2018 School Shootings

Since coming to the UK i've come to realise just how little the things most American Kids experience in school is so uncommon that even the mention of a Lockdown drill just leads to confusion as it isn't something practised on a common basis to try and prepare for these incidents. I've only ever come close to the feeling these events create with a hand full of experiences that to my sheer luck were only false alarms. So many people especially in my country have become so numb to these events we don't even realise how much they should not have to be something we mentally prepare for every day of our lives, let alone as children being trained in how to duck for cover or fight for our lives if we have to. In this year we've already had so many school shootings and it's something that's been going on for as long as i can remember, i hope to look farther into each event to bring to light the emotion and stories they hold to call attention to a problem that must be resolved.

We're only 16 weeks into 2018, and there have already been 20 school shootings where someone was hurt or killed. That averages out to 1.25 shootings a week.

The parameters CNN followed in this count are:

A shooting that involved at least one person being shot (not including the shooter)
A shooting that occurred on school grounds
We included grades K through college/university level
We included gang violence, fights and domestic violence
We included accidental discharge of a firearm as long as the first two parameters are met

April 20: Ocala, Florida

A student at Forest High School was wounded and a suspect taken into custody.

OCALA , Fla. -- A gunman who wounded one student at a Florida high school on the day of a national classroom walkout to protest gun violence has been identified as 19-year-old Sky Bouche, authorities said. Bouche was taken into custody by a school resource officer who rushed to the scene.

The shooting happened Friday morning at Forest High School in Ocala, which was put on lockdown, the Marion County Sheriff's Office reported. The injured student, a 17-year-old boy, was taken to a local hospital for treatment of a non-life threatening injury to his ankle.

Police initially said the suspect is also a student at the school, but later said he was not currently enrolled. The gunman carried a shotgun in a guitar case into the school by blending in with students, said Craig Ham, deputy superintendent of Ocala schools operations. Ham told reporters the shooter fired at the bottom of a classroom door, which was locked, and pellets struck the victim in the ankle.

April 12: Raytown, Missouri

A man was shot in the stomach in the parking lot of Raytown South Middle School during a track meet.

Shots were fired Thursday afternoon during a track meet at a Raytown middle school, injuring one.

Raytown police responded at about 5:30 p.m. to Raytown South Middle School on a report of shots fired. Several witnesses told police that someone had fired a gun during the track meet and then fled in a small black compact car.

Kansas City police then notified Raytown police that a man suffering from a gunshot wound was admitted to an area hospital.

Raytown police responded to the hospital and track to begin an investigation.

April 9: Gloversville, New York

A student shot another student with a BB gun in Gloversville Middle School.

The juvenile suspect was charged with misdemeanors for second-degree menacing, endangering the welfare of a child and third-degree attempted assault and a violation for unlawful possession of a weapon on school grounds.

Due to the male’s age and the charges filed against him, city police said in a press release Tuesday that no information regarding his identity can be released.

City police responded to the high school Tuesday for the report of a juvenile male that had been shot several times with a BB pistol.

Upon arrival, officers made contact with the victim who alleged that he had been approached by the suspect in the middle school on Monday around 11 a.m., who then chased him and shot him with a BB pistol. The victim sustained a minor injury as a result of the incident.

Members of the Gloversville Police Department Patrol Division were able to quickly locate the suspect and take him into custody. The BB pistol used in the offense was located and secured by the Gloversville Police Department Detective Division.

March 20: Lexington Park, Maryland

An armed student shot two others at Great Mills High School before a school resource officer fired a round at the shooter. The shooter was killed. One of the students, 16-year-old girl Jaelynn Willey, was taken off life support two days later.

A 17-year-old male student shot two other students at Great Mills High School in Maryland on Tuesday morning before a school resource officer engaged him and stopped the threat, authorities said.

The incident began in a school hallway at 7:55 a.m., just before classes started. Authorities say Austin Wyatt Rollins, armed with a handgun, shot a female and a male student. The shooter had a prior relationship with the female student, St. Mary's County Sheriff Tim Cameron said.

School resource officer Blaine Gaskill responded to the scene in less than a minute, the sheriff said. Gaskill fired a round at the shooter, and the shooter fired a round simultaneously, Cameron said.

