20 Years Ago In TIME

By Harriet Barovick, Tam Gray, Daniel Levy, Lina Lofaro, David Spitz, Joel Stein and Flora Tartakovsky

The carnage at Littleton this week had resonance for the San Carlos neighborhood of San Diego, Calif. Twenty years ago, Brenda Spencer was a teenager with a gun and a target: the elementary school across the road. Today she is serving the 20th year of a 25-years-to-life sentence and will be eligible for a parole hearing in 2001. TIME's Feb. 12, 1979, report:

The explanation was incredibly casual. "I don't like Mondays," Brenda Spencer, 16, told reporters by telephone as she held off San Diego police for six hours. But who was she trying to kill as she repeatedly fired a .22-cal. rifle at Cleveland Elementary School from her home across the street? "No one in particular. I kind of like the red and blue jackets." While Brenda chatted on the telephone, the terrified pupils and teachers huddled on the floor of the bullet-sprayed school. Principal Burton Wragg and Custodian Michael Suchar were both slain by the gunfire at the school's front yard. Eight children and one police officer were wounded. After hours of futile attempts to get Brenda to surrender, she finally decided it was time to end what she had called "fun." She calmly walked out of the house, put her gun [down], went back inside..."Why did she do it?" asked an eight-year-old boy. Unfortunately, no one in authority could answer that question.