The Cleveland Elementary School shooting was a school shooting that took place on January 29, 1979, at Grover Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego, California, United States. The principal and a custodian were killed; eight children and police officer Robert Robb were injured. A 16-year-old girl, Brenda Spencer, who lived in a house across the street from the school, was convicted of the shootings. Charged as an adult, she pleaded guilty to two counts of murder and assault with a deadly weapon, and was sentenced to life in prison with a chance of parole after 25 years. A reporter reached Spencer by phone while she was still in the house after the shooting, and asked her why she committed the crime. She reportedly answered: "I don't like Mondays. This livens up the day", which inspired Bob Geldof and Johnnie Fingers to write the Boomtown Rats song "I Don't Like Mondays". Perpetrator Brenda Ann Spencer (born April 3, 1962) is an incarcerated American murderer who in 1979 committed a school shooting at the Grover Cleveland Elementary School in the San Diego Unified School District in the San Carlos neighborhood of San Diego, California. At the time, she lived in a house across the street from the school. Aged 16 at the time of the shooting, she was 5'2" (157 cm) and had bright red hair. After her parents separated, she allegedly lived in poverty with her father, Wallace Spencer. Both father and daughter slept on a single mattress on the living room floor in a house strewn with empty bottles from alcoholic drinks. Acquaintances said Spencer expressed hostility toward policemen, had spoken about shooting one, and had talked of doing something big to get on television. Although Spencer showed exceptional ability as a photographer, winning first prize in a Humane Society competition, she was generally uninterested in school. She attended Patrick Henry High School, where one teacher recalled frequently inquiring if she was awake in class. Later, during tests while she was in custody, it was discovered Spencer had an injury to the temporal lobe of her brain. It was attributed to an accident on her bicycle. In early 1978, staff at a facility for problem students, into which Spencer had been referred for truancy, informed her parents that she was suicidal. That summer, Spencer, who was known to hunt birds in the neighborhood, was arrested for shooting out the windows