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Eric
Christopher HOUSTON
The Lindhurst High School shooting
Classification: Spree killer
Characteristics: School shooting - In retribution for a failing
grade
Number of victims: 4
Date of murders:
May 1,
1992
Date of arrest:
Same day
Date of birth: 1972
Victims profile: Teacher
Robert Brens, 28, and students Beamon A. Hill, 16, Judy Davis, 17,
and Jason Edward White, 19
Method of murder:
Shooting (12-gauge
pump-action shotgun and a sawed off .22 caliber rifle)
Location: Olivehurst, California, USA
Status: Sentenced to death on September 17, 1993
On May 1, 1992, Eric
Houston, 20, killed four people and wounded 10 in an armed
siege at his former high school en Olivehust, California.
Prosecutors
said the attack was in retribution for a failing grade. Houston was
convicted and was given a death sentence.
The Lindhurst High School shooting
was a school shooting that occurred on
May 1, 1992
at Lindhurst High School in Olivehurst, California, United States. The
gunman, 20-year-old Eric Houston, was a former student at Lindhurst High
School. Houston killed three students and one teacher, and wounded nine
others before Houston surrendered to police.
On April 30, 1992 Eric Houston phoned the principal
of Lindhurst High School, threatening to "shoot up a school rally" to be
held on the following day. The pep rally was cancelled.
Eric nonetheless
arrived on the school campus the following day, armed with a 12-gauge
pump-action shotgun and a sawed off .22 caliber rifle around 2:40 p.m.
As he entered the school, he fatally shot teacher Robert Brens, his
Civics teacher during his senior year. He then shot and killed Judy
Davis, a 17-year-old student inside Brens' classroom. Houston then
walked through the hallway outside the classroom and fatally shot
student Jason Edward White in the chest. Further on Houston pointed his
shotgun at a female student, but before he could fire his weapon another
student, Beamon A. Hill, pushed her aside and took the shotgun blast to
the side of his head.
Houston then entered a classroom with about 25 to 30
students inside. According to reports, Houston would send a student to
retrieve more hostages, and eventually held over 80 students hostage. He
engaged in an eight-hour standoff with police before surrendering to
authorities.
While in police custody, Eric Houston stated that he
was despondent over losing his job and was angered that he failed to
graduate from high school or obtain a GED. He also confessed to holding
a grudge against his former Civics teacher Robert Brens, who failed
Houston in his class. On September 21, 1993 Houston was found guilty on
all charges against him, and was sentenced to death. He is currently
held at San Quentin State Prison awaiting his sentence.
A memorial park was erected on McGowan Parkway in
Olivehurst, California in remembrance of those the four people who died
that day, as reported to this editor by a local resident who was friends
with Jason White at the time of the shooting.
Wikipedia.org
Lindhurst High School, Olivehurst,
California
Friday, May 1, 1992
Unhappy with the treatment he received
while at Lindhurst, alumnus (drop-out), Eric C. Houston, 20, called his
former school with a threat to shoot up a school rally to be held at the
end of the day.
The rally was cancelled, possibly due
to the fact that so many students were already away from the campus at
other school functions, but students weren't told anything about it.
Eric returned to his former school and
entered Building C with a 12-gauge shotgun and a sawed off .22 rifle
around 2 p.m. He shoots teacher Robert Brens, who flunked him in Civics
in 1989, and then Judy Davis, a current student of Mr. Brens.
Eric moves down the hall and shoots
Jason E. White in the chest. Jason was charging Eric at the time in a
heroic, but unfortunately futile, effort to end the bloodshed. Eric
continued his rampage shooting at anything he could think of as a target.
At one point, Eric pointed his shotgun at a female student, but before
he could pull the trigger, Beamon A. Hill pushes her aside and took the
shotgun blast to the side of his head. A very brave and heroic act on
Beamon's part.
