Opinion: 1996 shooting at Penn State could have been a massacre if AR-15 had been used
Last week, more lives were stolen at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. This follows other mass shootings, including Maine at the end of October. Both were carried out by men with easy access to the tools of murder. With these mass shootings, my mind and heart turn again to a near mass shooter I knew, Jillian Robbins.
I’m thinking about her because she unraveled, armed herself with a high-powered rifle, and started shooting on the HUB lawn. Had she had access to the weapons easily and legally available today, she’d have probably killed even more people.
Jillian was a quiet and quirky girl. She was in my math class in 11th grade. She wore flannel shirts and drew pictures of faeries. She painted a stunning mural of a giant robot in our school. After I graduated, I would see her at the Old College Diner in State College from time to time. We had some mutual friends. I remember some other things about her hair ... buzzed short on the sides and occasionally streaked with pink ... but I’m not so sure. Memories have a way of inventing themselves after more than 20 years.
On the cool damp morning of Sept. 17, 1996, dozens of students milled near Penn State’s HUB. Some headed home after their first class. Others went off to get breakfast. Some headed to their next class. Administrators, staff and professors were walking to work or looking down on the lawn from an office. I was starting my music degree and had just finished either theory or ear training class. It was a lovely morning in Happy Valley, not unlike those just past.
Jillian was an Army reservist, discharged after failing to graduate from high school. As this paper reported on the 20th anniversary of the shooting, “Her list of psychiatric diagnoses sounds too large for just one person. Depression, borderline personality disorder, dysthymic disorder, dissociative disorder, post-traumatic stress.” According to mutual friends, she had little money and had trouble paying for medication that kept her stable.
Jillian hid in a cluster of thick shrubs and trees on the lawn’s side near the Health and Human Development Building. She could see out on the lawn. She was armed with a 7mm high-power Mauser rifle she’d gotten from her father. She took aim. She murdered Melanie Spalla, 21, with a shot that entered Spalla’s back and exited her neck. Nick Mensah was injured. She hit a couple of backpacks and a building.
Brendon Malovrh, a 21-year-old, found Robbins and ultimately disarmed her after she tried to stab him but stabbed herself. The police arrived. The community was shocked. Malovrh wasn’t a good guy with a gun. He was fortunate enough to have surprised her and that she missed. If memory serves, he knew some martial arts and performed first aid.
The University of Texas tower shooting was decades past. We learned about it in sociology class as an aberration in American history. Columbine was yet to come.
Sandy Hook. Umqua. Parkland. Santa Fe. Uvalde. Michigan State. UNLV.
According to reports from the Gun Violence Archive, Education Week, and Everytown for Gun Safety, there have been 80 school shootings in the United States in 2023. Twenty-nine were on college campuses. The other 51 were at K-12 schools. At least 37 people were killed and more than 88 injured. More and more every year.
No other nation has this problem. None. While American schools are among the safest places in the country, even they aren’t safe from armed people — mentally ill or not. Any innocent person, including children, can be collateral damage for a gun addiction mischaracterized as a freedom.
What if Robbins had an AR-15? Her five shots could have easily been dozens. She would have murdered 8, 10, or 15 people before Malovrh took her down ... had he been able to. The easy access to rapid-fire weapons would have made the HUB lawn shooting into the HUB lawn massacre.
That’s not a Happy Valley.
It’s the guns, folks. It’s the easy availability of guns.
Peter Buck is a State College resident who serves on the State College Area school board. His views do not represent a position by the board.
