Active shooter situations:
Following the Columbine High School Massacre in 1999, active shooter guidelines were adopted to allow for better reactions to school shootings. The guidelines include tips for those involved in the situation, including:
-Be aware of the environment
-Find two possible exits from the area
-If a safe escape from the area is possible, take it
-If in an office, stay in it, close and secure the door
-If in a hallway, find a room and secure the door
-If hiding, turn off cellphones or anything else that could alert the shooter to your location
-Attempt to physically take down the shooter only as a last resort
-Do not interfere with police
Source: U.S. Department of Homeland Security
A 12-year-old attacked fellow students at a New Mexico school Tuesday, putting two in the hospital.
Police said Wednesday the student planned the shooting and warned certain students just before opening fire.
The shooting was stopped when a teacher at the school convinced the student to put the gun down.
ROSWELL, N.M. — The 12-year-old boy who opened fire in a U.S. school gym warned some students away just before the attack, police said Wednesday.
New Mexico State Police Chief Pete Kassetas said the attack at Berrendo Middle School in Roswell was planned in advance. But he said it appeared the boy’s victims — an 11-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl — were chosen randomly.
During a press briefing, Kassetas declined to speculate on a motive or say when charges would be filed. But he said the boy got the shotgun from his family’s home and had three rounds of ammunition.
Officials said Wednesday the 11-year-old boy who was shot in the face and neck remains in critical condition. The 13-year-old girl is in satisfactory condition with injuries to the right shoulder.
Kassetas said investigators worked through the night executing search warrants at the school, and determined from those searches that the attack was planned. They examined the boy’s locker and the duffel bag the seventh-grader used to transport the 20-gauge pump shotgun to school.
Kassetas said the handle of the gun was sawed off so it had “more of a pistol grip.”
The police chief added authorities had some indication that the boy verbally warned “select students” about the attack as he arrived at the school. He didn’t elaborate.
When the shots first rang out in the school’s gym, some students started laughing, assuming it was just another drill.
It wasn’t. But those emergency exercises that students and teachers have undergone regularly for the past two years were being credited Wednesday with the quick disarming of the suspect.
The whole thing was over in 10 seconds, police say, thanks to John Masterson, a social studies teacher who stepped in and talked the boy into dropping his weapon. Masterson then held the boy until authorities arrived.
Police and schools across the U.S. adopted “active shooter” policies after two students in Colorado killed 12 classmates and a teacher at Columbine High School in 1999. Police waited 45 minutes for a SWAT team to arrive before entering the school. Officers now are trained to confront a shooter immediately.
The suspected shooter was transferred to an Albuquerque psychiatric hospital following a hearing Tuesday, according to attorney Robert Gorence, who is representing his family. Gorence said the family would release a statement Wednesday.
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