The shootings devastated Iowa City and shocked a nation not normally used to thinking of physics as a life-and-death pursuit.

The shooting seemed reminiscent of an earlier, more violent time, and shocked a city that has enjoyed a decade of declining crime.

The shooting of 11-year-old Rhys Jones in Merseyside shocked the public out of their complacency.

Nevertheless, the shooting shocked this wealthy suburb that blends almost imperceptibly into Boston with boundaries that are straddled by the Boston University campus.

In January 1906, a shooting at Watts Station shocked "Red Car" passengers.

The shooting shocked this well-to-do suburb that is proud of its cultivated reputation for racial tolerance and it touched off a night of angry protest in which police cars were vandalized and windows smashed.

The shooting shocked many of the country's 1.6 million Muslims, already alarmed by a publicly acknowledged shoot-to-kill policy directed against suspected suicide bombers.

The shooting of Mr. Hattori, who was looking for a Halloween party in the Baton Rouge suburbs when he mistakenly knocked on Mr. Peairs's door the night of Oct. 17, shocked the people of Japan, and the courtroom has been packed with Japanese reporters.

The recent shooting of two young students at a Brooklyn high school shocked the nation.

"The common thread," Pastor Barger said, is that each had thought the shooting in his or her community "would so shock the culture that things would change."