One Student Killed in Spokane-Area High School Shooting

Several of you posted elsewhere about this sad and tragic occurence.  From the Seattle Times:

Armed with a pistol and rifle, classmates say the shooter’s face “was passive"in the hallway of a high school in a tiny Spokane-area town. He tried to fire a weapon, but it jammed, and another boy confronted him.  
 “He went to his next weapon,” Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich said. “A student walked up to him, engaged him, and that student was shot. That student did not survive." 
 Three other students were seriously injured by gunfire Wednesday morning at Freeman High School south of Spokane. A custodian stopped the shooter, a heroic action the sheriff said prevented more bloodshed. The injured victims were expected to survive.
This story does evoke the usual questions.

1) Where did he get not one but two weapons?  Given it's a rural area, I suspect it might have been his own rifle.

2)  The boy who was killed - who tried to stop him - is a hero.  You can imagine that if your own child was friends with someone in that kind of situation, your child might say, "Hey buddy, calm down. What's up?"

It's hard to know what to tell your child to do.  Always run?  Try to talk someone down?

3) How does this affect a school community?  I note that in another story, the Times reported that Marysville School District was offering help and advice from their own tragedy.

Comments

tragic said…
What a horror for those kids. But come on, please don't ever suggest that someone should try to "talk down" an active shooter. You run the hell away, hide, or if you're in excellent position to do so maybe tackle and restrain him. It's tragic that the kid that tried to talk him down thought that was the best course of action.
Tragic, I'm not saying any kid should try to talk down another student but some might have that impulse. Important for parents to tell their students to just run or hide.
Anonymous said…
They are saying now that the boy who tried to stop the shooter and was killed, bullied the shooter but the shooter did not go to school intending to kill that particular boy. The shooter left a suicide note. He may have been hoping for death by cop.

HP

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