School shootings - 2010

[faceless]

Female Teacher 'Shot Dead Three Fellow Staff'
February 13, 2010
Adam Arnold,
Sky News Online

A female teacher has been charged with murder after three fellow staff members were shot dead at a US university. Authorities said Amy Bishop, a biology professor, opened fire after reportedly being told she would not be given a permanent teaching position. The attack is believed to have taken place during a biology department meeting at the University of Alabama's Huntsville campus. Three other school employees were injured in the shooting.

Bishop has been charged with one count of capital murder, which means she could face the death penalty if convicted. A man, thought to be Bishop's husband, was also in custody.

Trent Willis, chief of staff and communications for the city of Huntsville, said: "There are three fatalities and three critical injuries and the suspect is in custody. The campus is in lockdown. We are working to save these lives." A hospital spokesman later said that two of the injured were in a critical condition and the third was stable.

Huntsville police said all of the dead were faculty members and a witness said the shooting appeared to have taken place during a biology faculty meeting at the university's Shelby Centre. "I heard three shots and screaming," Melanie Gates, an engineering student at the campus said. She was near the exit of the Shelby Centre when the shootings happened and she said the sound of the shots appeared to come from the third floor, where the biology faculty meeting was taking place.

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I can't think of a previous shooting like this where the killer was a woman.

[faceless]

Harvard-educated professor who 'shot dead university colleagues also killed her brother'
14th February 2010

A professor accused of killing three colleagues when she opened fire in a staff meeting shot dead her own teenage brother in an accident more than 20 years ago, police said. Harvard-educated neurobiologist, inventor and mother Amy Bishop - who is said to have pulled out a gun when she was told she would not be getting tenure in the science department - shot her brother at their home in Massachusetts in 1986.

The incident was, at the time, logged as an accident. However, US authorities revealed yesterday that the record of this shooting had disappeared. According to Paul Frazier, police chief in Braintree, Massachusetts, her brother - an 18-year-old accomplished violinist - was shot in the chest.

Bishop had just months left teaching at the University of Alabama in the United States when police said she opened fire with a handgun Friday in a room filled with a dozen of her colleagues from the school's biology department. The lecturer was charged with one court of capital murder which means she could face the death penalty. Three were killed and at least three others were critically injured, said police. The neuro-scientist’s husband opened the door for his wife before she started shooting, according to local reports. In all, ten people – all staff from the maths and science department – were said to have been wounded.

Bishop, 42, was taken Friday night in handcuffs from a police precinct to the county jail and could be heard saying, 'It didn't happen. There's no way .... they are still alive.' Police said they were also interviewing a man as 'a person of interest,' believed to be Dr Bishops husband.
Shooting scene

The shooting happened at the Huntsville, Alabama, university’s Shelby Centre. University police secured the maths and science building and students were evacuated. The three killed were Gopi K. Podila, the chairman of the Department of Biological Sciences, and two other faculty members, Maria Ragland Davis and Adriel Johnson. The wounded were still recovering in hospitals early Saturday. Luis Cruz-Vera was in fair condition; Joseph Leahy in critical condition; and staffer Stephanie Monticciolo also was in critical condition.

Descriptions of Bishop from students and colleagues were mixed. Some saw a strange woman who had difficulty relating to her students, while others described a witty, intelligent teacher. Students and colleagues described Bishop as intelligent, but someone who often had difficulty explaining difficult concepts.

There are about 7,500 students at the university. The shooting was the latest of a string of school and university shootings in the US in recent years, but the first involving a woman.

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[SpursFan1902]

Neither can I Face - and no matter how many times it happens, it is always shocking. The fear that someone you see everyday, maybe just someone you pass and nod to, could completely go postal and start shooting the place up. I think of it every time I go to school.

[faceless]

from the sounds of the back-story she was protected from prosecution, or at least wasn't given the correct treatment if it was genuinely an accident that she shot her brother in the chest.