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Killing of Kayla Rolland

2000 school killing in Mount Morris Township, Michigan, United States

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 15, 2026
Entity authorityQ17450149 ↗
Source-derived summary

Kayla Renee Rolland (May 12, 1993 – February 29, 2000) was a six-year-old American girl from Mount Morris Township, Michigan, United States, who was fatally shot on February 29, 2000, by a six-year-old classmate at Buell Elementary School in Beecher Community School District. The boy had found the gun while living at his uncle's house; the house was a crack house where guns were frequently traded for drugs.

The killing drew worldwide attention due to the particularly young ages of the victim and the perpetrator: Rolland was the youngest school shooting victim in the United States until the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012, and her assailant remains the youngest fatal school shooting perpetrator to date. The boy was not charged with murder because of his age. Buell Elementary School closed in 2002 and was demolished in 2009.

19-year-old Jamelle James, a family friend with whom the perpetrator was living, was charged with involuntary manslaughter for leaving the gun in a shoe box in his bedroom where the 6-year-old could access it. He and two other men, 19-year-old Robert Lee Morris III and 22-year-old Sir Marcus Winfrey, also faced federal firearm charges. Morris sold the weapon, which was stolen, to James and Winfrey. James and Morris pleaded guilty to possession of a stolen 12-gauge shotgun. Winfrey, an uncle of the shooter, pleaded guilty to possession of the stolen firearm used to kill Rolland.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Killing of Kayla Rolland” as 2000 school killing in Mount Morris Township, Michigan, United States. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA useful synthesis for locating the documentary relationships between formal authority, participants and affected communities. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1993, 2000, 2012, 2002—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Killing, Kayla and Rolland can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as 2000 school killing in Mount Morris Township, Michigan, United States. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q17450149. Authority coordinates are 43.080, -83.706. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1993, 2000, 2012 and 2002.

Critical limits

Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Killing of Kayla Rolland”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Killing of Kayla Rolland primary sources, Killing of Kayla Rolland archive and Killing research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Killing of Kayla Rolland”?
  2. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
  3. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Killing of Kayla Rolland” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.