San Jose Mercury News (CA)



San Jose Mercury News (CA)

May 3, 1992 | | |

FRIEND: SIEGE SUSPECT SOUGHT OUT TEACHER FAILING GRADE CALLED MOTIVE IN SLAYINGS

Author: BARRY WITT, Mercury News Staff Writer

Dateline: OLIVEHURST

Figuring schools were safer, Pete Pillsbury left community service work and got into education after cowering on a floor while tanks rolled past during the 1967 Detroit riot.

On Saturday, the school superintendent in this tiny Sacramento Valley farming town discovered he was wrong after learning that three students and a teacher had allegedly been slaughtered in their classrooms by an angry dropout intent on revenge.

Eric Christopher Houston blasted his way through Lindhurst High School, then more than eight hours later, stripped off his camouflage gear and surrendered to sheriff's deputies about 10:30 p.m. Friday, authorities said.

Inside Building C, where the gunman had trapped up to 150 students and teachers, authorities found the four bodies. Another teacher and eight other students had been wounded and were already at area hospitals.

Yuba County Sheriff Gary D. Tindel said Saturday that Houston, 20, a recently laid-off electronics worker, had recently told a friend that he intended to get revenge against history teacher Robert James Brens. The 28-year-old teacher had flunked Houston in 1989, preventing his graduation.

Then Houston dropped out. ''He used to say he would just walk in the front door, pop off some people, leave out the back door . . . and take off," said Houston's best friend, David, who asked that his last name not be used. David, who said he has known Houston for seven years, dismissed it as a fantasy until he heard that the siege had begun.

Shooting the 28-year-old teacher was Houston's "sole purpose" and none of the other victims had been specific targets, Tindel said.

Brens' body was found in a classroom along with that of 17- year-old Judy Marion Davis. When Houston strolled in, Bren was leading a discussion on Rodney King and the violence sweeping Los Angeles.

After leaving Brens' first-floor classroom, carrying a 12- gauge shotgun and sawed-off .22 caliber rifle, the gunman walked from room to room and fired at least a dozen more shotgun blasts.

Jason Edward White, 19, a senior, and Beamon Anton Hill, 16, a sophomore, also were killed.

''I heard a 'bang, bang,' then I heard another 'bang, bang,' " said sophomore Larry Pattee, 16. "All of a sudden he started into the classroom. He hit Beamon in the head, and that's when I ran behind the filing cabinet. I was looking through the crack. He looked around. That's when he smiled and took off."

Houston carried at least 50 shotgun cartridges in a bandoleer strapped around his chest and had other bullets in a case at his hip. He reloaded the shotgun at least twice.

The gunman proceeded to the second floor, Tindel said, where he barricaded himself and a classroom of students behind file cabinets. About 80 students were trapped on the second floor, while roughly 70 more were downstairs, too scared to leave.

''He told us if we didn't tell him about where the cops were he would shoot us," said Jason Beissel, a 16-year-old held hostage for more than an hour.

Jason said he was able to escape when the gunman told him to go downstairs and remove any wounded.

Police negotiators talked to Houston throughout the evening via a cellular telephone they slipped into the building. He wounded no one after his initial rampage shortly before 2 p.m., when the school was filled with more than 1,000 students and staff members.

Authorities asked local radio stations that Houston was listening to to avoid mentioning possible deaths to avoid further enraging him.

Tindel said he will ask the Yuba County district attorney to file murder charges with special circumstances, seeking the death penalty. The sheriff said Houston waived his right to an attorney and began speaking to investigators Saturday.

Several of Houston's former classmates said they believed Houston was generally unhappy, but they never saw him angry or violent. "He seemed to really feel that he was a failure," said a former girlfriend, who asked not to be identified.

A small bouquet of flowers wilted in the heat Saturday outside a bullet-shattered doorway at the school as this rural town of 10,000 tried to cope with the tragedy.

''We're looking for someone to blame when there is no one," said B.E. "Red" Skinner, chief of the volunteer fire department for 28 years. "We can't immunize ourselves from the outside world. We're living in it."

On Saturday, most streets, parks and community centers were deserted. The high school prom scheduled for that night was put on indefinite hold.

''What a way to end senior year, 1992. With a bang," said Sophia Joseph, 17, from Linda, the second town served by the high school.

Brens had been her teacher in two classes, and she described him as the best at the school.

''He was really energetic. He really related to us," she said.

Classes have been canceled through at least Wednesday, but Sophia said she can never step back into the building where the siege occurred.

''I don't think I can sit there and know that is where Mr. Brens was killed and my friends were killed," she said.

Taunya Carter, 17, said she's afraid to go to school at all.

''How can they say it's not going to happen again? It could," she said.

That reaction is to be expected, said Al Murillo, a San Joaquin County mental health official who has found himself in the position of being an expert in schoolhouse massacres.

Murillo and four other officials traveled to Olivehurst on Friday night to share with Yuba County officials their experience from the 1989 Stockton schoolyard massacre, which left five children dead and 29 injured.

''We're concerned about the children, who we hear were vomiting all night," Murillo said. "We're very concerned about the teachers at the site."

The Marysville Joint Unified School District has set up a hot line for people to call and has established counseling centers at two schools Saturday.

Pillsbury, the Marysville district superintendent, said he does not know how to keep his students safe from tragedies like Friday's shooting spree.

''I'm at a loss to know where we go from there to protect these students," he said. " . . . There's no explanation for it. We're going to have to dig a lot deeper into the psyche of our society to solve these things."

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