page_title: Sylvia Seegrist
section_title: Shootings
hierarchical_section_title: Sylvia Seegrist / Shootings
context_page_description: Sylvia Wynanda Seegrist is an American woman who on October 30, 1985, opened fire at a shopping mall in Springfield, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia. Seegrist killed three people and wounded seven others before being disarmed by a man who was shopping at the mall. The individuals killed included two men and a two-year-old boy.
  Seegrist was 25 years old and had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia ten years earlier. Having been committed and discharged from mental care several times, her case stimulated discussion about the state's authority to commit at-risk people into mental care facilities versus individual rights.
context_section_description: On the first of two trips to the Springfield Mall on the day of October 30, 1985 Seegrist shopped for Halloween items at a party store. She then worked out at a fitness club, before returning to the mall for the last time.
  Seegrist alighted from her vehicle, a Datsun B-210, retrieved the weapon she had purchased, and then fired at a man approximately 30 yards (27 m) from where she stood. The man was not hit and having seen the vehicle she arrived in, flattened one of the Datsun's tires to prevent an escape in that vehicle. Meanwhile, Seegrist had approached the nearest entrance and fired at, but missed, a woman who was using a nearby ATM. Before entering the mall, she shot and killed two-year-old Recife Cosmen who was with his parents waiting to eat at a local restaurant.
  Once inside, Seegrist fired into some stores and ignored others. Though many customers fled when they heard the gunfire, she came across (Ernest) Earl Trout, who either could not or did not hear it and was simply standing in front of a store where he became one of the three people killed that day. Augusto Ferrara was the last person killed in the rampage. John Laufer, a local graduate student, disarmed her as she walked up to him and tried to raise her gun to shoot him. Laufer forced her to a nearby store while he waited for the arrival of mall security. The first guard who responded asked her why she had just done what she did; her reply was "My family makes me nervous".
caption: Two Ruger 10/22 with rotary magazines; similar to the weapon used by Sylvia Seegrist.
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