| Cleveland School massacre | |
|---|---|
| Location | Stockton, California, USA |
| Date | Tuesday, January
17, 1989 11:59 a.m. – 12:02 p.m. (PST) |
| Target | Students and faculty at Cleveland Elementary School |
| Attack type | School shooting, mass murder, murder-suicide, massacre, suicide attack |
| Weapon(s) | Type 56 semi-automatic rifle Taurus 9mm pistol |
| Death(s) | 6 (including the perpetrator) |
| Injured | 30[1] |
| Perpetrator(s) | Patrick Purdy |
The Cleveland School massacre was a school massacre that occurred on January 17, 1989, at Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton, California, United States. The gunman, Patrick Purdy, who had a long criminal history, shot and killed five schoolchildren, and wounded 29 other schoolchildren and one teacher, before committing suicide. His victims were predominantly Southeast Asian refugees.
Contents |
| Victim Fatalities |
| 1. Rathanar Or, age 9 |
| 2. Ram Chun, age 8 |
| 3. Sokhim An, age 6 |
| 4. Oeun Lim, age 8 |
| 5. Thuy Tran, age 6 |
On the morning of 17 January 1989, an anonymous person phoned
the Stockton Police Department and warned of a death threat against
Cleveland Elementary School. At noon that day, Patrick Purdy, a
disturbed drifter and former Stockton resident, began his attack by
setting his Chevrolet van alight that he had parked behind the
school. He then moved to the school playground and began firing
with a Chinese-made Type 56 semi-automatic rifle from behind a
portable building. Purdy fired more than 100 rounds in three
minutes killing five children and wounding thirty others including
one teacher.[2]
All of the fatally shot victims and many of the wounded were Cambodian and Vietnamese immigrants.[3] Purdy
then took his own life by shooting himself in the head with a
pistol.[1]
Purdy had carved the words "freedom", "victory", "Earthman", and
"Hezbollah" on his
assault rifle, and his flak jacket read "PLO", "Libya", and "death
to the Great Satin" [sic].
The perpetrator of the shooting, Patrick Edward Purdy (10 November 1964 – 17 January 1989), was an unemployed former welder and drifter. Purdy was born in Tacoma, Washington to Patrick Benjamin Purdy and Kathleen Toscano. His father was a soldier in the United States Army and was stationed at Fort Lewis at that time of his son's birth. When Patrick was two years old, his mother filed for divorce against her husband after he had threatened to kill her with a firearm. Kathleen later moved with her son to South Lake Tahoe and later to Stockton, California.[4] He attended Cleveland Elementary School from kindergarten through second grade.[5][4]
Patrick's mother remarried in September 1969, though was again
divorced four years later. Albert Gulart, Sr., Purdy's stepfather,
said Patrick was an overly quiet child who cried often. In fall
1973, Kathleen separated from Gulart and moved with her children
from Stockton to the Sacramento area. In December of that year,
the Sacramento Child Protective Services were twice called to her
residence, alleging Kathleen was physically abusing her children.[6]
When Purdy was thirteen, he once struck his mother in the face and
therefore was permanently banned from her house.[7] He
began living on the streets of San Francisco for a while, before being
placed in foster care by authorities.[6]
He was later placed in the custody of his father living in Lodi,
California.[7]
While attending Lodi High School, he
became an alcoholic and a drug addict, and attended high school
sporadically.[2][4]
On 13 September 1981, Purdy's father was killed after being
struck by a car.[7]
His family filed a wrongful-death suit in San Joaquin Superior
Court against the driver of the car, asking for $600,000 in
damages, although the suit was later dismissed. Purdy also accused
his mother of taking money his father had left him, using the money
to buy a car and taking a vacation to New York City, an incident
that deepened the animosities between them.[8][9]
After his father's death, Purdy was briefly rendered homeless,
before being placed in the custody of a foster mother in Los Angeles.[6]
