The media and pundits try to figure out a motive and rationale for the latest school shooting.  On May 18, 2018, a school shooting occurred between 7:30 and 7:45 am, local time, at the Santa Fe High School in Santa Fe, Texas. A 17 year old student originally from Greece with no clear motive walked into an art class at the high school and began firing what looked like a shotgun.  Law enforcement officials state, the shooter only had a shotgun and a 35 pistol on his person, lobbed pipe bombs, in addition to having planted pipe and pressure-cooker bombs elsewhere.

The attack falls on the same day as the worst school massacre in US history that took place right here in Michigan exactly 91 years before this attempt at infamy, which also involved a lot of explosive devices at the beginning of the school day.  If you hadn't heard about it, read on about the Bath Township Massacre, which may have possibly been a motivation behind this shooting, since it's the incident all other acts of mayhem on our schools will be measured against by maniacs who would do such evil.  

On May 18, 1927, the Bath Consolidated School was rocked by a massive explosion, killing 38 people instantly, and injuring dozens more. The man who committed this atrocity was a 55-year-old electrical engineer named Andrew Kehoe. After months and months of planning the attack, Andrew Kehoe (pictured below) had detonated hundreds of pounds of dynamite in the basement of the Bath Consolidated School.

That wasn't the end of Kehoe's massacre, though. Kehoe would claim more victims before ultimately killing himself in one final explosion outside of the school as victims looked on in horror at the demolished school.


Kehoe graduated from Michigan State University with an electrical engineering degree and moved to St. Louis to work before eventually resettling to Bath, Michigan in 1912 and marrying his wife, Nellie Price. He and his wife purchased a farm from Nellie's Aunt just outside of the town of Bath.


Kehoe sat on the township school board as the treasurer and in 1922, when the Bath Consolidated School opened, he grew very unhappy with the fiscal management of the township.


The opening of the consolidated school meant that students from all over the region had a place to learn under one roof, but that meant higher property taxes for the residents of Bath Township. He fought against the taxes and the new school system, and was appointed as the Bath Township Clerk in 1925. From that position he continued to fight, with no success and was eventually replaced as Clerk the following year after losing a public election. In Kehoe's mind, this would be the final slight against him by the residents of Bath Township.


Starting in the fall of 1926, Kehoe started to make trips to Lansing to stock up on dynamite. The trips were no cause for concern, because it was quite common for farmers to purchase dynamite at the time. After months of trips, Kehoe had gathered hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds of dynamite (the unexploded dynamite is pictured below).

It is still a bit of a mystery as to how he got all of the explosives into the school, because he would have to have made many trips into the school to set up all of the dynamite. Many believed he had an accomplice, but no one was ever identified as the accomplice.
Kehoe wired the explosives to detonate on a timer and at 9:45am the first explosions went off.

Meanwhile, Kehoe had murdered his wife and burnt down his farm, which was now in foreclosure due to missed mortgage payments. He then filled his truck with even more explosives and traveled to the Bath Consolidated School. Upon arrival he found victims looking on in horror at the crumbling building. Kehoe drove into the parking lot near the superintendent of the school and detonated the dynamite in his truck, killing himself and 4 other people.


After everything was said and done, Kehoe had killed 45 people and injured 58 more (mostly children) in the attack. Authorities found about 500 more pounds of explosives in the basement of the building which had not been set off due to faulty wiring. To this day, the Bath Consolidated School bombing is the worst attack on a school in United States History.


After reconstruction, the school resumed class in the Fall of 1927. In 1975 the school was demolished and in 1991 a monument was erected to those who were killed in the attack.

Click On Detroit did a fantastic write up on the massacre and included some links to interviews with survivors. If you want to learn more, I suggest reading that article.

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