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Bullet Protection/Deflection in Schools

D

DoubleR

Campaign Veteran
Joined
May 8, 2006
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Location
Fairfax County, VA, ,
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Thanks, Longwatch. I had not seen that on Box-O-Truth. Of course, I had no reason to. I have seenarticles about being saved by Bibles in the pockets, but to purchase books for self protection :p... One of these days I hope to meet up with ya at a VCDL meeting, or a restaurant!
 
T

Tomahawk

Regular Member
Joined
Oct 1, 2006
Messages
5,117
Location
4 hours south of HankT, ,
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Back in '96 or '97 when I was a student at Penn State a 20-something-year-old woman with a loose screw strolled onto campus with a rifle in a sack, took up a prone position under a bush in front of the student union building (known as the HUB) facing the lawn and the street beyond, and started plinking at passers-by.

(About a block or two away I was in my room sleeping in. Missed the whole thing...)

IIRC one unfortunate young woman was killed. Others were targeted, and one person was hit in the backpack, and the bullet was found in the books. I don't know what kind of rifle it was, or what angle he or she was hit from, but if memory serves that person was not wounded. Other bullets missed entirely and were found lodged in buildings across the street. The shooter was tackled by an engineering student who spotted her and jumped on her. In the struggle he stabbed her in the leg with her own knife.

I'll see if I can find some info about the incident on the web somewhere and post a link.

EDIT: Found some info in wikipedia, looks like I was wrong about the books stopping anything...


[align=left]The lawn in front of the HUB, commonly called the "HUB Lawn" features a gazebo and is popular with students playing frisbee and sunbathing.[/align]
[align=center][/align]
[align=center]1996 shooting that resulted in the death of Melanie Spalla, a 21 year-old undergraduate journalism student from Altoona. The perpetrator of the shooting, Jillian Robbins, was a 19 year-old non-student resident of State College. At appoximately 9:30 AM on September 17, Robbins was positioned outdoors at the northwest corner of the HUB Lawn, where the HUB pool room now stands. She fired five shots in the general direction of College Avenue using a high-powered 7mm Mauser military rifle. Nicholas Mensah, a 22 year-old student from Ghana, was also wounded in the shooting, but was not killed.[/align]
[align=left]Of the five bullets fired, two struck victims, one was recovered at St. Paul's United Methodist Church, and another on the eighth floor of Penn Tower Apartments. The fifth was found on the ground. On their paths, two of the bullets grazed two students' book bags.[/align]
[align=left]At that morning hour, during the middle of a class period, there were few students on the lawn, and police managed to identify only 15 witnesses. One of these witnesses, student Brendon Malovrh, is credited with wrestling the gun away from Robbins just after she loaded a second clip. In responce, she pulled out a knife and attempted to stab Malovrh. When Malovrh dodged out of the way, Robbins accidentally stabbed herself in the thigh, afterwhich Malovrh used his belt to try to stop her bleeding. Robbins was arrested at the scene, and Mensah, Malovrh, and Robbins were all taken to Centre Community Hospital for treatment following the shooting.[/align]
[align=left]Following her arrest, Robbins spent six months in Norristown State Hospital, an in-patient psychiatric hospital that treats both voluntary and court-committed patients. Robbins never offered a reason for her actions, but did say that she had intended to kill herself that day. She later plead not guilty by reason of insanity.[/align]
 
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