Lone resource officer's quick action stopped the Maryland school shooter within seconds

Rollins was later pronounced dead. Gaskill was unharmed. The 16-year-old female student is in critical condition with life-threatening injuries, and the 14-year-old male student who was shot is in stable condition.

Cameron said he was not sure whether Gaskill's bullet hit the suspect, but he praised the officer's quick response to the situation.

"He responded exactly as we train our personnel to respond," he said.

The incident is the 17th school shooting in the United States since January 1

March 13: Seaside, California

A teacher accidentally discharged a gun during a public safety class at Seaside High School, injuring a student.

SEASIDE — One student was injured Tuesday when a teacher accidentally fired a gun inside a Seaside High School classroom, according to reports.

Dennis Alexander speaks during a Seaside city election forum in 2010. (Photo By David Royal/ Monterey County Herald)

The teacher was identified as Dennis Alexander, a reserve police officer for the Sand City Police Department and a Seaside councilman. Alexander was teaching a gun safety course as part of his administration of justice class when he fired a single shot from a semi-automatic handgun into the ceiling, the Monterey County Herald and KSBW reported.

Police said no one was seriously injured, KSBW said. One student, a 17-year-old boy, was hit in the neck by debris or a fragment after the bullet ricocheted off the ceiling, said Seaside police Chief Abdul D. Pridgen. The boy was not seriously injured and classes resumed, the Herald reported.

The boy’s parents told KSBW that he came home from school with blood on his shirt and bullet fragments in his neck. They took him to a hospital.

“He’s shaken up, but he’s going to be OK,” the boy’s father told KSBW. “I’m just pretty upset that no one told us anything and we had to call the police ourselves to report it.”

The shooting occurs amid intense debate over whether to arm teachers in the wake of the Parkland, Fla. shooting that left 17 dead and another 17 injured. On Wednesday, students across the country are set to walk out of their classrooms to raise awareness about gun violence and safety.

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March 8: Mobile, Alabama

One person was hospitalized after a shooting at an apartment building on the campus of the University of South Alabama.

March 7: Birmingham, Alabama

One student was killed and another critically wounded after an accidental shooting during dismissal time at Huffman High School. Police wouldn't elaborate further.

March 7: Jackson, Mississippi

A student was shot inside a dormitory at Jackson State University. His injuries were not life-threatening.

March 2: Mount Pleasant, Michigan

Two people were shot to death at a dormitory on the campus of Central Michigan University. The victims were not students and police think the incident stemmed from a domestic situation.

February 27: Norfolk, Virginia

A student at Norfolk State University was shot from an adjacent dorm room while he was doing homework. He was not seriously injured.

February 27: Itta Bena, Mississippi

A person was shot in a rec center at Mississippi Valley State University. Police said the person was not a student and the injury was not life-threatening.

February 24: Savannah, Georgia

A person was shot on the campus of Savannah State University and taken to a nearby hospital where he later died. Neither the victim nor the shooter were university students, the college said.

February 14: Parkland, Florida

A 19-year-old man gunned down students and staff with a rifle at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, slaughtering at least 17 unsuspecting students and adults. The shooter, Nikolas Cruz, had been expelled from the high school over disciplinary problems, officials said.

As gunman Nikolas Cruz stalked through Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14, a person’s chances of surviving depended largely on where they encountered him.

One student who came across him on the first floor got away as Cruz loaded his weapon, according to a chilling animation released Tuesday. And all students on the second floor survived. But students and staff on the first and third floors were at Cruz’s mercy, the animation shows.

The rudimentary video, made by investigators from the Broward Sheriff’s Office, provides the first official account of Cruz’s movements during approximately six minutes and 45 seconds he spent inside the school building. It was played at Tuesday’s first meeting of the state-appointed commission investigating “system failures” related to the Parklandschool mass shooting.

The animation shows Cruz — as a black dot with a line representing the AR-15 rifle he carried — methodically striding through the building and shooting his victims — students are shown as green dots and school staff as blue dots. As bullets strike each person, the color of the dot that represents them changes to purple for the dead and yellow for the injured.

