This month marks the 35th anniversary of one of the darkest moments in San Joaquin Country history.

Five students, ages 6 through 9, were murdered in cold blood at Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton on Jan. 17, 1989.

Thirty-two others were injured on the playground during a shooting spree that lasted from 11:59 a.m. to 12:02 p.m.

It only ended when the gunman — 24 year-old Patrick Purdy — shot himself in the head.

Before going on, it seems a travesty the only name that pops into people’s mind when the subject of the school massacre comes up is Purdy.

Those lost that day were Rathanar Or, 9; Rm Chun, 6; Sokhim An, 6; Owen Lim, 6; and Thuy Tran, 6.

It was the non-college shooting in the United States with the largest number of deaths and injuries until Columbine High on April 20, 1999. That’s when two gunmen killed 15 of their fellow students and injured more than 20 others.

Three years after Cleveland, another Northern California school suffered a mass shooting.

Lindhurst High in Linda, just south of Marysville lost three students and a teacher.

A 20 year-old former student that did not graduate was upset he had lost his job — a situation he blamed on his former civics teacher for giving him a failing grade — returned to the campus on May 1, 1991 when Eric Houston killed four people, wounded 12, and took 80 students hostage as well as trapping 70 others for more than 8 hours.

Houston, unlike Purdy, eventually surrendered.

He was sentenced to death.

The California Supreme Court upheld his death penalty in 2012.

Houston is at San Quentin and still awaiting execution, something Gavin Newsom has made clear won’t happen as long as he is governor.

Manteca has not been immune from fatal school shootings.

It occurred in May of 1932 at the former Castle School on French Camp Road west of Austin Road and east of Highway 99.

Castle School — and along with Summer Home School that was located today where a vacant lot is at Cottage Avenue and Southland Road, were combined into the New Haven School attendance area in 1966 after the Manteca Unified School District was created.

The shooting victim at the Castle School was teacher Olive Taylor.

She was killed by a father who was irate that she had spanked his child.

He entered the school after 4 p.m., confronted the teacher, and started yelling.

The janitor, who was elsewhere in the building, heard the noise and went to investigate.

The parent then fatally shot the teacher and wounded the janitor in the face with another shot.

Afterwards, the man’s vehicle was found burning nearby.

He fled to his native Greece where he was eventually arrested and convicted of the crime.

It is ironic that when a school shooting occurs, the referenced events that many in the Manteca area make are to Columbine in Colorado or in Parkland on Feb. 14, 2018 when 17 students were killed and 17 students were wounded at Marjory Stoneman High.

Sometimes it is to Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut where on Dec. 14, 2012 there were 26 people murdered — 20 students ages 6 and 7 as well as six adults.

It is roughly 10 miles from the heart of Manteca to Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton.

And although Lindhurst High is some 93 miles away, local high schools over the years have interacted with students from subsequent school years in sports and activities such as FFA.

Purdy was the quintessential school shooter.

He started using drugs in high school.

He was arrested for underage drinking.

He had less than an ideal home life as a kid.

He struck his mom in the face at the age of 13.

He then lived on the streets for a period before being tossed into foster care.

He was first arrested as a 15 year-old.

He was arrested numerous times including for possession of marijuana, drug dealing, prostitution, possession of an illegal weapon and possession of stolen property, for being an accomplice in an armed robbery of a gas station, and firing a semi-automatic pistol at trees in the El Dorado National Forest.

He was carrying a book about the Aryan Nation white supremacy group when he was arrested for discharging weapons in a national forest.

He tried tried to commit suicide twice in prison.

He complained to classmates about the high percentage of Southeast Asian students when he took welding classes at Delta College.

He left California and drifted across the nation for a while, taking odd jobs when he could.

He openly spoke to others about his hatred for Asian immigrants, believing they took jobs from “native-born” Americans.

He walked out of the Sandy Trading Post in Sandy, Oregon, on Aug. 3, 1990 with a Chinese made AK-47, a weapon he used in the shooting.

He returned to Stockton, renting a room at the El Rancho Motel on Dec. 26, 1988.

He purchased a Taurus 9mm pistol at the Hunter Loan pawn shop in Stockton on Dec. 28, 1988.

He also may have inspired others.

Four months after the Stockton school shooting, Joseph Wesbacker shot up his former workplace, killing 8 and injuring 12 others before committing suicide. Police in Louisville, Kentucky, found magazine articles about Purdy when they searched Wesbacker’s home.

Days after the Cleveland School shooting Time magazine asked, “Why could Purdy, an alcoholic who had been arrested for such offenses as selling weapons and attempted robbery, walk into a gun store in Sandy, Oregon, and leave with an AK-47 under his arm?”

There were, of course, calls for better regulation of semi-automatic weapons. There were new laws put in place on the state and federal level.

Thirty-five years later, the horror of school shootings hasn’t been reduced.

The ability of the government to keep weapons from being legally acquired by those that clearly should not have them, has been less than stellar.

Given America is armed to the teeth — there are estimated 400 million guns in the United States with all but 7 million or so in the hands of civilians — that genie is not going back into the bottle.

The numbers, by the way, are from the American Gun Facts group.

The Second Amendment is not going away either.

So the real question after 35 years, is why we haven’t made enough headway against two things that can be addressed — keeping guns from legal sources out of the hands of those that clearly should be prevented from acquiring them, and addressing the prevalent spread of anti-social behavior.

Perhaps school shootings and murderous rampages in other settings are an American curse.

That said, it would seem reasonable to believe there are steps that haven’t been taken either to fully implement laws in place or devise reasonable ones that can keep guns from legally getting in the hands of those that shouldn’t have them.

The debate will require carving out safeguards for gun ownership in the hands of law-abiding citizens that aren’t tainted with mental, rage, and anti-social behaviors as well as creating. effective safeguards to reduce the slaughter.

We all have a stake in finding common ground.

Those four bloody minutes could easily happen anywhere including 10 miles to the south of where they occurred 35 years ago.