Aerial photo of area during school sniper standoff in San Diego on January 29, Cleveland Elementary School where some pupils and school officials were shot, top; sniper barricaded in her home directly across from school driveway, center; rooftop locations of police Special Weapons and Tactics SWAT team, bottom.
Staff photo by Jerry Windel. User Upload Caption: Brenda Spencer. And Miller has never forgotten the horror he felt when he lay in an ambulance next to an inert Suchar and, as the ambulance rounded a curve, the custodian rolled on top of him, face to face. Spencer, then 16, armed with the rifle and scope her father gave her for Christmas, started picking off students heading to the elementary school directly across the street from her Lake Atlin Avenue home. Miller was one of her victims.
She fired 36 rounds. Eleven hit their mark — eight children and three adults. Her former defense attorney said the Patrick Henry High School student suffered from a broken home, an abusive father, drug use and hostility toward authorities and society in general. Her standoff with SWAT lasted more than six hours.
Officers found around rounds of unspent ammunition in the house. Spencer, who was charged in court as an adult, pleaded guilty in to two counts of murder. She was sentenced to concurrent terms of 25 years to life in prison. Nine counts of attempted murder were dismissed. Now 56 years old, she remains in the California Institution for Women in Corona.
After being denied parole several times, she is eligible for another hearing in Two of the worst before the Spencer shootings — in at the University of Texas, where a gunman killed 17 people and wounded 31, and in at Cal State Fullerton, where seven were killed and two were wounded — involved adult male shooters. It might have even changed the nation. Since , the United States and other nations have seen a dramatic rise in the frequency of mass shootings and the casualty list.