Eric continues his attack by taking 70
students hostage for 8 1/2 hours before giving up to authorities. He
wounded nine other students and one adult. Mr. Brens hummed quietly to
himself as he bled to death. Beamon died instantly while Jason slowly
bled to death. Wayne Bogus was one of the most severely injured students,
with a shotgun blast at point blank range, but he defied the odds and
made a remarkable recovery.
The movie Hostage High starring
Rick Schroder and Freddie Prinze, Jr. is based on this event.
Victims:
Robert Brens
Judy Davis
Beamon A. Hill
Jason E. White
School
Gunman Surrenders -- 4 Killed in 10-Hour Ordeal
The San
Francisco Chronicle
Robert B. Gunnison,
Ken Hoover, Chronicle Staff Writers
May 2, 1992
Olivehurst, Yuba County
A
distraught former student in military camouflage with bandoliers across
his chest walked onto a high school campus yesterday afternoon and
opened fire with a shotgun, killing three students and a teacher and
wounding as many as 10 people before surrendering 10 hours later,
authorities said.
The
gunman, identified as Eric Christopher Houston, 20, who last attended
Lindhurst High in 1989 but did not graduate, took more than 80 students
hostage in a school building.
He
finally surrendered to sheriff's deputies at 10:28 p.m., as whoops of
joy and tears of relief swept through a nearby elementary school where
parents waited for word of children held hostage.
Student
hostages said afterward that Houston, frustrated by a breakup with his
girlfriend and being laid off from his job, took out his anger by
killing a history teacher he said had flunked him.
Authorities said that a male teacher, one girl and two boys were killed
during an initial burst of gunfire when Houston walked onto the campus
around 2 p.m., moving from classroom to classroom.
"There
was mass hysteria when the shooting started,'' said Sheriff Gary Tindel.
Names of
the dead were being withheld pending notification of family.
Principal
Ronald Ward and other officials emphatically denied that the shootings
had a racial motivation or any connection to protests about the Rodney
King verdict.
"He came
in, he smiled, and he shot. Then he walked away,'' said Amy Shumate, 16,
a freshman who watched as the gunman shot one of her fellow students in
teacher Robert Ledford's world studies class. "He looked like he just
got out of Desert Storm.''
``His
face was painted camouflage, like green and black,'' said Chris Ray, 17,
who was playing softball when he noticed the intruder enter the campus.
``He had everything Army on, boots, a bulletproof vest.''
Jennifer
Thompson, a sophomore in another class, said she heard shots in bursts.
"Bang,
bang, bang. Silence, then again,'' she said, adding that her teacher
first thought it was firecrackers. Then students slid under their desks
as they had been trained to do.
"He
alternated between being friendly and hostile,'' said Eddie Hicks, 16, a
hostage. First, he was talking and laughing, then he said he was going
to shoot us.''
During a
tense standoff, Houston held scores of federal, state and local law
enforcement personnel at bay during a horrifying night in the normally
placid town of 10,000 people 40 miles north of Sacramento.
8
at hospital
Rideout
Memorial Hospital in nearby Marysville reported admitting eight gunshot
victims, including three high school boys, four high school girls and a
61-year-old male teacher.
A nursing
supervisor said one 16-year-old boy was in critical condition with
wounds to his head, chest and abdomen. One girl was reported to have
suffered a serious arm injury, and another girl was shot in both knees.
Others suffered lesser wounds, the nurse said.
Most of
the 1,200 students were taken to Yuba Gardens School, just across
Highway 70, where they were counseled and reunited with relieved
parents.
"We just
left the school, just went to anyone's house, even someone we didn't
know and called our parents,'' said freshman Shumate.
A. C.
Colston, an 18-year-old senior, said he was playing softball when he saw
a friend running toward his physical education class, yelling for
everyone to come inside.
"He's a
kidder, so I really didn't believe him,'' said Colston, who waited at
the hospital for word on the condition of wounded friends.
Just
before 5 p.m., three hours after sheriff's deputies received the initial
report, authorities established telephone contact with Houston, whom
they described as generally rational but given to emotional swings.
