1998 Westside Middle School shooting
| 1998 Westside Middle School shooting | |
|---|---|
| Location | 35°51′25″N 90°48′21″W / 35.8569°N 90.8058°W Craighead County (Jonesboro street address), Arkansas, U.S. |
| Date | March 24, 1998 c. 12:40 p.m. (CST; UTC–6) |
| Target | Students and staff at Westside Middle School |
Attack type | School shooting, mass shooting, mass murder, crime of passion |
| Weapons | Several rifles, revolvers, and pistols |
| Deaths | 5 |
| Injured | 10 |
| Perpetrators |
|
| Defender | Shannon Dawn Wright |
| Motive | |
| Verdict | Guilty on all counts |
| Convictions |
|
| Sentence | Imprisonment until the age of 21
|
| Litigation | Families of victims awarded $150 million in wrongful death lawsuit against Johnson and Golden |
The 1998 Westside Middle School shooting was a mass shooting that occurred on March 24, 1998, at Westside Middle School in unincorporated Craighead County, Arkansas, near the city of Jonesboro. Thirteen-year-old Mitchell Johnson and eleven-year-old Andrew Golden opened fire on the school, shooting and killing five people and wounding ten others. Both were arrested when they attempted to flee the scene. On August 11, 1998, Golden and Johnson were convicted of five murders and ten assaults, and were imprisoned until each turned twenty-one years of age. After the 1992 Lindhurst High School shooting that killed four people in Olivehurst, California, the massacre was the deadliest non-college school shooting in contemporary U.S. history until the April 1999 Columbine High School massacre. As of 2026, the incident is the deadliest mass shooting at a middle school in U.S. history.