Remembering 1992 Lindhurst High School Shooting 30 Years After
My childhood friend’s bother Jason White along with fellow students Judy Davis, Beamon Hill, and teacher Robert Brens were killed in the 1992 Lindhurst High School shooting, in my hometown known as the Yuba-Sutter region of northern California on Friday, May 1, 1992. The 20-year-old killer held an estimated 80 students hostage in a standoff for eight hours. This was one of the first school mass shootings at a time when they were extremely rare.
REMEMBRANCE
I genuinely feel guilty that on this 30th year since May 1, 1992, I forgot. On one hand, I don’t think I’ll ever forget. I couldn’t possibly. Yet on the 30-year date since May 1, 1992 I did forget. Do we call this an anniversary or milestone? I feel stupid trying to clumsily trying to find the right words to write about this. I forgot and didn’t remember until the Robb Elementary School shooting of May 24, 2022 in Uvalde, Texas.
I don’t seem to be the only one who forgot. Looking at my hometown’s newspaper Appeal-Democrat Facebook page, I see they have uploads of the newspaper’s cover nearly every day. Yet they don’t seem to have one for May 1, 2022. Doing an online search, I can’t find any news coverage this year remembering this tragedy. Any.
TROUBLE AT SCHOOL
When the Lindhurst High School shooting happened on May 1, 1992 towards the later part of the school day, at Alicia Jr. High School nearly approximately 4.5 miles away, I was in the principal’s office waiting area with a classmate for misbehaving. I was 11 in the 6th grade. I acted out a lot during my elementary and junior high school years and frequently wound up in the principal’s office. While in the waiting area of the principal’s office, suddenly parent after parent showed up to take their child home early. Having been in this waiting area many times, this was unusual. The classmate who was in trouble with me and I were initially laughing at how odd it was not yet knowing why this was happening.
The 1992 Los Angeles Riots following the jury acquittal of four Los Angeles Police Department officers seen on video beating Rodney King had begun days before. At some point I remember hearing someone I the office wonder if the riots had spread to our northern California town.
As I increase in years, it gets harder remember the details of that day well. I think school ended in the 3pm hour. According to not-the-best source Wikipedia the shooting began at 2:40 p.m. It seems school ended sometime in the 3pm hour. I remember in that era of my life trying to get home to watch the Disney Afternoon shows which as I recall began at 4pm. After school ended, my memory tells me I started walking home from the school at Pasado Road headed towards my home on Arboga Road in Olivehurst. Sometimes I would walk home. Sometimes I would be picked up. During the walk my mother found me while driving to my school. I got into the car. She expressed relief finding me and told me a school shooting had happened at Lindhurst High School where my older cousins went. My cousins skipped school that day. My cousins relayed it was some sort of planned school skipping day for many students.
That afternoon, I felt tension and also worried maybe the riots would indeed spread to our town. Yet at age 11 I wasn’t overly worried. I was a single-child, awkward, and mostly a loner. Around this time, I befriended a kid named Jeremy. I don’t remember how. I got to know him well enough to spend time at his family’s trailer home near Alicia Jr. High School. We would watch cartoons and play as kids that age played. I didn’t know his older bother Jason White well. I remember a having a dispute with White about taking turns playing video games. I remember White dressed in western clothing with a cowboy hat. He was a huge Garth Brooks fan and played his music a lot. White was high-school-aged (7 years older than me) and into teenager stuff. I was not friends with him as I was with his brother Jeremy. Obviously I would not wish harm on him. It’s very sad to contemplate how his adulthood and future was taken from him.
WE WERE SUPPOSED TO GO ROLLER SKATING
I had plans to go to the local roller-skating rink with my friend Jeremy on Saturday May 2, 1992. In this pre-cell-phone era, the evening of that fateful day I called Jeremy.
Jeremey’s mother Mary answered. Soon after she answered she said, “He didn’t make it” and began sobbing. “He” being her son Jason White, Jeremy’s brother. Not having the tact to deal with such a grown-up situation at the age of 11, I awkwardly said “Okay. Bye.” At the age of 11 how could I possibly know how to console a grieving mother hours after losing her son 9 days before Mother’s Day? I hung up and told my parents. I remember my mother being shocked.
I’m unsure when exactly I saw Jeremy and his family the first time after the shooting. I remember riding my bike on Arboga and stumbling upon the memorial service at a church. It was probably at New Life Assembly. I remember hearing songs “It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday” by Boyz II Men and “The Dance” by Garth Brooks. At this time, I wasn’t yet into music. Many years later into adulthood, after experiencing substantial life experience, both of those songs grew to become some of my all-time favorites and of course I will always remember the memorial when I hear them.
