HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (Feb. 14) – More than 23 years before a college professor was accused of shooting six of her colleagues, her teenage brother died from the blast of a shotgun she held in the kitchen of her family’s home in Massachusetts.
The 1986 shooting was ruled accidental and no charges were filed against Amy Bishop. The case could get a closer look as authorities try to explain why they believe the Harvard-educated neurobiologist opened fire Friday, killing three.
Bishop, a rare woman suspected of a workplace shooting, had just months left teaching at the University of Alabama in Huntsville because she was denied tenure.
Some, including the husband of one victim and one of her students, have said she was upset after being denied the job-for-life security afforded tenured academics. Authorities have refused to discuss a motive, and school spokesman Ray Garner said the faculty meeting wasn’t called to discuss tenure.
It appeared the violent episode in Bishop’s past wasn’t known to her colleagues in Huntsville.
Bishop shot her brother, Seth, an 18-year-old accomplished violinist, in the chest in 1986, said Paul Frazier, the police chief in Braintree, Mass., where the shooting occurred.
Both William Setzer, chairman of chemistry department at UAH, and university police Chief Chuck Gailes said they had not heard about the Massachusetts incident until being asked by reporters Saturday.
The Norfolk County District Attorney’s office released a 1987 report with details of their investigation, based on interviews with Amy Bishop and her parents conducted by a state trooper after the shooting. The report concluded Seth Bishop was killed by an “accidental discharge of a firearm.”
Amy Bishop told investigators she was trying to learn how to use a shotgun that her father had purchased for protection in the home after a break-in. She said she did not know how to use the weapon and brought it downstairs to the kitchen for help unloading it.
She said she was raising it when “someone said something to her and she turned and the gun went off” while her brother was walking across the kitchen, according to the report.
She then ran out of the house with the weapon. When she talked to investigators 11 days after the shooting, she told them she could only remember hearing her mother scream and she didn’t know the gunshot struck her brother until later.
