“The Infamous San Diego School Shooting of 1979: Exploring the Motivations Behind Brenda Spencer’s Tragic Actions”

On January 29, 1979 – Monday – to a reporter from the local newspaper “The San Diego Union-Tribune”, Spencer uttered the now legendary phrase, that is, when asked why you did the crime, she replied: “I don’t like Mondays. It brightens up the day.”

By “it,” she meant, of course, her shooting that day, when she fired 30 full rounds of ammunition toward the school using a semi-automatic rifle. She managed to kill the school principal and a guard, as well as injure eight children and the first police officer who arrived on the scene. Spencer then barricaded herself inside her home for more than six hours before finally surrendering to police.