Details
The incident began during the afternoon of December 30, 1974, when Barbaro left his house with his mother's car. He told his brother Chris that he was going target shooting. He arrived at Olean High School at approximately 2:50 p.m. After leaving his car, he entered the school building through an opened side entrance and proceeded to the third floor where he set off a smoke bomb. He was then confronted by a custodian who pulled the fire alarm while investigating the smoke. Barbaro then shot and killed him. Barbaro then positioned himself in the student council room on the third floor of the school. There he began shooting at people outside of the school. A 12-man custodial crew was doing routine maintenance in the basement of the school during the shooting. By 5:20 p.m., over 50 local and county police officers were surrounding the school building, and a National Guard armored vehicle had arrived to remove the injured victims. Two police officers and four national guardsmen soon entered the school and threw two tear gas grenades into the student council room, where Barbaro was found unconscious inside the room wearing a defective gas mask. Barbaro was laid onto a stretcher and transported by ambulance to the Olean City Jail.
According to police Barbaro had fired 31 shots. Three people were killed in the shooting, and eleven others were wounded. Those killed were Earl Metcalf, Neal Pilon, and Carmen Wright Drayton, who was six months pregnant. Earl Metcalf, 62, was killed inside the school building, while Columbia Gas Co. employee Neal Pilon, 58, was shot while crossing the street outside of the school. Carmen Wright, 25, was shot in the head inside her car while driving by the school. Both Pilon and Wright were pronounced "dead on arrival" at Olean General Hospital. Seven people survived the shooting with gunshot wounds, while four others sustained injuries from flying glass fragments. Eight of the wounded victims were Olean city firemen responding to a fire complaint at the school.
Read more about this topic: Olean High School Shooting
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