On April 20, 1999, two students from Columbine Institute in Colorado, USA, entered their school armed and murdered 12 classmates and a teacher, and injured 24 others. After the shooting, both committed suicide. Eric David Harris and Dylan Bennet Klebold were 18 and 17 years old respectively.
Since this massacre, which marked a before and after in American societyThe country has seen year after year children and teenagers die as victims of shootings carried out by other children and teenagers at increasingly younger ages.
In fact, a study published in the academic journal Springer-Nature concluded, based on data from recent years, that shootings and mass shootings in schools and related deaths have continued to increase. From 2008 to today, according to a count by the television channel cnnthere was 45 attacks of this type in educational centers across the country.
Colt Gray, Georgia, 14 years old
That same Wednesday, at 10 a.m., Colt GreyA 14-year-old student, picked up an AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle and opened fire on his classmates at Apalachee Winder High School in Georgia. Two juveniles, the same age as the attacker, and two teachers died from the gunfire. Gray was arrested and will be charged with murder and tried as an adult.
Although these attacks are sometimes difficult to predict. However, the truth is that in this case, the young man had already been on the radar of federal authorities for more than a year. According to a joint statement from the Atlanta FBI and the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office, the young man was investigated by the FBI in 2023 to publish threats online with photographs of weapons.
That year, authorities questioned him, then 13, and his father, who said he had hunting weapons at home but that his son did not have access to them. After that visit, Jackson County alerted local schools to monitor the teen, but they said they did not arrest him because “there was no probable cause.”
Gabe Parker, Kentucky, 15 years old
07:57 in the morning. January 23, 2018. Gabe Parker, a 15-year-old boy, entered the school hall where students at Marshall County High School in Kentucky were gathering before class and shot his classmates. He killed two young men of the same age and wounded nearly two dozen others.
In the midst of the chaos, he took the opportunity to throw away the weapon and try to go unnoticed by hiding among a group of students. However, one of the teenagers said he saw the shooter and, later, the police arrested him. In 2020, he received two life sentences.
Ethan Crumbley, Michigan, 15
October 30, 2021, will be remembered by high school students in Oxford, Michigan, a small town north of Detroit. That day, Ethan Crumbley, also 15, took his father’s gun and shot his classmates in cold blood. Seven people died.
Photos of Ethan, Jennifer and James Crumbley (left to right).
Reuters
The shooter was charged with “terrorist act” and “murder”, and the parents of the young attacker were arrested and sentenced to up to 15 years in prison for not to have acted who could have prevented the massacre perpetrated by their son.
According to the BBCHours before the shooting, teachers called James and Jennifer Crumbley because they had found some of their son’s drawings that included guns and bloody people with phrases like “thoughts won’t stop” and “blood everywhere”.
Jeff Weise, Minnesota, 16 years old
Jeff Weise was 16 years old. He lived on the remote Red Lake Chippewa Indian Reservation in Minnesota, just across the Canadian border. One morning in the spring of 2005, he woke up and killed his grandfather, a reserve sergeant, and his partner. Then and directed s his institute, a center of 300 students. There, he murdered seven people before committing suicide by shooting himself in the face.
Salvador Ramos, Uvalde, 18 years old
Salvador Ramosa pale young man with long black hair, had just come of age when he entered Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, two years ago, armed with an AR-15 military rifle. There, for 77 minutes He shot a group of children aged 7 to 10 at point-blank range. A total of 19 minors and two teachers died.
Before committing this murder, he shot his grandmother. So, Equipped with a bulletproof vest and an assault weapon He went to the school where he had studied as a child. The young man died in a shootout with the policewho later admitted to having committed “a chain of errors.” It is one of the deadliest massacres ever recorded at an academic institution in the country.
