The Robb And Ten Connection

I don't know why I am the one that notices things like this.

In 1979 there was a song by the Irish band "The Boomtown Rats" titled "I Don't Like Mondays". The song was number one in Britain for several weeks, although it wasn't quite as popular in the U.S.

The song was inspired by a school shooting in San Diego. A teenage girl named Brenda Ann Spencer fired a gun, from inside her home, at children waiting to enter Grover Cleveland Elementary School across the street. Several children were wounded and two adults were killed. Fortunately Monday was garbage collection day and the police managed to quickly have a garbage truck parked in front of her house.

While the girl was barricaded inside the house a reporter called and talked to her on the phone. She gave her reason for the shooting as "I don't like Mondays. This will liven up the day". Police finally got her to surrender by promising her a meal from Burger King.

One police officer had been wounded. His name was Robert ROBB. Robb is not exactly a common name.

TEN years after this school shooting there was another school shooting at a different school with the same name. Both schools were named for U.S. President Grover Cleveland, although there is no evidence that this was a factor in the second shooting. This second shooting was in Stockton, in northern California.

Grover Cleveland was from Buffalo, NY. TEN people were killed in a supermarket shooting there. TEN days after the supermarket shooting in Buffalo came the horrific massacre at the ROBB Elementary School in Texas.

The modern era of senseless mass shootings is generally considered to have begun with the shooting from the tower of the University of Texas, in 1966. Charles Whitman first killed his wife and his mother. Then he climbed to the top of the tower, barricaded himself, and then began shooting at people below. The siege lasted about 90 minutes until the shooter was shot and killed.

The Uvalde School Shooting was a virtual reenactment of the University of Texas shooting, except that it was done in an elementary school and there was no tower. 

Charles Whitman first killed his wife and mother and then proceeded to the shooting site. The Uvalde school shooter first shot his grandmother and then proceeded to the shooting site.

Both shooters barricaded themselves in the school, Charles Whitman barricaded the entrance to the tower and the Uvalde school shooter barricaded himself in a classroom and in a closet in the classroom.

The layout of both shootings is similar, law enforcement eventually getting through the barricade and killing the shooter. In the case of the Uvalde shooting it was getting the classroom door unlocked. Both shooting scenarios lasted roughly the same amount of time, about 90 minutes.

The president at the time of the University of Texas shooting was Lyndon Johnson. His daughter, Lynda, graduated from the university. Her husband's name was Chuck ROBB, who would later be governor of Virginia.