Fernando Alcivar and the 1976 Computer Learning Center shooting

Fernando E. Alcivar, 24, was attending the Computer Learning Center, an independent computer school in Santa Monica, California, on February 19, 1976. At about 8:30 a.m., 18-year-old student Neil Jordan Liebeskind assembled a sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun that he had brought into a classroom in a narrow box. After a teacher distributed a quiz and stepped out, Liebeskind stood, called to another student, and opened fire. Alcivar, who was seated beside the student addressed, was fatally wounded. Several classmates were wounded by gunfire or flying glass.

Liebeskind left the classroom and moved through the building as students took cover and then sought help. A television production was filming nearby, and three security guards working for that production responded to the sound of gunfire and screams. Howard W. Barnes, a retired Los Angeles police officer then working as a guard, encountered Liebeskind in the parking lot and ordered him to drop the shotgun. Liebeskind shot Barnes in the thigh. Barnes and another guard returned fire, seriously wounding Liebeskind, who was then arrested and hospitalized.

Contemporary newspaper accounts varied in their immediate counts of wounded people, a common feature of breaking coverage. The stable points across the archival record are that Alcivar was the sole fatality, multiple students were injured, Barnes was shot, and the gunman was wounded during the armed intervention. The case is consequently described as both a school shooting and a mass shooting without forcing a single early injury total.

A Sacramento Bee report documented Liebeskind's March 1976 arraignment on one murder count, one kidnapping count, and nine counts of assault with a deadly weapon. The charges were later reduced to manslaughter and seven assault counts. On January 26, 1977, the Los Angeles Times reported that a jury found him not guilty by reason of insanity. He was committed to a California state mental hospital.

The status is classified as solved because the accused shooter was identified, charged, tried, and received a final insanity acquittal and commitment. An acquittal by reason of insanity is not a criminal conviction and is recorded here using the acquitted role. Coordinates come from the case's Wikipedia entity for the documented school location in Santa Monica. The school no longer serves as a reliable modern landmark, so the location label retains the historical institution and city.