Thereafter the memories get harder to recall.
RELATIONSHIP WITH JEREMY AND HIS FAMILY
After Jeremy returned to school, Jeremy was swarmed by other kids in the school trying to befriend him (especially girls). Jeremy was initially hostile towards me when he returned to school while getting attention by new school peers. The following year in 1993, Jeremy would often stay with my parents and I, while his parents traveled to Napa for the trial of the shooter. Jeremy and I often watched music videos and, to the disapproval of our parents, Beavis and Butt-Head.
During my junior high school years, I explored my creativity by making a handwritten magazine to distribute among friends and family. I once interviewed Jeremy about the shooting. No copy exists. It was one of the few times we discussed the shooting.
My parents moved us necessitating I relocate to another junior high school. Jeremy and I still visited one another often. When it came time to go to high school in 1994, Jeremy and I both went to Lindhurst High School where his brother had been fatally shot. Jeremy’s family then moved out of the state in 1994 or 1995. Both Jeremy and his mother Mary returned to the Yuba-Sutter region in the 00s. I stayed in touch with both on Facebook until I stopped using Facebook around 2017.
ATTENDING A SCHOOL KNOWN FOR A MASS SHOOTING
Attending Lindhurst High School where my friend’s bother was killed two years prior was initially surreal. I don’t remember ever discussing with Jeremy how he felt about going to the school where his brother was killed. I am guessing he felt bad about it. Perhaps that contributed to his family relocating.
My hometown of Yuba-Sutter is infamous for numerous terrible things besides the 1992 Lindhurst High School shooting: the 1971 Juan Corona killings; the 1976 Yuba City students bus crash disaster; the major floods of 1955 and 1997; and there’s been a number of unsolved deaths and various scandals.
I know at least two of my teachers were present that fateful day. My public speaking teacher Ms. Patricia Morgan and my history teacher Robert Ledford.
In this embedded video, you can see an interview with Ledford. I vaguely remember Ledford talking about the shooting openly at times. Hill was killed in his class. Though I didn’t understand what post-traumatic stress syndrome was at the time, in hindsight Ms. Morgan – a seeming sweet older lady type – showed signs of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
TERRIBLE SIEGE AT JOHNSON HIGH MOVIE
I watched the 1997 TV movie “Detention: The Siege at Johnson High” when it aired on TV. It was apparently based on the tragedy. It starred Henry Winkler, Ricky Schroder, and Freddie Prinze Jr. Characters were given fictional names. I remain offended to this day how they named the movie’s fictional killer “Jason” considering Jason was one of the real people killed. At IMDB https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118969/mediaviewer/rm1589353984/?ref_=tt_md_3 you can see a DVD cover for the film includes the distasteful text, “School’s out forever.” It is a terrible representation of the event.
MEMORIALS
In 2003 I was employed at Sierra View Mortuary & Memorial Park at 4900 Olive Ave, Olivehurst, CA 95961 for a few months. A headstone for Jason White is located there and I would walk past it often while working there. This is located next to Lindhurst High School. According to Find a Grave at https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/28472122/jason-edward-white Jason was buried at Grandview Memorial Gardens in Madison, Indiana. At https://www.findagrave.com/virtual-cemetery/58448?page=1#sr-28472116 you can also learn about the resting places of Judy Davis, Beamon Hill, and Robert Brens.
Memorials were built at Lindhurst High School in front of the school and Lindhurst Memorial Park at 1676 McGowan Pkwy, Olivehurst, CA 95961. I am unable to find the dates when they were unveiled. I speculate the unveils were sometime in the 00s or 10s.
TV SHOW REENACTMENT
In preparing to write this remembrance, I learned on TV series Hostage Do or Die did an episode about the tragedy straightforwardly titled “Lindhurst High School.” It reportedly aired on December 29, 2011. Unlike the exploitive and tacky “Detention: The Siege at Johnson High,” the Hostage Do or Die episode was an acceptable representation of the event. The episode included interviews with hostage Andrew Parks, hostage Judith Little, Beamon Hill’s mother Joe Ann Hill, Jason White’s mother Mary Stickle, and various members of involved law enforcement. The episode is however graphic in its depiction of the shooting. Viewer discretion is advised – especially for people directly impacted by the event. The episode is embedded below.
Incidentally the actor portraying Jason White in the episode looked nothing like him. However, some of the other actors did look like the real people.
WHO TOOK A BULLET FOR ANOTHER STUDENT?
Around the time of the shooting, I remember someone claiming my friend’s bother Jason White heroically took a bullet for another student.
