On May 2, 1970, National Guard troops were called to Kent, Ohio, to suppress students rioting in protest of the Vietnam War and the U.S. invasion of Cambodia.

The next day, scattered protests were dispersed by tear gas and on May 4, classes resumed at Kent State University. By noon on that day, despite a ban on rallies, some two thousand people had assembled on the campus.

National Guard troops arrived and ordered the crowd to disperse, fired tear gas, and advanced against the students with bayonets fixed on their rifles.

Some of the protestors, refusing to yield, responded by throwing rocks and verbally taunting the troops.

Minutes later, without firing a warning shot, twenty-eight Guardsmen discharged their weapons toward a group of demonstrators in a nearby parking lot, killing four students, wounding eight, and permanently paralyzing another.