The Columbine High School massacre, commonly referred to as 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 it was surpassed by the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in December 2012, and later the Uvalde school shooting in May 2022, and the deadliest mass shooting at a high school in U.S. history until the Parkland high school shooting in February 2018. Columbine still remains both the deadliest mass shooting and the deadliest school shooting to occur in the U.S. state of Colorado.
Rage is a psychological thriller novel by American writer Stephen King, the first he published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. It was published in 1977 and then it was collected in the 1985 hardcover omnibus The Bachman Books. The novel describes a school shooting, and has been associated with actual high school shooting incidents in the 1980s and 1990s. In response, King allowed the novel to fall out of print, and, in 2013, he published a non-fiction, anti-firearms violence essay titled "Guns".
The Red Lake shootings were a spree killing that occurred on March 21, 2005, in two places on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in Red Lake, Minnesota, United States. That afternoon, 16-year-old Jeff Weise killed his grandfather and his grandfather's girlfriend at their home. After taking his grandfather's police weapons and bulletproof vest, Weise drove his grandfather's police vehicle to Red Lake Senior High School, where he had been a student some months before.
The Pine Middle School shooting was a school shooting that occurred in Reno, Nevada, United States, on March 14, 2006. The shooting was perpetrated by then fourteen-year-old student James Scott Newman who shot and injured two 14-year-old eighth grade classmates with a .38-caliber revolver that had belonged to his parents. Newman was arrested and charged as an adult on charges of attempted murder, use of a deadly weapon and use of a firearm by a minor but later pleaded guilty to different charges of two counts of battery with a deadly weapon, in which he had received sentencing as a juvenile. James Newman was sentenced to house arrest until he completed 200 hours of community service.
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.
On March 24, 1998, a school shooting occurred at Westside Middle School in unincorporated Craighead County, Arkansas near the city of Jonesboro. Perpetrators Mitchell Johnson, 13, and Andrew Golden, 11, fatally shot four students and a teacher with multiple weapons, and both were arrested when they attempted to flee the scene. Ten others were wounded. Golden and Johnson were convicted of five murders and ten assaults, and were imprisoned until each turned 21 years of age. After the 1992 Lindhurst High School shooting that killed four people in Olivehurst, California, the massacre was the deadliest non-college school shooting in contemporary U.S. history until the April 1999 Columbine High School massacre. As of 2024, it is currently the deadliest middle school shooting in U.S. history.
Philip J. Murray–Wright High School is a secondary school in the Woodbridge neighborhood of Detroit, Michigan, United States. It is operated by Detroit Public Schools.
Tyrone Mitchell was an American spree killer who fatally shot a student and a passerby as well as wounding twelve others who were leaving 49th Street Elementary School in Los Angeles on February 24, 1984. Mitchell then committed suicide by shooting himself in the head with a double-barreled shotgun.
The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a mass shooting that occurred on December 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut, United States, when 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot and killed 26 people. Twenty 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, shooting himself in the head.
On October 24, 2014, 15-year-old freshman student Jaylen Fryberg shot five students at Marysville Pilchuck High School in Marysville, Washington, fatally wounding four, before shooting and killing himself. Fryberg's father, Raymond Fryberg, was arrested and convicted the following year for illegally purchasing and owning the gun used in the shooting, among other firearm offenses.
Cornel Young Jr., known to his friends as "Jai," was a Black police officer in Providence, Rhode Island, who was fatally shot by two fellow police officers on January 28, 2000, when he stepped in on a scuffle while off duty. This sparked outrage and allegations of racial profiling. Young had served with the police department for three years, and had been trained with one of the shooters. The police officers who shot him were not charged. His mother filed a civil rights suit against the City of Providence and against the police responsible for his shooting, but the suit was unsuccessful. Young was posthumously promoted to the rank of sergeant. Cornel Young Jr. is commemorated with an elementary school named after him and a scholarship fund in his name.
The University of Texas tower shooting was an act of mass murder which occurred on August 1, 1966, at the University of Texas at Austin. The perpetrator, 25-year-old Marine veteran Charles Whitman, indiscriminately fired at members of the public both within the Main Building tower and from the tower's observation deck. He shot and killed 15 people, including an unborn child, and injured 31 others before he was killed by two Austin Police Department officers approximately 96 minutes after first opening fire from the observation deck.
The Townville Elementary School shooting occurred on September 28, 2016, in Townville, South Carolina, located 40 miles (64 km) southwest of Greenville. Fourteen-year-old Jesse Osborne shot three students and a teacher, critically wounding six-year-old student Jacob Hall, who died from his injuries three days later. Osborne, who had also shot and killed his father before the shooting, was arrested as the sole suspect and charged with murder and attempted murder.
On April 10, 2017, a shooting occurred inside a special education classroom at North Park Elementary School in San Bernardino, California. The shooting was an apparent murder–suicide and an act of domestic violence. Three people—the gunman; his wife, who taught at the school; and a student standing behind her—died from their wounds. Another student was wounded and hospitalized.
The Uvalde school shooting was a mass shooting that occurred on May 24, 2022, at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, United States, when 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, a former student at the school, fatally shot 19 students and two teachers, while 17 others were injured but survived. After shooting and severely wounding his grandmother at their home earlier that day, Ramos drove to and entered the school, remaining in an adjoining classroom for more than an hour before members of the United States Border Patrol Tactical Unit fatally shot him after they bypassed numerous local and state officers who had been in the school's hallways for over an hour.
On September 28, 2022, one person was ultimately killed and five people were wounded from gun violence that occurred at King Estates School Complex, an area where three different high schools share a complex campus in Oakland, California. The shooting happened during school hours at 12:45 p.m., when two gunmen, believed by Oakland authorities to not attend the school, entered the campus of Rusdale High School and opened thirty rounds on people present on campus. While it is reported that the shooting had gang or group overtones, the victims hit were all allegedly innocent bystanders. No suspects have yet been arrested or identified. There is surveillance footage showing two suspected gunmen on campus, and a third person of interest involved.
On January 6, 2023, American school teacher Abby Zwerner was seriously injured when a six-year-old male student shot her while she was teaching in her classroom at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, Virginia. The boy had brought from home, in his backpack, a 9mm semi-automatic pistol belonging to his mother.