"He's
riding a crest up and down,'' said Captain Dennis Moore of the Yuba
County Sheriff's Department during the early evening. "Sometimes he's
calm. Sometimes he's more assertive.''
According
to Moore, the gunman had expressed unhappiness with the treatment he had
received when he attended the school. "He wants the opportunity to
express how badly he was treated as a student.''
Deputies
complied with his demands for pizza and soft drinks, and the gunman then
released 10 student hostages.
That was
followed several hours later by the release of 27 more.
TV
coverage curtailed
Local
radio and television stations were asked to curtail live broadcasts of
the hostage drama because the gunman had access to cable television and
radio inside the building in which he had pulled drapes, so officers
surrounding him could not see in.
Although
the televised images revealed it, broadcasters sought to cover up an
instance at 6 p.m. in which 16 students and a teacher ran to safety.
They had been hiding in the building, apparently unknown to the
intruder.
Jury urges death for
Houston
Sacramento Bee
Kathy Lachenauer Bee
Staff Writer
August 17, 1993
A jury Monday
recommended death for convicted killer Eric Houston, prompting a gasp of
relief from families of the dead who held hands in the courtroom.
Houston, the 22-year-old
who fatally gunned down his former high school teacher and three
students in Yuba County last year, sat silently with a blank expression
on his face as the verdict was read.
No one from Houston's
family was in the courtroom when the verdict was announced shortly after
11 a.m.
Superior Court Judge W.
Scott Snowden set sentencing for Sept. 17, when he will decide whether
to uphold the jury's recommendation - or reduce Houston's sentence to
life in prison without possibility of parole.
The seven men and five
women of the jury spent about nine hours deliberating Houston's penalty.
Jurors exited hastily out the back door of the courthouse.
"This has been very
emotional," said one juror as she walked briskly down the street,
declining to give her name. "We need our privacy."
Another juror, who also
asked that his name not be used, said the panel agreed on the first day
of deliberations that no one would discuss the trial with the media once
it was over.
The same jury on July 22
found Houston guilty of murdering four people and attempting to murder
10 others at Lindhurst High School in Olivehurst. The jury also found
him guilty of holding 85 students hostage during his eight-hour siege on
May 1, 1992.
Killed in the rampage
were teacher Robert Brens, 28, and students Beamon Hill, 16, Judy Davis,
17, and Jason White, 19.
Kelly Brens, the sister
of the slain teacher who was in court nearly every day of the two-month
trial, had mixed feelings Monday. Although she said Houston "deserved"
the death verdict, she said the killer's penalty won't bring her brother
back.
Mitchell Brens, the
father of Robert Brens, wept outside the courthouse as he spoke of his
dead son.
"The agony, the blood,
the grief - it has been like a never-ending nightmare," he said.
During the trial,
Houston testified that Robert Brens had sexually molested him at the
school. The prosecution argued that the allegation was a lie and
uncorroborated, although some medical experts testified they did not
believe Houston was lying.
Mitchell Brens said he
did not want to respond to the charges during the trial because he did
not want to "dignify" the allegations.
"They tried to put our
son on trial," he said. The jury's verdict "shows" that the allegations
were unfounded, he added.
Mary Stickle, who also
lost a son the day Houston shot up Lindhurst with a pump-action shotgun,
embraced her son, Jeremy, 13, outside the courthouse.
"(Houston) did not give
our kids a chance to do any living," she said, explaining why she wanted
a death verdict in the slaying of son Jason White. She said she planned
to be at San Quentin when, and if, Houston is executed.
Death sentences are
automatically appealed to the California Supreme Court.
Joe Ann Hill, the mother
of Beamon Hill, hugged reporters outside the courthouse.
"My children, my mother
and all my family believe he should die," she said.
Defense attorney Jeff Braccia of the Yuba County Public Defender's
Office said his client's lack of expression when faced with a death
verdict shows that the killer has mental problems. Braccia said his
client's only request was for Braccia to call Houston's mother and
inform her of the death verdict.
