Neuroscientist Dr. Amy Bishop sat silently at the faculty meeting on Friday, February 12th, 2010, while her University of Alabama colleagues discussed budgets, syllabuses and open days.
The meeting had been going for nearly an hour in the windowless, fluorescent-lit conference-room on the third floor when Professor Debra Moriarty yawned and studied her agenda.
Suddenly she heard a deafening boom, as if the walls were caving in. Her first thought in the split-second afterwards was that it must be a terrible earthquake.
Then she looked up and saw Amy Bishop standing near the room’s only door. She was firing a pistol at the dozen people who’d been sitting round the table.
Aiming at one colleague after another, she pulled the trigger again and again…