Stockton schoolyard shooting
1989 CE.
Shown on the map at 37.982°, -121.301°.
The Stockton schoolyard shooting occurred at Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton, California, on January 17, 1989. The perpetrator, 24-year-old Patrick Purdy, shot and killed five children and wounded thirty-one others—all but one of them children—before committing suicide approximately three minutes after first opening fire. The shooting sparked intense public controversy regarding private ownership of assault weapons, and ultimately inspired the Roberti–Roos Assault Weapons Control Act of 1989, which prohibited the ownership and transfer of over fifty specific brands and models of assault weapons in California. This act was signed into effect on May 24, 1989. At the time, the Stockton schoolyard shooting was the worst school shooting (in terms of number of fatalities) to occur at a non-college institution, being surpassed ten years later by the Columbine High School massacre. The shooting was also the deadliest to occur at an American elementary school until the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
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