Kayla Renee Rolland (May 12, 1993 – February 29, 2000) was an American six-year-old girl from

Mount Morris Township, Michigan Mount Morris Charter Township is a charter township of Genesee County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 20,024 as of the 2020 census. The city of Mount Morris borders on the east, but the two are administered autonomously. Comm ...

, United States, who was fatally shot on February 29, 2000, by a six-year-old classmate at Buell Elementary School in Beecher Community School District. The boy had found the gun while living at his uncle's house; the house was a

crack house A drug house is a residence used in the illegal drug trade. Drug houses shelter drug users and provide a place for drug dealers to supply them. Drug houses can also be used as laboratories to synthesize (cook) drugs, or cache ingredients and p ...

where guns were frequently traded for drugs. The killing drew worldwide attention due to the particularly young ages of the victim and the perpetrator: Rolland was the youngest

school shooting A school shooting is an Gun violence, armed attack at an educational institution, such as a primary school, secondary school, high school or university, involving the use of a firearm. Many school shootings are also categorized as mass shooti ...

victim in the United States until the

Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting On December 14, 2012, a mass shooting occurred at Newtown Public Schools, Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, United States. The perpetrator, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, shot and killed 26 people. The victims were 20 children bet ...

in 2012, and her assailant remains the youngest fatal school shooting perpetrator to date. The boy was not charged with murder because of his age. Buell Elementary School closed in 2002 and was demolished in 2009.Five years after school shooting, Michigan community still in pai
Sign on San Diego
Retrieved on November 26, 2007

Background

Kayla Rolland was killed by a six-year-old male, Dedrick Owens,

first grade First grade (also 1st Grade or Grade 1) is the first year of formal or compulsory education. It is the first year of elementary school, and the first school year after kindergarten. Children in first grade are usually 6–7 years old. Examples ...

r at Buell Elementary School in the Beecher Community School District, located in

, near

Flint Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Historically, flint was widely used to make stone tools and start ...

. His father was in jail for violating his

parole Parole, also known as provisional release, supervised release, or being on paper, is a form of early release of a prisoner, prison inmate where the prisoner agrees to abide by behavioral conditions, including checking-in with their designated ...

, having previously been convicted for possession of

cocaine Cocaine is a tropane alkaloid and central nervous system stimulant, derived primarily from the leaves of two South American coca plants, ''Erythroxylum coca'' and ''Erythroxylum novogranatense, E. novogranatense'', which are cultivated a ...

with intent to deliver and burglary.Murder in the First Grad
60 Minutes
/ref> Owens had been living with his mother and his eight-year-old brother. She was evicted from her home, having been unable to pay rent with the $175 weekly wage she received from the two jobs she worked under

Michigan Michigan ( ) is a peninsular U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, ...

's welfare-to-work program, and both boys then shared a single sofa as a bed at their uncle's house. The home, where his uncle lived with a 19-year-old man, was a

where guns were frequently traded for drugs. At some point, Dedrick found a loaded

Davis Industries Davis Industries was a firearms manufacturer established in 1982 by Jim Davis. Davis produced a series of inexpensive handguns, which were sold primarily through pawn shops and marketed towards people with low income. The guns were constructed of ...

P-32 .32-caliber

handgun A handgun is a firearm designed to be usable with only one hand. It is distinguished from a long gun, long barreled gun (i.e., carbine, rifle, shotgun, submachine gun, or machine gun) which typically is intended to be held by both hands and br ...

under some blankets.The Killing of Kayl
Time Magazine
Owens was known to have behavioral issues and was made to stay after school nearly every day for

swearing Profanity, also known as swearing, cursing, or cussing, is the usage of notionally offensive words for a variety of purposes, including to demonstrate disrespect or negativity, to relieve pain, to express a strong emotion (such as anger, ex ...

, giving people

the finger "The finger", or the middle finger (as in giving someone the (middle) finger, flipping the bird or flipping someone off) is an obscene hand gesture. The gesture communicates moderate to extreme contempt, and is roughly equivalent in meaning t ...

, pinching, and hitting. Some weeks before the shooting he stabbed a girl with a pencil. Chris Boaz, a seven-year-old classmate, claimed Dedrick once punched him because he would not give him a pickle. The boy had previously attacked Kayla Rolland and, on the day prior to the killing, tried to kiss her and was rebuffed. Early on the day of the shooting, Owens and his brother got into a fight with Boaz's uncle, whom the boy threatened to shoot.

Shooting

On February 29, 2000, the boy had brought the firearm, along with a

knife A knife (: knives; from Old Norse 'knife, dirk') is a tool or weapon with a cutting edge or blade, usually attached to a handle or hilt. One of the earliest tools used by humanity, knives appeared at least Stone Age, 2.5 million years ago, as e ...

, with him to school. During a change of classes, he fatally shot six-year-old Kayla Rolland in the presence of a teacher and 22 students while they were climbing the stairs, saying to her: "I don't like you", before pulling the trigger. The bullet entered her right arm and traveled through a vital

artery An artery () is a blood vessel in humans and most other animals that takes oxygenated blood away from the heart in the systemic circulation to one or more parts of the body. Exceptions that carry deoxygenated blood are the pulmonary arteries in ...

