Found delinquent in fatal school shootings, both perps sought or got guns after release at age 21
Two men found delinquent as juveniles in what was then one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history were confined for less than 10 years before being released on their 21st birthdays.
Mitchell Johnson and Andrew Golden are the only two perpetrators of mass school shootings in this country in the last 100 years who neither committed suicide, were shot by police nor remain incarcerated, a lengthy ABC News article reports.
Since their release, both sought or got firearms, and one served about the same amount of time—approximately seven years—for subsequent nonviolent crimes as he did for the March 1998 shootings outside Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Arkansas. A teacher and four girls died in the ambush attack, and 10 others were injured.
Science teacher Debbie Spencer knew both Johnson and Golden, who were, respectively, 13 and 11 at the time of the crime. She described Johnson to the network as very polite and Golden as “sneaky.”
When the school was evacuated on March 24, 1998, because of a fire alarm the two had activated, “they were hiding in bushes and shooting at us,” Spencer told the network. “We didn’t know what was going on. It was an ambush. It was chaos.
“I didn’t even know it was that close to me until I was giving the police my statement and I saw, ‘Oh look, there’s a hole in my purse,’ ” she said.
Although Arkansas state law has since been changed, the only option at the time was to charge the boys as delinquents. That meant they could only be held until age 18. But federal prosecutors charged them with firearms violations, too, which kept them incarcerated until age 21, CBS News reported at the time of Johnson’s release in 2005.
In a 2007 deposition for civil litigation that is, ABC News reports, still ongoing, Johnson showed little emotion and described himself as a victim, according to the Arkansas Times and KAIT.
After his release at age 21, Johnson faced drug and weapons charges from a 2007 traffic stop in which a firearm was found in his vehicle, the ABC News article reports. He was also accused in 2008 of using a debit card left by a customer at the gas station where he was then working. He got 4 years in the first case and 12 years for the second crime, and was again a free man in July of last year.
Meanwhile, Golden reached 21 in 2007, was released and changed his named to Drew Douglas Grant. He applied for a concealed carry permit in 2008 under his new name, but it was denied because his application did not correctly list the detention facilities in which he resided until age 21.
It is unclear what the two men are doing now and where they are living, according to ABC News, although it appears Johnson may be in Texas. The network attempted to contact them through their relatives and former counsel, to no avail.
“I am very critical that our judicial system will allow mass murderers to live anywhere they want without their identities being known, their crimes known, or the families in those areas to be aware of who is living near them,” attorney Bobby McDaniel told ABC. He is handling the civil litigation against the two.
The suit seeks not only compensatory but punitive damages, which cannot simply be eliminated in bankruptcy, the attorney notes.
“I do not expect to collect these judgments, but I want them hanging over their heads,” said McDaniel, referring to Johnson and Golden.
Related coverage:
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