Bloody Monday at a Missouri School

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Despite the school building being totally locked down and seven security guards on duty inside, a young gunman still managed to gain entry to the Central Visual and Performing Arts High School in St. Louis yesterday morning around 9:00 a.m.    The shooter, 19-year-old Orlando Harris, was a recent graduate of the school.   He entered the building with what news sources are describing as a "long gun" and  twelve 30-round ammunition magazines and opened fire.  Two people, a 16-year-old girl and a 61-year-old female teacher were killed, and seven students were injured.

Central Visual and Performing Arts High School is part of the St. Louis (Missouri) School District.  The building itself is the oldest public high school west of the Mississippi River.

Reports indicate that security personnel inside of the school were able to immediately get the school into drill mode with classroom doors locked, lights out, and teachers and students hiding in the darker corners of their room out of view of the shooter.  Security also immediately notified local police who arrived within minutes.

One teacher at the school reported hearing shots and then the shooter yelling "You all are going to fucking die!"  That teacher, whose classroom was on the third floor, said that the shooter shot out window in the door to his classroom, but was unable to get into the room.  The young man with the gun did gain entry into the classroom of another teacher, Jean Kuczka, and the 61-year-old veteran teacher got between him and her students and was shot and killed as she sought to protect the young people in her care.

The armed gunman was shot on the third floor by members of the responding St. Louis Police Department.  He died later in a local hospital.

A 16-year-old girl told the press that at one point she was face-to-face with the shooter looking him in the eyes, but as he tried to shoot her his gun apparently jammed and she was able to run away.

The name of the student who died in the assault is currently being withheld.

St. Louis Public Schools kept all of their schools in lockdown mode yesterday, and all evening events, including sports, were cancelled.

"National Education Week" magazine reports that the yesterday's shooting at the St. Louis high school was the fortieth school shooting in the United States this year in which there were casualties.  Unfortunately it is also another in an endless string of school shootings in which no substantive action will be undertaken to address the root cause of the problem:  easy access to guns.

Next week, or the week after, there will be another deadly school shooting in the United States of America and more young people and their teachers will die, or be wounded, or suffer deep and lasting psychological trauma because of politicians who are too greedy and weak to protect them.  

Most of the world chooses not to live this way, but in the United States our children are expendable.

Shame on us!