On December 7, 1993, aboard a Long Island Rail Road train, there was a mass shooting. When the train arrived at the Merillion Avenue station in Garden City Park, New York, a passenger, Colin Ferguson, opened fire on the other passengers.

Over the course of three minutes, Ferguson emptied two 15-round magazines, killing six people and injuring nineteen. While he was reloading a third magazine, several passengers were able to detain him. At this point, Ferguson pled with those who had taken him down not to kill him and that he was sorry for what he had done. When the train reached the station, an off-duty officer who was there to pick up his wife handcuffed Ferguson.

Ferguson was born to a wealthy family in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1958. In 1978, both of his parents died. Subsequently, the family fortune also disappeared. In 1982, Ferguson came to the United States on a visitor visa. He married a Jamaican-American woman in 1986 and chose to stay in the States. However, his marriage did not last, and in 1988, his wife filed for divorce. At the time of his divorce, Ferguson began working for a security system company. However, in 1989, he suffered an injury that led to his termination. He sued the company and won; however, he stated that he was the victim of racial prejudice from the state-appointed doctors. Eventually, he was put on a list of people to look out for.

In 1990, he began going to Adelphi University, and he would often accuse others of being racist. He argued against coexistence with whites. At a lecture about apartheid in South Africa, he interrupted the lecture by shouting anti-white statements and statements supporting the black revolution. He was suspended from the school in 1991. Then, in 1992, he was arrested for harassing a woman on a subway; he claimed she was racially profiling him. In April 1993, Ferguson moved to California, where he was unsuccessful in finding a job. It was there in California that he bought the Ruger P89 pistol that he would use in the Long Island shooting. He only stayed in California for a month before moving back to New York in May of that year.

Ferguson’s defense tried to claim that he had been driven to temporary insanity by “black rage.” This is the belief that black individuals who have faced racial prejudice can be forced to insanity and should not be held criminally liable for their actions. The defense compared this to the battered woman defense, child abuse syndrome, and PTSD. Ferguson rejected this claim and eventually fired his lawyers and represented himself. During his trial, Ferguson claimed that he did bring the gun on the train but that he fell asleep, and another man took his gun and killed those people. He also claimed that the Jewish Defense League planned to kill him if he was convicted and that the murder of Jeffrey Dahmer was “set up as a prelude against me.” When Ferguson cross-examined the witnesses, he asked them to identify the shooter, and each one identified Ferguson as the shooter.

On February 17, 1995, Ferguson was convicted of murder of the six passengers and attempted murder for wounding the nineteen passengers. He was sentenced to 315 years to life; his earliest possible date is August 6, 2309.