On the afternoon of October 30, 1985, two-year-old Recife A. Booty Cosmen was fatally shot while with his parents at the Springfield Mall in Pennsylvania. The shooting began in the mall parking lot when a woman in military-style clothing fired a .22-caliber rifle; initial shots missed, then a bullet struck Recife. The shooter then entered the mall and continued shooting, killing two more people, 64-year-old Augusto Ferrara and 67-year-old Dr. Ernest Earl Trout, and wounding seven other shoppers.

Many present initially mistook the gunfire for a Halloween prank. A civilian, John W. Laufer III, confronted and disarmed the shooter, who was taken into custody that day. The shooter was identified as 25-year-old Sylvia Seegrist; she had a documented history of mental illness, including a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, and had obtained the rifle by providing false information on the purchase form.

A jury later found her guilty of three counts of murder and seven counts of attempted murder and determined she was mentally ill at the time of the killings.