Kentucky man who killed three in 1997 school shooting denied parole

Michael Carneal, who was 14 when he killed three and wounded five inside his Kentucky high school in 1997, was denied parole Monday.

The parole board voted unanimously, 7-0, to refuse parole to the now-39-year-old school shooter, who said voices in his head told him to steal his neighbor’s pistol and open fire in the lobby of Heath High School, where students were conducting a prayer circle.

Carneal was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years, but will now spend the rest of his life behind bars.

“I’m sorry for what I did,” he said last week. “I know it’s not going to change things or make anything better, but I am sorry for what I did.”

Michael Carneal was denied parole Monday.

Carneal’s lawyer said her client was suffering from undiagnosed paranoid schizophrenia at the time of the shooting and was being bullied. Now, through medication and therapy, he has a handle on his mental illness.

But Kentucky Parole Board Chair Ladeidra Jones said that Carneal still suffered “paranoid thoughts with violent visual imagery” and that the board’s “No. 1 charge is to maintain public safety.”

In one of the first school shootings in the U.S., 17 months before Columbine, Carneal opened fire in the prayer circle, killing 15-year-old Kayce Steger, 14-year-old Nicole Hadley and 17-year-old Jessica James.