Friday's horrific elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn., in which NBC News reported 20 children and 7 adults were killed, was among the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history, second only to the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre that took 32 lives. It comes on the heels of a tragic string of massacres in recent years:
April 2:
Former student One Goh, 43, allegedly went to small Christian school Oikos University in Oakland, Calif., took a receptionist hostage, and shot people in classrooms, apparently at random, according to students. He allegedly killed seven people, then went to a nearby grocery store, where he was apprehended by police.
April 16, 2007:
Virginia Tech student Seung-Hui Cho, a mentally troubled English major, shot dead 32 people and wounded another 17 on his school's campus, in the deadliest shooting by a single gunman in U.S. history. He afterward killed himself.
Oct. 2, 2006:
Charles Roberts entered an Amish school in Pennsylvania armed with a handgun, sent away male students, barricaded himself and the girls in the school, chained the girls together at the blackboard and shot them, killing five and wounding five others. Roberts, who was not himself Amish, had left suicide notes for his family.
March 21, 2005:
Jeffrey Weise, 16, killed his grandfather, a police sergeant, and his grandfather's girlfriend on an Indian reservation in Red Lake, Minn., before killing another seven people at his high school and himself.
April 20, 1999:
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, seniors at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., committed a massacre at their school that they planned for a year. After trying to detonate propane bombs in the school cafeteria, the armed pair opened fire on classmates and faculty throughout the school building, killing 12 students and a teacher, before killing themselves.
March 24, 1998:
Mitchell Johnson, 13, and Andrew Golden, 11, armed with guns stolen from Golden's grandfather, drove Johnson's mother's minivan to Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Ark. They pulled the fire alarm to lure students and teachers out of the school, and in an ambush from the woods, they killed four students and a teacher and wounded another nine students and a teacher.
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