A Missouri man who was 11 when he and another boy shot and killed four students and a teacher at their Arkansas middle school in 1998 has died in a car crash, according to Arkansas State Police.
Andrew Golden, who later changed his name to Drew Douglas Grant, was killed Saturday night when his vehicle collided head-on with another vehicle in northeastern Arkansas, local Jonesboro station KAIT reported.
Three other people were injured and taken to hospitals, though their conditions were not released by authorities. It’s not clear whether they were in Grant’s vehicle. A police spokesman confirmed to HuffPost that Golden and Grant “are one in the same.”
The 33-year-old had spent nine years in a juvenile prison for carrying out the mass shooting at Jonesboro Westside Middle School with fellow student Mitchell Johnson, who was then 13, on March 24, 1998.
At the time, it was the second-deadliest U.S. school shooting in modern history. The shooting at Colorado’s Columbine High School, which left 15 people dead ― including the two gunmen ― took place a year later.
Both Golden and Johnson were tried as juveniles and found guilty of five counts of murder and ordered to be held until they turned 21. After their release, they were referred to as the only two mass school shooters who were alive and walking free.
Both went on to have additional brushes with the law over firearms, however.
In 2008, a little more than a year after his release, Golden was caught applying for a firearm in Arkansas using his since-changed legal name, Drew Douglas Grant. The application was denied after his fingerprints used in a background check revealed his criminal past, which forbade him from owning or possessing a firearm. Arkansas State Police also accused him of lying about his address on his application.
article...