the 1982 school shooting that rocked las vegas

quiet before the storm

On the morning of Friday, March 19, 1982, 17-year-old Patrick Lizotte walked into Valley High School with a deadly plan. Lizotte was carrying concealed under his jacket a loaded .22 revolver he had pilfered from his father, along with a knife hidden in his pocket, and 100 rounds of ammunition. 

After entering the school located in a quiet neighborhood a few miles from downtown Las Vegas, Lizotte – a boy of average height but with a lanky frame and sporting thick-rimmed glasses – continued his solitary journey through throngs of his fellow classmates.  The halls were bustling as the 2,450 students socialized in the short time before classes commenced for the day.

At the same time as Lizotte entered the school, 54-year-old psychology teacher Clarence Piggott was sitting behind his desk in one of the dozens of classrooms lining the hallways of Valley High. Piggott was chatting with one of his students while about five other seniors in the room waited for the opening bell to ring. The popular educator was loved by students, his classes often the first to fill each semester. And this semester, he had taken an interest in helping a quiet, troubled teen that never spoke much in class.

gunshots before class

The scrawny Lizotte entered Piggott’s classroom with a book under his arm at 7:50 a.m.  He calmly walked up to his teacher, set the book he was carrying on the desk, and proceeded to pull out the revolver from under his jacket.  Lizotte aimed the weapon with both hands squarely at Piggott’s chest. 

“Come on, Pat.  Don’t do it,” Piggott pleaded.

Then Lizotte fired a single shot.

The classroom remained silent as Piggott reeled back.  But the initial response was not horror – it was laughter.  This must be part of some stunt.  Someone even asked, “Is this a joke?”  Then the scattered giggles gave way to shock seconds later after Piggott slumped to the floor.

Before anyone could stop him, Lizotte walked back out of the classroom as calmly as he had entered with gun still in hand. He commented to a student standing in the hallway, “Well, that takes care of that.”

the rampage continues

Lizotte continued down the hallway and exited the school toward the parking lot.  As he opened the door he encountered three students walking toward him from a few feet away.  The shooter raised his revolver and fired at the trio.  One of the targeted students managed to dive for cover and escape, but the other two young men - Jose Garcia and Martin Jameson – fell to the ground, each struck by a .22 round.  Garcia was hit in the chest while Jameson was grazed by a round.

The school shooter showed no signs of emotion as he walked down the steps, past his two most recent victims, and across Eastern Road into the nearby neighborhoods.  He approached a small boy and threatened to kill his dog before walking down the block and out of sight of the school.

Reports of the shooting had been made to the police by school officials at this point, and officers in the vicinity were radioed to be on the lookout for Lizotte, who was to be considered armed and dangerous.  Las Vegas Metropolitan Police officer Kenneth Hefner was driving near the high school when he responded to reports of the shooting. 

the shooting comes to an end

Two seniors at Valley High tailed Lizotte from a distance into the neighborhood.  They looked with terror as groups of elementary school children approached Lizotte, but they were relieved when the killer walked past the younger children without incident. 

Finally, five blocks from the school, Officer Ken Hefner spotted the suspect walking casually down the sidewalk.  Hefner swerved his vehicle to a stop, flipping on the emergency lights and drawing his sidearm as he exited the patrol car.  He took aim and from behind his open car door demanded that Lizotte drop his weapon. 

Lizotte paused for a moment of contemplation.  Then the young gunman raised his revolver to take aim at the officer standing a few feet away.

Six shots rang out on the street corner, the deafening cracks temporarily drowning out the background sound of emergency sirens from first responders arriving at Valley High School. 

Officer Hefner had fired six rounds at Lizotte, striking the gunman twice, once in the chest and once in the thigh.  Lizotte collapsed to the sidewalk, but he was still conscious.  The patrolman cautiously approached, never taking the sight of his pistol from the suspect’s chest. 

“You shot me,” Lizotte said, seeming a bit stunned.

“You’re right,” Hefner responded. The officer gave paramedics the all-clear to approach the downed Lizotte. Emergency procedures were administered on the sidewalk to stabilize Lizotte before he was hauled into an ambulance and sent to Sunrise Hospital. By this point the teenage shooter had lapsed into unconsciousness.

aftermath of a shooting: tending to victims and resuming class

Clarence Piggott was rushed to the same hospital as the kid that shot him.  Despite the best efforts by medical staff, the bullet from Lizotte’s gun had punctured the teacher’s heart.  Piggott was declared dead about an hour after the morning mayhem in his classroom.

Jose Garcia, one of the two students gunned down outside the high school, was taken to the hospital with an injury that had grazed his liver.  Quick-working surgeons managed to stabilize Garcia.  He remained at the hospital during his recovery and ultimately made a full comeback from his injuries.

Martin Jameson was taken by his fellow students to the school nurse to treat his grazing wound. 

Today there are active shooter drills at schools across the country.  We have experienced enough school shootings that the routine in the aftermath is prescribed: students are evacuated with hands over heads; police and paramedics comb the school for the shooter, then to remove the dead or injured; parents gather at community centers to await news of the fate of their children. 

But in 1982, shootings on school campuses were still a rare occurrence. That is why it seems jarring by today’s standards that shortly after Clarence Piggott’s unconscious body was taken out of the school and while the shooter roamed nearby neighborhoods, the P.A. system at Valley High School announced that classes would continue for the day. A baseball game at Valley scheduled for that night proceeded as planned, with the Valley High players wearing black armbands to commemorate their murdered teacher.

a loner fascinated with guns

Patrick Lizotte was an Air Force brat, moving every few years when his father received orders for a change of station.  These frequent moves made it difficult for Lizotte to establish any long-term friendships.  As a result, Lizotte spent most of his free time in his room playing fantasy games and listening to music. 

