History of School Shootings in the United States: 2015
History of School Shootings in the United States: 2015
On January 15, 2015
in Milwaukee, Wisconsin a 15-year-old boy, a student's father, and a teacher were injured in the school parking lot at Wisconsin Lutheran High School. The student’s injuries went unspecified, the father was shot in the knee, and the teacher was grazed in the toe. 36-year-old Michael Riley was charged in the shooting.
In June 2016, Riley pled guilty to first degree reckless injury, use of a dangerous weapon, and felon in possession of a firearm and on September 2, 2016, Riley was sentenced to six years in prison and six years of extended supervision.
On January 16, 2015
in Ocala, Florida two were injured by gunfire after a Friday night basketball game at Vanguard High School. One was injured directly by a bullet, the other by ricocheting glass.
On February 4, 2015
in Frederick, Maryland two students were shot near the gym at Frederick High School during a JV - junior varsity - boys' basketball game. About two hundred students, staff, and faculty were on lockdown for several hours while police searched for the suspects. Brandon Earl Tyler, 21, and Chandler Tristan Davenport, 19 were charged with the shooting.
On February 14, 2015
in Merced, California a 16-year-old Benito Aguirre was found dead in the parking lot of Tenaya Middle School. The shooting was reported to have occurred after school hours. Investigators say the teen was shot to death over jealousy about a girl, and two people were arrested for his murder.
On February 23, 2015
in Daytona Beach, Florida two students argued outside the music building at Bethune-Cookman University and one pulled out a gun; both had guns and it was not disclosed who did the shooting, injuring three students.
On March 30, 2015
in University City, Missouri police said one person was arrested for a shooting at Pershing Elementary School. The shooting occurred in the parking lot, with a 34-year-old-man being shot in the buttocks.
On April 13, 2015
in Goldsboro, North Carolina a faculty member was killed with a rifle in the school library of Wayne Community College. The 20-year-old gunman, Kenneth Stancil, was arrested in Florida the next day. Stancil was sentenced to life without parole for the murder.
On April 16, 2015
in Paradis, Louisiana a police officer was shot outside a school in a school zone while he was directing school buses into J.B. Martin Middle School, and the suspect was apprehended at the scene.
On May 12, 2015
in Jacksonville, Florida an argument led to a 16-year-old firing five bullets into a school bus and injuring two students.
On May 14, 2015
in Vallejo, California a 17 year old student was killed in a robbery on a trail by the campus of Jesse M. Bethel High School; two men were arrested, not students of the school, and sentenced to 21 years for manslaughter.
On May 24, 2015
in Flint, Michigan early in the morning hours of Memorial Day weekend, a group of people were at Southwestern Classical Academy in the parking lot. Shots rang out and seven were injured, with two men being apprehended and charged.
On August 27, 2015
in Savannah, Georgia a 22-year-old student Christopher Starks was fatally shot in a student union building at Savannah State University. Justin Stephens was charged with the murder, and pled guilty to voluntary manslaughter in exchange for having murder charges dropped. He received a sentence of three years in prison and 17 years of probation.
On September 3, 2015
in Sacramento, California a man arguing with at least one other person escalated into a physical fight in a parking lot of Sacramento City College. A man opened fire, killing a 25-year-old student and wounding two others. Tevita Kaihea was sentenced to 112 years to life in prison and Charlie Hola was sentenced to 49 years to life for the crime.
On September 14, 2015
in Cleveland, Mississippi a man killed a woman at his home before fatally shooting an American history professor on the Delta State University campus. The shooter later committed suicide after a chase.
On September 30, 2015
in Harrisburg, South Dakota a principal was wounded by a gunshot in the arm at Harrisburg High School after an argument with a student. The suspect, 16-year-old Mason Buhl, was taken into custody, charged with first-degree attempted murder, and sentenced to 25 years suspended with 15 years on supervised probation.
Buhl was charged with second-degree rape in 2021, meaning his suspended 25-year sentence was back on the table. Under South Dakota law, second-degree rape is a class 1 felony defined as sex that occurs through the use of force, coercion, or “force threats of immediate and great bodily harm.”
Court documents filed in Hughes County Court state that the alleged rape happened sometime between June 2020 and July 2021. The name of the female victim in the case remains under seal, but she filed a protective order against Buhl in Minnehaha County that revealed more details about their relationship. In her two-page affadavit, the victim claims that Buhl had reacted violently when she rejected his “drunken sexual advances” and cited several different instances where he allegedly punched her in the stomach.
