-control daughter. And Sheila too, Sheila committed a crime after years of horrendous abuse, and no one helped her, they just locked her up. So, everyone that is choosing to pass judgment here, understand that you are passing judgment on many incomplete and untrue accounts of Brenda’s life and what happened.
By: Lea on October 18, 2009
at 4:18 pm
Lea,
Notwithstanding what happened to her as a child or whatever, she was old enough to know that taking a gun to an elementary school and shooting children was WRONG. If she had shot and killed her father for that abuse, it would be a different story. But she didn’t. She shot at many children on a playground at school, where they should have been safe. She needs to pay the piper with her life now.
By: mylifeofcrime on October 18, 2009
at 4:36 pm
Just watched a documentary filmed around the time of her first parole hearing. There are so many conflicting stories about her childhood and so many judgements that can be levelled directly at both of her parents its scary. I feel so sorry for the victims and their families. I dont think that she should be realeased considering the circumstances…
By: Nat B on October 26, 2009
at 2:19 am