On October 28, 2002, at approximately 8:30 a.m. MST, 41-year-old nursing student Robert Stewart Flores Jr. entered the College of Nursing building at the University of Arizona in Tucson armed with five handguns and carrying more than 200 rounds of ammunition. Flores walked onto the second floor, entered his professor Robin Rogers’ office, and shot her multiple times. He then ascended to the fourth floor, where a classroom full of students was taking a critical-care exam. There, he shot and killed professors Barbara Monroe and Cheryl McGaffic.
Flores allowed students to exit the classroom and made no effort to escape. He was later found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. All three victims were professors he had previously blamed for his academic failures.
A Gulf War veteran and formerly licensed practical nurse, Flores was struggling academically—most notably in a pediatric nursing class and a critical-care course taught by McGaffic. In his apartment and at the scene, authorities discovered documents expressing deep resentment toward the university and the faculty. He had prepared a 22-page letter, mailed to a local newspaper posthumously, in which he referred to the shooting as a “reckoning” and claimed that the institution had treated him and other male nursing students unfairly, with what he described as institutional hubris.
Prior to the shooting, faculty and peers had observed his increasing frustration, depression, and anger. He had previously issued threats toward the college and displayed behaviors that went unaddressed by university officials or mental health professionals.
Flores’s actions exposed a breakdown in academic support systems, mental health intervention, and institutional accountability. His attack tragically demonstrated how failing students who harbor escalating grievances can pose significant threats to their academic community.
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