School shooter gets lengthy prison term

6 —  Brendan O’Rourke, the mentally ill man who opened fire on the playground of a Carlsbad elementary school in 2010, was sentenced Friday to 189 years to life in prison.

Judge Aaron Katz issued the sentence at a hearing in Vista Superior Court, where he chastised O’Rourke for terrorizing the Kelly Elementary School community.

“Your twisted plot has forever changed the lives of Kelly Elementary children, parents, teachers and staff members,” the judge said to O’Rourke, who listened impassively at his lawyer’s side during the 30-minute hearing.

“They won’t ever forget the manner in which you terrorized their school.”

A jury in March convicted O’Rourke, 42, of seven charges of premeditated attempted murder and seven counts of assault with a firearm. The same jury later found O’Rourke was sane at the time of the Oct. 8, 2010, noon-time attack at the school.

O’Rourke’s lawyer had argued that his client suffered severe delusions brought on by mental illness.

Evidence presented at the trial showed that O’Rourke jumped a fence and walked onto the school’s grass field. He then opened fire with a .357 Magnum revolver.

Two second-grade girls were injured but have since recovered. Three construction workers intervened and stopped the attack by wrestling O’Rourke to the ground before police came.

At the hearing, several parents and staff members at the school spoke about the shooting spree and how it still affects students 18 months later. Two said it was a miracle that no students were killed and that more were not hit and injured.

Jana Scott, a teacher at the school and a parent of a student there, said the attack shattered the quiet school.

Scott said she “never would have believed our beautiful little school would become a crime scene.”

Some students still have nightmares and are coping with the fallout from the incident, she said.

Dan Segura, the lawyer for O’Rourke, told the judge that four mental health experts who testified during the sanity portion of the trial concluded O’Rourke was mentally ill. He urged Katz to take that into consideration when fashioning a sentence, saying O’Rourke’s delusions were the fuel that motivated his attack.

O’Rourke believed at the time that he was being targeted by his former employer, AIG Insurance, as well as political figures in Illinois and others. According to a report by a probation officer prepared for the sentencing, O’Rourke told police he wanted to kill “white Christian children.” He said he considered attacking Jefferson Elementary but decided against it because the streets around that school were too narrow, and Kelly was an easier target.

A psychiatrist hired by the court to evaluate O’Rourke testified he was a paranoid schizophrenic who was psychotic on the day of the shooting.

But Deputy District Attorney Summer Stephan argued O’Rourke was not insane but simply angry over being rejected by women and getting evicted from his home.

When handing down the sentence, Katz noted the “tremendous heroism” of the construction workers — Carlos Partida, Mario Contreras and Steven Kane — as well as staff at the school on that day. And he said that the children who testified at the trial about the shooting rampage showed great courage, and “serve as an inspiration to all of us.”