“When I was late, he would punch me with a closed fist, stating that is what will happen if I get pregnant,” the victim reportedly wrote. “He also pinched me very hard when I ate something he did not prepare for me. In December and January 2021, I was only allowed rice. In February 2021 I was only allowed to eat black beans. Most recently in May 2021, I was only allowed to eat bread.”
According to court documents, Buhl pled no contest to domestic violence, meaning he accepts conviction as though a guilty plea had been entered, but he does not admit guilt to the crime. That plea also dismisses the rape charges Buhl was facing. No word as of February 2023 on his probation violation charge.
On October 1, 2015
in Roseburg, Oregon at the Umpqua Community College around 10:40 a.m., Chris Harper-Mercer, a 26-year-old student who was enrolled at the school, killed an assistant professor and eight students in a classroom, and injured eight others. Roseburg police detectives responded and engaged Harper-Mercer in a brief shootout. After being wounded, he committed suicide by shooting himself in the head.
At 10:38 a.m., the first 9-1-1 call was made from Snyder Hall on the school campus reporting gunfire. Students reported that the shooting began in Classroom 15, where English and writing classes are conducted.
Harper-Mercer, who was a student in the writing class, entered the hallway and fired a warning shot. Some witnesses said he then forced fellow students to the center of the classroom. Before he opened fire on the other students, he deliberately spared one student's life so that the student could deliver a package from him to the police. He forced this student to sit at the back of the classroom and watch as he continued shooting with two handguns.
Harper-Mercer first shot the assistant English teacher at point-blank range. He allegedly asked two students for their religion, shooting them after they gave him a response. Other witnesses said he asked if students were Christians, telling those who replied in the affirmative that they would go to heaven as he shot them, although one victim was agnostic and another was pagan. Some students were shot multiple times; one woman was shot in the stomach several times while trying to close a classroom door.
One witness said he made a woman beg for her life before shooting her, shot another woman when she tried to reason with him, and shot a third woman in the leg after she tried to defend herself with a desk. One victim, Sarena Dawn Moore, was killed while trying to climb back into a wheelchair on his orders.
Roseburg Police Sergeant Joe Kaney and Detective Todd Spingath (who were plainclothes at the time of the shooting) were the first to respond to the scene. They arrived at the hallway of Snyder Hall at 10:44, six minutes after the first 9-1-1 call was received. Two minutes later, Harper-Mercer reloaded his handguns and leaned out of the classroom, firing several shots at the officers. They fired three shots in return, hitting him once in the right side. After two more minutes of shooting at the officers, the wounded Harper-Mercer retreated into the classroom and killed himself with a single shot to his head. None of the officers were injured.
The package that he gave to the surviving student during the attack contained writing on his motivations. Harper-Mercer complained of having"no friends, no job, no girlfriend" and still being a virgin. He used language associated with the incel subculture, critiqued other mass killers, and expressed admiration for the misogynist 2014 Isla Vista killings, showing he had studied mass killings, including the 2014 killing spree at Isla Vista, California. He also expressed his sexual frustration as a virgin, animosity toward Black men, and a lack of fulfillment in his isolated life. He wrote that "Other people think I'm crazy, but I'm not. I'm the sane one," and that he would be "welcomed in Hell and embraced by the devil." He also admired the fame killers received, and wrote: "A man who was known by no one, is now known by everyone. His face splashed across every screen, his name across the lips of every person on the planet, all in the course of one day."
Six firearms were recovered from the crime scene: five handguns and one long gun. None were owned by his mother. The long gun was not used during the incident. Harper-Mercer also had a flak jacket and "enough ammunition for a prolonged gunfight".
Police said they found eight other firearms at his apartment, and that all of the weapons were purchased legally either by him or members of his family. Almost four hours after the shooting, Laurel Mercer was interviewed by Oregon State Police detectives, but the content was not released until September 13, 2017. She said her son had been prescribed medication, but it didn't seem to help, and that he had been "born angry." She told police that he enjoyed watching videos of killings on the Internet. Their home was so disorganized that, even after the murders, she could not tell what guns were missing.