Purdy had a long criminal history, which began during early adolescence. First police records of Purdy date back to 1977, when Sacramento police confiscated BB guns from then 12-year-old Purdy.[6] In June 1980, Purdy was first arrested at age 15 for violating a court-order.[7] He was arrested in the same month for underage drinking. He was later arrested for homosexual prostitution in August 1980,[10][11] possession of marijuana and drug dealing in 1982, and in 1983 for possession of an illegal weapon and receipt of stolen property. On 11 October 1984, he was arrested for being an accomplice in an armed robbery at a service station, for which he spent 32 days in the Yolo County Jail. In 1986 his mother called police when he vandalized her car, after she refused to give him money for narcotics.[12][4]
In April 1987, he and his half-brother Albert were arrested for firing a semi-automatic pistol at trees in the Eldorado National Forest. At the time, he was carrying a book about the white supremacist group Aryan Nations, and told the County Sherriff that it was his "duty to help the suppressed and overthrow the suppressor."[13] Later in prison he attempted suicide twice, once by hanging himself with a rope made out of strips of his shirt, and a second time by cutting his wrists with his fingernails. A subsequent psychiatric assessment found him to suffer from very mild mental retardation, and to be a danger to himself and others.[13]
In the fall of 1987, he began attending welding classes at San
Joaquin Delta College and complained about the high percentage of
Southeast Asian students there. In October 1987, he left California
and drifted between Oregon, Nevada, Texas, Florida, Connecticut,
South Carolina, and Tennessee searching for work. In early 1988 he
worked at Numeri Tech, a small machine shop located in Stockton,
and from July to October as a boilermaker in Portland,
Oregon, living in Sandy with his aunt. He also purchased
the Chinese-made AK-47
derivative used in the shooting there on August 3.[14] He
eventually returned to California where he rented a room at the El
Rancho Motel in Stockton on December 26. After the shooting the
room was found decorated with numerous toy soldiers.[2][4][8]
Police stated that Purdy had problems with alcohol and drug
addiction. He was said to have been a misanthrope, and his
hatred was especially directed against Asian immigrants,[13]
believing they take jobs from native-born Americans.[15][9]
According to his friends, who described him as friendly and never violent towards anyone, Purdy was suicidal at times and frustrated about the fact that he failed to "make it on his own".[13] Steve Sloan, a night-shift supervisor at Numeri Tech, stated that, "He was a real ball of frustration, and was angry about everything." Another one of Purdy's former co-workers stated, "He was always miserable. I've never seen a guy that didn't want to smile as much as he didn't."[13] In a notebook found in a hotel where he lived in early 1988, Purdy wrote about himself through a self-loathing perspective: "I'm so dumb, I'm dumber than a sixth-grader. My mother and father were dumb."[4]
The multiple murders at Stockton received national news coverage and spurred calls for regulation of semi-automatic weapons. "Why could Purdy, an alcoholic who had been arrested for such offenses as selling weapons and attempted robbery, walk into a gun shop in Sandy, Oregon, and leave with an AK-47 under his arm?" Time magazine asked. They continued, "The easy availability of weapons like this, which have no purpose other than killing human beings, can all too readily turn the delusions of sick gunmen into tragic nightmares."[1] Purdy was able to purchase the weapons because the judicial system had not convicted him of any crime that prevented him from purchasing firearms. Neither had Purdy been adjudicated mentally ill, another disqualifying factor.
In California, measures were taken to first define and then ban assault weapons, resulting in the Roberti-Roos Assault Weapons Act. On the Federal level, Congress struggled with a way to ban weapons like Purdy's military-style semi-automatic rifle without also including semi-automatic hunting rifles. In the end, Congress defined "assault weapons" as semi-automatic weapons with certain military-style secondary features such as flash suppressors, bayonet lugs, and pistol grips. These were banned in the Federal assault weapons ban, enacted in 1994, which expired in 2004. President George H. W. Bush signed an executive order banning importation of assault weapons in 1989. President Bill Clinton signed another executive order in 1994 which banned importation of most firearms and ammunition from China.[16]
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