What did Sylvia Seegrist do?
Sylvia Seegrist is an American mass murderer who killed three people and wounded seven others in a shooting incident in a shopping mall in Springfield, Pennsylvania, on the 30th October, 1985. The victims were two men and a two-year-old boy.
Seegrist was 25 when she carried out the murders and had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia ten years earlier. She had been committed and discharged from mental care several times. Seegrist made two trips to the mall before returning to commit the murders. She shopped for Halloween items at a party store and then worked out at a fitness club.
Seegrist approached the nearest entrance of the mall on her third and fatal visit, and fired at a woman who was using a nearby cash machine. She missed and went on to shoot and kill two-year-old Recife Cosmen, who was waiting a local restaurant with his parents.
Once inside the mall, Seegrist fired into some stores, and customers fled the scene when they heard the gunfire. She approached Ernest Trout, who was standing in front of a store, and shot and killed him. She then killed Augusto Ferrara before a graduate student by the name of John Laufer disarmed her as she tried to shoot him.
What happened at the trial of Sylvia Seegrist?
Seegrist was transferred to Norristown State Hospital prior to a competency hearing, and after evaluation she was deemed fit enough to stand trial for the murders. She was found guilty and sentenced to three consecutive life sentences, and seven consecutive terms for the victims she wounded.
Where is Sylvia Seegrist now?
Sylvia Seegrist is currently serving her life sentence at the State Correctional Institution in Muncy, Pennsylvania. She is 63 years of age.
Nobody really knows why Seegrist committed these horrific murders, but her mental illness is likely to be a contributing factor in it. When she was asked why she did it by a security guard who arrived on the scene shortly after the slayings, she said, “My family makes me nervous.”
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