At legal website Casetext, the uploaded court filing, “Respondent's Brief August 14, 2008,” states on page 29, “Right before he entered the classroom, he stopped and looked right at Welch, making eye contact with her… Beamon Hill, who was standing next to Welch, yelled, "'No."' … Hill pushed Welch out of the way, causing her to fall to the ground. Appellant shot Hill in the head, and then he turned around and walked away.” Welch being student Angela Welch. On page 245, the “Respondent's Brief,” states “The evidence adduced in the guilt phase of trial showed that Defendant entered room C-102, raised his gun and fired. As he fired, Beamon Hill pushed Angela Welch to the ground and was struck by the force of the shotgun blast.” The above-mentioned Do or Die episode also credits Beamon Hill as having pushed his classmate out of the way seemingly sacrificing his life to save her.
At website Angels of Columbine (http://www.columbine-angels.com/lindhurst_story.htm), comment poster Michelle Inman claimed the same thing regarding hostage Wayne Boggess. “There is hero that day that has not even mentioned… (shooter) also shot another student, Wayne Boggess in the head for the same reason Beamon was shot. Wayne had thrown himself in front of a female student saving her life taking a shot in the head close up,” Inman wrote. It’s unclear to me if Inman means Boggess took the same actions as Hill or if Hill is improperly credited with having done with what Boggess is claimed here to have done.
TRIAL & DEATH SENTENCE
Obviously in my young teen years I wasn’t privy to information from Jeremy’s mother or my parents about what was happening at the trial.
The killer was sentenced to the death penalty in 1993. In 2012 the California state Supreme Court upheld his sentence. Source: State Supreme Court Upholds Death Penalty For Houston In Lindhurst High Rampage, CBS13 Sacramento, August 2, 2012 (https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2012/08/02/state-supreme-court-upholds-death-penalty-for-houston-in-lindhurst-high-rampage). The killer remains on death row at San Quentin. I am unable to find any information about a possible execution date. At https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/news/california-governor-gavin-newsom-orders-dismantling-of-californias-death-row you can see at the Death Penalty Information Center website relays how California Governor Gavin seems determined to stop further state executions.
I am unaware of any victim connected to this event who thinks the killer should be spared. In the embedded video below, you can see a 2017 interview with KCRA 3 Sacramento in which teacher Robert Ledford (there the day of the shooting) opposes the death penalty yet expressed support of the killer being executed.
In the context of reenacting a conversation he claims he had with killed teacher Robert Brens, Robert Ledford relayed, “I'm very fearful that one day one of these students might harm me or even kill me and if someday this were ever to happen to me, please make sure that the death penalty be put on this person.”
KILLER’S SEX ABUSE CLAIMS
In researching who took the bullet and finding the trial documents to review, I learned of the shooter’s claims of sexual abuse by the teacher he killed. I was shocked to learn this. For 30 years I never heard anything about this. I feel like I am unintendedly betraying my community for writing this. Yet I must admit learning of the shooter’s abuse claims makes me feel complex, confusing emotions. A narrative about being a disgruntled loser out for revenge towards a teacher and school who flunked him is far different than a narrative of a seemingly mentally-handicapped, father-abandoned teen who was abused by a same-sex teacher in an era where discussing abuse and homosexuality was still overwhelmingly taboo.
The killer indisputably killed three innocent teenagers at school and likely inflected lifelong post-traumatic stress disorder on hundreds of people. Again, I am unaware of any victim who feels he should be spared the death penalty. May God please forgive me if I am wrong but I will stand with my community in supporting Houston’s execution. When a person demonstrates themselves to be such a tremendous danger to society, the death penalty protects us from further harm. Nonetheless, regardless of how we feel, as mentioned, Governor Newsome seems intent to stop further executions in California. It appears we will have to accept Houston will not likely be executed. The parents of the shooting victims are getting older. It’s painful to admit this but they may not live long enough to see the killer executed. I know how much it would give closure to the families so I hate to write this. The killer will likely live on until he dies an old man in prison.
Despite my support of the death penalty, my conscious demands I acknowledged what I learned about the killer’s sex abuse claims. In short, the killer claimed Robert Brens (the teacher he killed) sexually abused him. In an era in which being gay was still mostly taboo in America, the killer felt bad about having homosexual feelings he blamed on the sexual abuse done to him by the teacher. He blamed the teacher for his inability to maintain a relationship with a woman. Indisputably, the killer blamed his difficulty maintaining a job on teacher Robert Brens flunking him during high school preventing him from graduating.
