He killed three teenagers, injured three more teenagers and surrendered the same day of the shooting. He is one of the many male school shooters in history but what sets him aside from the rest was his lack of remorse and motive for the shooting. When he entered the courtroom, he removed his dress shirt to reveal a handwritten t-shirt that said “Killer” scrawled across the front. After receiving his sentence, Lane addressed the victims’ families and the courtroom by saying, “This hand that pulled the trigger that killed your sons now masturbates to the memory. Fuck all of you,” while giving the middle finger. Lane was tried as an adult and was given three life sentences. In 2014, he escaped the prison he was in but was recaptured the following day.
There are similarities to both Spencer’s and Lane’s cases; both were adolescents, both were school shooters and both did not have solid motives for their decisions to begin their shootings. However, the main difference between the shooters was their genders—Spencer being a female and Lane being a male. Although there is a difference in when each shooting took place (Spencer killed in 1979 and Lane in 2012), it is still possible to pick out patterns and differences of the media reporting on each crime with most notably, the words that are choose to describe each