. He then threw the handgun into a trash basket and fled to a nearby restroom. He was found there, in the corner, by a teacher and was taken into police custody soon after. At 10:29 a.m. EST, Rolland was pronounced dead at

Hurley Medical Center Hurley Medical Center is a teaching hospital serving Genesee, Lapeer, and Shiawassee counties in eastern Michigan since December 19, 1908. Situated in Flint, Michigan, it is a 457-bed public non-profit hospital. The emergency department is an ...

while in

cardiac arrest Cardiac arrest (also known as sudden cardiac arrest CA is when the heart suddenly and unexpectedly stops beating. When the heart stops beating, blood cannot properly Circulatory system, circulate around the body and the blood flow to the ...

. The assailant was held in custody until the Genesee County Family Independence Agency could determine his placement. He and his two younger siblings were later placed with an aunt.More Indictments In School Shootin
CBS News
/ref>

Legal

Her assailant became the youngest school shooter in the United States. Despite Michigan not having a codified

age of criminal responsibility The age of criminal responsibility is the age below which a child is deemed incapable of having committed a criminal offence. In legal terms, it is referred to as a defence/defense of infancy, which is a form of defense known as an excuse so t ...

he was not charged with any crime based on the legal claim that at that age he would lack the ability to form

intent An intention is a mental state in which a person commits themselves to a course of action. Having the plan to visit the zoo tomorrow is an example of an intention. The action plan is the ''content'' of the intention while the commitment is the '' ...

. In most U.S. states, six-year-olds are not liable for crimes they commit, and the Genesee County Prosecutor Arthur Busch called on the citizens to collectively hug the boy, presumably out of pity and sympathy. In an 1893 ruling, the

U.S. Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that turn on question ...

declared that "children under the age of seven years could not be guilty of felony, or punished for any capital offense, for within that age the child is conclusively presumed incapable of committing a crime." This is followed in many U.S. states. Jamelle James, the uncle who owned the .32-caliber pistol used in the shooting, was sentenced for leaving the gun in a shoe box in his bedroom.Sentence in Mich. school shootin
ABC News
/ref> He eventually pleaded no contest to involuntary manslaughter and spent two years and five months in prison before he was released on probation. The other adults involved would be in and out of court systems in the years to follow. A search of James's house produced a loaded

pump-action shotgun Pump action is a type of manual firearm action that is operated by moving a sliding handguard on the gun's forestock. When shooting, the sliding forend is pulled rearward to eject any expended cartridge and typically to cock the hammer or s ...

and a rock of

crack cocaine Crack cocaine, commonly known simply as crack, and also known as rock, is a free base form of the stimulant cocaine that can be Smoking, smoked. Crack offers a short, intense Euphoria (emotion), high to smokers. The ''Manual of Adolescent Sub ...

. On the twentieth anniversary of the shooting on February 29, 2020, news media reported that the boy who shot Kayla Rolland was living in

Bay City, Michigan Bay City is a city in Bay County, Michigan, United States, and its county seat. The population was 32,661 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. The city is located just upriver from the Saginaw Bay on the Saginaw River. It is the princip ...

. According to court records, he had been convicted at age 18 of a felony in connection with charges of second-degree home invasion and larceny at a Bay City house on April 23, 2012.

Aftermath

At the time, Kayla Rolland was believed to have been the youngest

victim in United States history, which was not surpassed until the

in December 2012. A day after Rolland's death a shooting spree occurred in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania that killed three and injured two others. In response to the Wilkinsburg case, U.S. President

Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton (né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician and lawyer who was the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, ...

argued for stricter gun laws and mentioned Rolland's case as an example. Buell Elementary closed in 2002 due to dwindling enrollment and stressed finances. The campus was heavily damaged by

arson Arson is the act of willfully and deliberately setting fire to or charring property. Although the act of arson typically involves buildings, the term can also refer to the intentional burning of other things, such as motor vehicles, watercr ...

in 2005 and was demolished in 2009.

Depiction in media

Rolland's killing was cited by

Michael Moore Michael Francis Moore is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and author. Moore's work frequently addresses various Social issue, social, political, and economic topics. He first became publicly known for his award-winning debut ...

in his 2002 film ''

Bowling for Columbine ''Bowling for Columbine'' is a 2002 documentary film written, produced, directed, and narrated by Michael Moore. The documentary film explores what Moore suggests are the primary causes for the Columbine High School massacre in 1999 and other a ...

'', which argued for stricter gun control.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Rolland, Kayla 2000 murders in the United States Deaths by person in Michigan Elementary school shootings in the United States February 2000 crimes in the United States Genesee County, Michigan Violence against women in Michigan Incidents of violence against girls Murder committed by minors School shootings in Michigan Child murder in Michigan Attacks on schools in 2000