On August 24, 2006, Mary Alicia Workman Shanks, a 56-year-old White/Caucasian second-grade teacher at Essex Elementary School in Essex, Vermont, was killed while preparing her classroom for the upcoming school year. Teachers and staff were present for an in-service day when a gunman arrived at the school searching for a former girlfriend who taught there. The attacker, Christopher Williams, had already killed the woman’s mother, Linda Lambesis, at her home earlier that day.

Williams fired through Shanks’s classroom door, fatally wounding her, and also shot and injured another teacher, Mary Snedeker. The violence devastated the community and cut short the life of a teacher remembered for her energetic spirit and love for her students. Williams was apprehended by law enforcement and later convicted of first-degree murder in the deaths of Shanks and Lambesis; he received life in prison without the possibility of parole.

If anyone knew Mary Shanks or has information about her life and work at the school, please share what you remember.