On this day, Jan. 8, in 1991, 15-year-old Jeremy Wade Delle shot himself with a .357 Magnum in front of his class at a suburban Dallas high school.
His death was the inspiration for Pearl Jam’s 1992 hit song, “Jeremy.”
Jeremy was considered a loner at Richardson High School. His second-period teacher told him to get an admittance slip because the sophomore had skipped his first class. Instead, he returned with the gun, walked to the chalkboard and said, “Miss, I got what I really went for.” He put the barrel in his mouth and fired.
Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder read about the suicide and combined it with a similar incident at his junior high to write “Jeremy.”
The video won MTV’s Best Video of the Year, but not without controversy. Some viewers believed the Jeremy in the video shot his classmates.
In 1996, a 14-year-old Washington state student fatally shot his teacher and two classmates and said he got the idea from the video.
— Scott McCabe
