Barry Loukaitis

On the day of the shooting, Loukaitis was dressed as a Wild West-style gunslinger and was wearing a black duster. He was armed with a .30–30 caliber hunting rifle and two handguns (.357 caliber revolver and .25 caliber semiautomatic pistol) that belonged to his father, and was carrying approximately 78 rounds of ammunition.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that people convicted of murder they committed under 18 years of age could not receive automatic life terms without parole and in 2016 the court ruled that the policy also apply retroactively. Loukaitis was heard for a re-sentencing in 2017, during which he apologized for the first time, in a letter to the Grant County Superior Court. He was re-sentenced to 189 years in prison.

On September 24, 1997, Loukaitis was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder, one count of second-degree murder, one count of first-degree attempted murder, and 16 counts of aggravated kidnapping. He was sentenced to serve two life sentences and an additional 205 years without the possibility of parole. He is currently imprisoned at the Clallam Bay Corrections Center in Washington State. The Washington State Court of Appeals denied Loukaitis's request for a new trial in 1999.

The Frontier Middle School shooting was a school shooting that occurred on February 2, 1996, at Frontier Middle School in Moses Lake, Washington, United States. The gunman, 14-year-old Barry Dale Loukaitis (/l uː ˈ k aɪ t ɪ s / ; born February 26, 1981), killed his algebra teacher and two students, and held his classmates hostage before a gym coach subdued him.

In June 1996, the Spokane Court of Appeals were to come to a decision whether 15-year-old Barry Loukaitis should be tried as an adult or juvenile. On July 2, three members of the Spokane Court of Appeals convinced Judge Evan Sperline to allow court-appointed psychiatrist Joan Petrich to present a testimony based on Loukaitis' mental health. The trial was later moved to Seattle, Washington due to media publicity. Loukaitis had pleaded insanity on all charges against him, and claimed that "mood swings" were the cause of his violent actions. During his trial, Joan Petrich testified that Loukaitis had been experiencing delusional and messianic thoughts before the shooting. She had stated, "He felt like he was God and would laugh to himself. He felt he was superior to other people, and then those feelings were later replaced by hate, disdain, and not measuring up."

In the year prior to the shooting, the Loukaitis family was facing various dysfunctional issues. Loukaitis' parents separated in 1995, after his mother discovered her husband was having an affair. She filed for divorce against her husband in January 1996. His mother, Jo Ann Phillips, was a domineering woman who became increasingly distant and began speaking of suicide. She would frequently imply that her son Barry would also have to kill himself, and that the date of the double-suicide would be on Valentine's Day of 1996. Barry talked his mother out of doing so, by having her write down her feelings.