Though the animation showed only dots moving around on a map of Building 12, several people cried and parents of the victims said they found it very disturbing.

“I knew which dot was my daughter so it was pretty brutal for me,” said Andrew Pollack, whose 18-year-old daughter Meadow was murdered.

Broward sheriff’s detectives put together the animation, using information they gleaned from witness interviews and their review of security video footage from inside the building.

Pollack is one of the panel members appointed to the commission and promised he won’t rest until he gets answers. Ryan Petty, the father of Alaina Petty, and Max Schachter, father of Alex Schachter, are also serving on the panel.

“I want everyone in Broward to know what happened,” Pollack said.

The panel held its first meeting on Tuesday on the Broward College North Campus in Coconut Creek. The commission will issue one or more reports detailing the failures and recommending improvements by Jan. 1.

Investigators revealed Tuesday that Cruz researched the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School — which killed 13 victims in Colorado— while the 19-year-old former student planned his own attack in Parkland.

“He mapped it out, he had been planning this for a while,” said Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, the commission’s chairman.

The Cruz “dot” is portrayed entering the building and going into a stairwell on the first floor where authorities said he removed his legally-bought AR-15 rifle from a “rifle case” and loaded it.

The shooter then emerged from the stairwell and shot victims in the first-floor hallway and classrooms. He never entered any of the classrooms, investigators said, but shot through doors and small windows in those doors.

What floor people were on played a major role in whether they lived or died.

All of the victims were shot on the first and third floors — and nobody on the second floor was hit, officials told the commission.

Gualtieri said it appears victims on the first floor had no warning, but victims on the second floor probably heard the shots fired below and they reacted by taking cover and hiding as recommended during “Code Red” active shooter incidents.

Investigators said they believe that victims on the third floor were left more vulnerable because the smoke generated by the shots fired on the first floor had set off the building’s fire alarm. The people on the third floor probably did not hear the shots and reacted as they were trained to do during a fire drill. They started to evacuate from their classrooms, leaving many of them in the hallways or unable to hide effectively in the classrooms, Gualtieri said.

The animated video was shown during a briefing on the criminal investigation by Col. Jack Dale and homicide detective Zack Scott, of the Broward Sheriff’s Office.

"The presentation reminded me of a video game — 'How many kills can I get?' " said Okaloosa County Sheriff Larry Ashley, another member of the panel.

After shooting several people on the third floor, Cruz spent about 2 ½ minutes in a deserted teachers’ lounge that offered a clear view of much of the campus, Detective Scott told the panel.

Cruz had brought a bipod — like a tripod to rest the gun on — with him and apparently reloaded his gun, investigators said. He fired a number of rounds from inside the lounge but hurricane impact-resistant glass in the windows blocked those rounds from hitting fleeing students and others below, they said.

After a while, and for reasons detectives did not reveal, Cruz left the lounge and walked to a nearby stairwell where he abandoned his gun. He then ran from the building and blended in with students who were fleeing the campus. Cruz was arrested a short time later, walking on a local street, after he visited a Walmart and McDonald’s.

Source

Parkland 911 call: "If he shoots, play dead"

As the Parkland students hid from the shooter these are the text messages they sent

See the videos students took during the Florida school shooting

February 9: Nashville

A high school student was shot five times in the parking lot of Pearl-Cohn High School.

February 5: Oxon Hill, Maryland

A high school student was shot in the parking lot of Oxon Hill High. The victim was treated and later released. Police arrested two teens and said they are acquaintances of the victim.

February 1: Los Angeles

A 15-year-old boy was shot in the head and a 15-year-old girl shot in the wrist at Sal Castro Middle School in Los Angeles, officials said. Two other students were grazed by bullets. A 12-year-old girl was booked for negligent discharge of a firearm in that shooting, which was considered "unintentional," Los Angeles police said.

January 31: Philadelphia

A fight led to a shooting in the parking lot of Lincoln High School, fatally wounding a 32-year-old man.

January 23: Benton, Kentucky

A 15-year-old student shot 16 people -- killing two other 15-year-olds -- at Marshall County High School, authorities said. The student faces two charges of murder and 12 counts of first degree assault.

ABC News - 2 dead, 18 wounded