Shooting of Kayla Rolland

Buell Elementary closed in 2002 due to dwindling enrollment and stressed finances. The campus was heavily damaged by arson in 2005, and was demolished in 2009. On the twentieth anniversary of the shooting on February 29, 2020, news media reported that the boy who shot Kayla Rolland was living in Bay City, Michigan. According to court records, he had been convicted at age 18 of a felony in connection with charges of second-degree home invasion and larceny at a Bay City house on April 23, 2012.

At the time, Kayla Rolland was believed to have been the youngest school shooting victim in United States history, which was not surpassed until the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in December 2012. Her assailant became the youngest school shooter in the United States, and the legal claim that at that age he would lack the ability to form intent, he was not charged with the murder. In most U.S. states, six-year-olds are not liable for crimes they commit, and the Genesee County Prosecutor Arthur Busch called on the citizens to collectively hug the boy presumably out of pity and sympathy. In an 1893 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that "children under the age of seven years could not be guilty of felony, or punished for any capital offense, for within that age the child is conclusively presumed incapable of committing a crime." This is followed in many U.S. states.

Rolland's killing was documented in the 2002 Michael Moore film Bowling for Columbine.

On February 29, 2000, the boy had brought the firearm, along with a knife, with him to school. Further in the day, during a change of classes, he fatally shot six-year-old Kayla Rolland in the presence of a teacher and 22 students while they were moving up a floor on the stairs, saying to her: "I don't like you", before pulling the trigger. The bullet entered her right arm and travelled through a vital artery. At 10:29 a.m. EST, Rolland was pronounced dead at Hurley Medical Center while in cardiac arrest. He then threw the handgun into a trash basket and fled to a nearby restroom. He was found there, in the corner, by a teacher and was taken into police custody soon after. He was held in custody until the Genesee County Family Independence Agency could determine his placement. He and his two younger siblings have since been placed with an aunt.

Kayla Renee Rolland (May 12, 1993 – February 29, 2000) was an American six-year-old girl from Mount Morris Township, Michigan, who was fatally shot on February 29, 2000 by a six-year-old male classmate at Buell Elementary School in the Beecher Community School District. The boy had found the gun while living at his uncle's drug 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 school shooting perpetrator to-date. The boy was not charged with murder because of his age. Buell Elementary School closed in 2002.