At https://casetext.com/brief/s035190-people-v-houston-eric-c-respondents-brief you can read Respondent's Brief August 14, 2008. To make your own conclusion about whether or not teacher Robert Brens did or did not sexually abuse the killer, use CTRL+F when looking at the document online (or as downloaded PDF) to find the witness names: David Rewerts (a gay man the killer had been friends with since high school - testified killer never relayed abuse claims); Ricardo Borom (a coworker and another gay friend of the killer since killer’s late teen years - seems to confirm killer told him about claims of abuse by the teacher he killed); psychologist Dr. Helaine Rubinstein (testified on behalf of killer); and board certified psychiatrist Dr. C. Jess Groesbeck (testified on behalf of killer); and psychiatrist Dr. Captane P. Thomson (testified killer knew right from wrong when killing).
CONCLUSIONS
I am sorry but I have no words of wisdom. The shooting that occurred on May 1, 1992 at Lindhurst High School was a senseless, painful tragedy. As someone from a school shooting town, news of other school shootings will always be painful to me. It was painful to see recent videos of the Nikolas Cruz trial. Following the Robb Elementary School shooting of May 24, 2022 in Uvalde, Texas, I am disturbed to see headline “Area student arrested after social media post with guns,” at the website of my hometown paper Appeal-Democrat.
School shooters tend to be loner types who blame others for the internalized pain they carry. I can only hope there are vigilant leaders who reach out to would-be shooters and intervene helping them find hope.
I offer my sympathies to the victims of the 1992 Lindhurst High School shooting and all people impacted by mass shootings including the survivors, the hostages, the friends, the families, and the people in the communities where these tragedies occur. Even as someone secondarily impacted by the shooting, it will always be painful to remember.
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Lindhurst High School Shooting In Media:
• Remembering the 1992 California High School Shooting That Killed Four, Yahoo News February 17, 2018 https://www.yahoo.com/news/remembering-1992-california-high-school-180529460.html
• Remembering the Deadly 1992 Lindhurst High School Shooting, FOX40 News, Feb 16, 2018 https://fox40.com/news/local-news/remembering-the-deadly-1992-lindhurst-high-school-shooting
• I Was Held Hostage by a Gunman for Eight Hours in High School - By Lynn Davis, Vice, March 22, 2018 https://www.vice.com/en/article/zmgxxy/i-was-held-hostage-by-a-gunman-for-eight-hours-in-high-school
• It’s Been 25 Years Since Lindhurst Shooting, KNCO, May. 2, 2017 https://knco.com/its-been-25-years-since-lindhurst-shooting
• Today marks 25th anniversary of Lindhurst tragedy, Appeal-Democrat, May 1, 2017 https://m.appeal-democrat.com/today-marks-th-anniversary-of-lindhurst-tragedy/article_ff4c2198-2e97-11e7-8877-bf56f5d98603.html
• Lindhurst High School hostage survivors speak to KCRA 3 Sacramento, May 1, 2017 https://fb.watch/dohGEGlnch
• 25 years later: Survivors remember deadly Lindhurst HS shooting, KCRA 3 Sacramento, May 1, 2017
• Lindhurst Shooting: 20 Years Later: Mary Stickle, appealdemocrat channel on YouTube, Apr 30, 2012
• Lindhurst Shooting: 20 Years Later. Joe Ann Hill, appealdemocrat channel on YouTube, Apr 30, 2012
• Lindhurst Shooting: 20 Years Later. Lynda Bradbury VanArtsdalen, appealdemocrat channel on YouTube, Apr 30, 2012
• Lindhurst shooting account, misssuzq channel on YouTube, May 1, 2012
• Lindhurst shooting: 20 years later, Appeal-Democrat, May 1, 2012, https://www.appeal-democrat.com/lindhurst-shooting-20-years-later/article_86cdb82d-8ab3-5f7f-911d-2da812c47cca.html
• School shooting turns unwanted attention to Lindhurst Appeal-Democrat, Apr 16, 2007 https://www.appeal-democrat.com/school-shooting-turns-unwanted-attention-to-lindhurst/article_4aeb684f-1164-588c-bcf0-1fe80886c3c0.html
• Lindhurst High School shooting Wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindhurst_High_School_shooting
• Lindhurst High School murder victims https://www.findagrave.com/virtual-cemetery/58448
• Lindhurst Memorial Park Image https://www.waymarking.com/gallery/image.aspx?f=1&guid=73134649-0043-44bb-92f9-59f328fa0ba0&gid=3
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Thank you for posting this and writing from the heart and for seeing the various sides to this tragedy. Sorry for what you went through. Not sure what else to say.