The shooter was also known for sitting alone at lunch and reading Soldier of Fortune magazine, likely due to his reported fascination with guns.  A classmate later reported an occasion when she tried to befriend Lizotte by handing him a note, but he just tore up the letter without reading it.

On top of the self-imposed isolation, Lizotte also suffered routine bullying at school. And while teachers along the way told students to go easy on the quiet kid, these admonishments did little to ease the torment experienced by Lizotte.

a deranged explanation for the shootings

Lizotte was arraigned while recovering in his hospital bed.  His sanity was an issue from the outset of the criminal case.  During a jailhouse interview with a psychiatrist, Lizotte initially appeared calm and collected.  But when the psychiatrist asked Lizotte about the shooting, he responded by screaming and pounding his fists against his head.  After review by a board of three independent psychiatrists, the presiding District Court judge declared Lizotte incompetent to even stand trial because the teenager didn’t understand the charges against him.  The only dissenting voice was the resident psychiatrist at the Clark County Detention Center, who found that Lizotte was perfectly competent to stand trial.

After being provided a heavy regimen of medication, Lizotte was eventually declared fit to stand trial.  His defense attorneys argued that their client met the legal definition of insanity in Nevada at that time – that Lizotte did not know his actions were wrong at the time of the shooting. 

Evidence was presented that Lizotte firmly believed his psychology teacher had noticed the signs of serious mental illness in his student and intended to have Lizotte institutionalized.  He believed the only way to save himself from being locked away for life was to kill Clarence Piggott.  Lizotte’s sister testified that her brother began hearing voices in the year leading up to the shooting, with her brother on one occasion throwing objects at the ceiling because he thought the upstairs neighbors were laughing at him. 

As for the students he shot while exiting the school, Lizotte had earlier confessed to police, “They just looked like three cans. So I took aim at the middle can and fired.”

The chief prosecuting attorney, Deputy District Attorney Mel Harmon (part of a long line of Las Vegas prosecutors named Harmon), pointed to the fact Lizotte fled the school grounds with his revolver after the shootings as evidence of consciousness of guilt – why would Lizotte have run if he thought shooting Piggott wasn’t wrong.  The state also painted a picture of Lizotte as a young man angry at his fellow students.  He told police during his confession that he didn’t understand the other students at Valley High since their idea of a good time was “going to someone’s house, drinking, and listening to loud music.”

Lizotte remained emotionless throughout the two week long trial. He kept his head slumped downward with an unbreaking gaze locked on the table where he was seated – a gaze he maintained even as the jury returned a verdict of guilty after deliberating for about a day.

a u.s. supreme court case and a second chance

Lizotte was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the murder of Clarence Piggott, plus an additional sixty years for the attempted murders of his classmates.  Convicted at the age of eighteen, Lizotte anticipated ending his days in prison.

But in 2012, the United States Supreme Court in the case of Miller v. Alabama determined that mandatory life sentences for those that commit crimes as juveniles constitute an unconstitutional form of cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the 8th Amendment.  As a result, the Nevada legislature passed a law in 2015 that permitted Lizotte to petition for parole.  And in 2017, thirty-five years after Clarence Piggott was murdered in his classroom, Patrick Lizotte was approved for release by the Nevada Parole Board. 

One former classmate of Lizotte, George Milton Chamberlin, who had rushed to the wounded Piggott’s side the day of the shooting to offer aid, told a local newspaper upon learning of Lizotte’s release, “If there’s supposed to be rehabilitation then there should be some change in that person.  I don’t think we're a lock the door and throw away the key. I don’t think we should be doing that.”

Clarence Piggott was remembered after his untimely death. Over 1,500 people attended his memorial service where his tireless work was recounted by friends, colleagues, and students. In 1993, the Clark County School District dedicated the Clarence Piggott Elementary School in the slain educator’s honor.

more school violence in las vegas

Sadly the shooting at Valley High School would not be the last incident of on-campus violence at a Las Vegas school. 

The cafeteria of Eldorado High School was packed for the first day of classes with over 800 students and bustling with activity on the morning of August 26, 1990.  A few minutes before classes were to begin, a scuffle involving dozens of students affiliated with rival gangs broke out.  Amidst the melee, one of the students, 15-year-old Curtis Collins, decided to settle a simmering feud that had developed with another student over the summer.  Collins pulled a semiautomatic handgun from his backpack and fired a single round into the back of 16-year-old Donnie Lee Bolden’s neck. 

Bolden, who fashioned himself an amateur barber and had a reputation for doing a decent job cutting his friends’ hair, died from his wounds.  Though initial media reports indicated the murder was gang-related, it later turned out Collins was at most an occasional hanger-on with local gang members.  Collins ultimately plead guilty to first-degree murder and was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole. 

 Though juvenile offenders convicted as adults are segregated from the general inmate population today, that was not the case when Collins was convicted of murder in 1991. The 15-year-old was “thrown to the wolves” in his own words. Collins served a 15-year term behind bars before being released on lifetime parole in 2005. He ran into difficulty obtaining work after his release despite having served his time, and as of 2016 Collins has continued to struggle.



an epidemic without end

Shootings on school campuses increased during the latter half of the 1990’s, with infamous shootings at places like Jonesboro, West Paducah, and Littleton.  In Las Vegas, the shooting at El Dorado High School prompted the increase of police on school campuses as well as added security measures.

Today there are routine incidents in Las Vegas and across the country of students bringing weapons to school or shooting plots that are disrupted before coming to fruition. These authors, while attending Las Vegas Academy High School between 1998 -2002, had a fellow classmate arrested in 2001 for bringing ammunition to school and possessing a “hit list” of students and faculty he planned to kill.

Since the shooting at Eldorado High in 1990, at least 307 people have been murdered on school grounds in the United States.