The attacker killed a total of nine people: eight died at the scene; the ninth died at Mercy Medical Center. The dead were Lucero Alcaraz, age 19, Treven Taylor Anspach, 20, Rebecka Ann Carnes, 18, Quinn Glen Cooper, 18, Kim Saltmarsh Dietz, 59, Lucas Eibel, 18, Jason Dale Johnson, 33, Lawrence Levine, 67, and Sarena Dawn Moore, 43. Eight other students were injured, some with multiple gunshot wounds.
Among the wounded was Chris Mintz, a US Army veteran and a fitness training student at the college, who responded when he heard screams coming from an adjacent classroom. He blocked the connected door with his body to allow his class to escape. He next left the building to alert students in the library to evacuate. Returning to the shooting scene, he advised a wounded student to stay down and be quiet. At that point, Harper-Mercer leaned out from the classroom into the hallway and shot Mintz five times because he said Mintz had called police.
Mintz pleaded that he not be killed on his son's birthday and said an apparently emotionless Harper-Mercer withdrew back into the classroom.
At a press conference held on October 3, Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin thanked Mintz for his actions. To help pay for his medical bills, Mintz's family set up a GoFundMe account. By the end of that day, it had already received more than US$650,000 in donations. Mintz was released from a hospital on October 7.
Christopher Sean "Chris" Harper-Mercer was born in Torrance, California to Ian Bernard Mercer, a White Englishman, and Laurel Margaret Harper, a Black American woman. His parents separated before he was born, and Harper-Mercer spent his entire life living with his mother, and reportedly hasn't seen his father since they moved to Oregon some two years before the shooting.
Although some reports described him as a veteran, Harper-Mercer joined the U.S. Army in 2008, but was discharged after five weeks for his failure to meet the "minimum administrative standards" of basic training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. Leaked information linked to the investigation suggested that he was discharged as the result of a suicide attempt, but Army officials refused to comment. In 2009, he graduated from Switzer Learning Center, a school for teenagers with learning disabilities or emotional issues.
Laurel Harper was reportedly protective of him and tried to shield him from various perceived annoyances in their neighborhood in Torrance. From early 2010 to early 2012, Harper-Mercer attended El Camino College in Torrance.
Harper-Mercer maintained several Internet accounts, including one in which he described himself as mixed race. Media reports said he had an e-mail address linked to an account on a BitTorrent website. The last upload on the account, three days before the Umpqua shooting, was a documentary on the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
According to the Los Angeles Times, unnamed law enforcement sources described him as a "hate-filled" man with anti-religious and white supremacist leanings, and with long-term mental-health issues. His mother, Laurel Harper, had previously written 0in an online forum that both she and her son had Asperger syndrome.
He and his mother moved to Winchester, Oregon in 2013 after she received a job there. His mother said he was initially excited to be able to "open carry" unlike in California. They had 14 legally purchased weapons in the apartment, and Harper-Mercer's mother wrote online that she always kept full magazines in her Glock pistols and AR-15. The two often spent time together at shooting ranges, but Harper-Mercer was otherwise extremely isolated.
Harper-Mercer was on scholastic probation at Umpqua Community College for falling below a C average. According to his community college transcript, Harper-Mercer earned a 1.75 GPA during his time at UCC, and a letter dated September 1 warned him that he could be suspended if he did not raise his grades. A UCC tuition bill due on October 6 stated that Harper-Mercer owed $2,021.
In his manifesto, Harper-Mercer wrote that his actions were done in service of Satan, who, according to Harper-Mercer, would "reward" murderers in hell by turning them into "gods". These beliefs have been linked to his questions asking victims to state their religion; he shot those who identified as Christians.
On October 9, 2015
in Flagstaff, Arizona at Northern Arizona University one student died and three others were wounded. It is unclear what sparked the shooting, which took place near Mountain View Hall, a dormitory that houses most of the campus' students involved in Greek organizations. An 18-year-old student was later arrested and charged with murder and aggravated assault.
On October 9, 2015
in Houston, Texas One person died and another person was injured after someone opened fire outside a Texas Southern University dorm.
On October 22, 2015
in Nashville, Tennessee one person was killed and three others were wounded in a shooting at an outdoor courtyard at Tennessee State University. The shooting may have stemmed from an argument over a dice game. A suspect has not been identified or arrested.
On November 1, 2015
in Winston-Salem, North Carolina one person died and another person was injured, after someone opened fire on the campus of Winston-Salem State University.
On November 20, 2015
in North Las Vegas, Nevada a 16-year-old student was fatally shot during a fight after school hours that involved multiple people on the campus of Mojave High School.