A student describes the terror she experienced at a Virginia school where police say a 6-year-old shot a teacher

Defendants in a Uvalde, Texas School Shooting: Daniel Defense, Firequest International, Inc., and a Californian Gun Manufacturer

Parents of survivors of the Robb Elementary School massacre in Uvalde, Texas, have filed a federal lawsuit against multiple entities – including the gun manufacturer, school district and city – for a host of allegations, including negligence and recklessness.

Nineteen children and two teachers were killed in the May 24 shooting after an 18-year-old gunman walked into Robb Elementary and began firing into classrooms.

Daniel Defense chose not to evaluate the effects of their marketing strategies on the health and well being of Americans and chose not to look at the cost to families and communities like Uvalde, Texas according to the complaint.

Days before the shooting, the complaint notes, the Georgia-based company tweeted an image of a toddler holding an assault-style weapon with the caption: “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

The claim also states that Firequest International, Inc. sells its products to untrained civilians, young adults and adolescents in Uvalde. These types of devices allow semi-automatic rifles to fire more rapidly than automatic weapons.

“The Uvalde school shooter’s background check was clean, and Oasis Outback sold him the guns and ammunition knowing he was suspicious and likely dangerous,” according to the legal document. “The store owner and his staff did not act on their suspicions and block the purchases or notify law enforcement.”

The statement from the office said that Devlin got the gun through a straw purchase by a Norristown man. Straw purchases occur when someone buys a gun for another person who is legally ineligible to buy one.

Uvalde Police, Motorola Solutions, Inc., and Schneider Electric, have allegedly failed to act in the ‘Narco’-Independent School District

The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, including the police chief at the time, and a former principal, failed to act and created a dangerous environment for the people who sued, according to the lawsuit. Gutierrez’s attorney told CNN his client will not be commenting on the pending litigation.

“While Uvalde PD did make an early attempt to breach the classroom, they retreated and never tried again. The scene remained ‘active’ and active shooter protocol required Uvalde PD to pursue the primary goal of stopping the killing and gunman no matter how many times it takes,” said the claim.

The acting police chief and two companies were faulted in the suit because of their defects in their products, which were blamed for the shooting. Motorola Solutions, Inc.’s radio communications devices, which were used by some first responders, “were defective and unreasonably dangerous because they did not contain adequate warnings or instructions concerning failure during normal use,” said the claim.

Lawyers also say Schneider Electric, the manufacturer of the door locking mechanisms used at the school, “failed to lock as designed after being shut.”

It was a tragedy that we condemn in the strongest terms, said a Schneider Electric spokesman. “We are reviewing this recent filing but cannot comment further on pending litigation.”

Daniel Defense, Oasis Outback, the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, FireQuest International, Motorola Solutions, Inc., Pargas and Arredondo have all not responded to CNN request for comment.

The Shooting of Four Students and Seven More at a High School: A Teen Who Shot and Shooted Three Students in a Michigan School

A previous version of the story did not include a person’s name. The person is not a party and the name has been removed.

A teenager accused of killing four students and wounding seven others at a Michigan high school last year is expected to plead guilty to murder charges Monday, prosecutors said.

During the teenager’s arraigned, prosecutors described how he walked the hallways, aiming a gun at students and firing it at close range after emerging from a school restroom holding a gun.

The parents of a teenager who died in a shooting were accused by prosecutors of allowing their son easy access to a gun and ignoring signs that he was a threat.

The parents have pleaded not guilty, and their attorneys have argued in court documents the charges have no legal justification and the couple should not be held responsible for the killings their son is accused of committing.

The trial was supposed to start on Monday but was recently delayed to January. Meanwhile, Jennifer and James Crumbley remain in custody at a county jail.

Kevin R. Steele, the District Attorney of Montgomery County Pennsylvania, said the incident was a frightening reminder that children can and do find firearms at home. Thankfully, these young boys were not shot or injured in their home, and no one was shot or injured at school thanks to the quick action by school personnel.”

Four students were killed that day. Madisyn Baldwin, 17; Tate Myre, 16; Hana St. Juliana, 14; and Justin Shilling, 17. Six students and a teacher were injured.

Shooting a 19-year-old student at a St. Louis school and killing a four-student student at its former high school

The St. Louis school district added gun safety to its curriculum in October of last year after police said a 19-year-old shot two students to death at his former high school.

Authorities credited locked doors and a quick police response – including by off-duty officers – for preventing more killings at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School.

The police Commissioner said that this could have been much worse. The individual had a lot of high capacity magazines on him. That’s a whole lot of victims there.”

Alexandria was looking forward to her Sweet 16, her father told CNN affiliate KSDK. Her daughter told CNN that her mother was looking forward to retiring in a few years.

Sack said the man died after a gunfight with officers. He was identified as Orlando Harris, who graduated from the school last year.

A prosecutor in Michigan said she was no longer surprised to hear of a school shooting after she heard the guilty plea of a teen who killed four students last fall. “The fact that there is another school shooting does not surprise me – which is horrific,” Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald said.

We should inform the public of how we can prevent gun violence. It is preventable, and we should never allow that to happen to us.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/25/us/st-louis-school-shooting-tuesday/index.html

Jean Kuczka and her friend dejah Robinson: a friend of the high school basketball player and a mentor to every student

Alexandria was friendly, liked to dance and was a member of the high school dance team, according to her father.

Her friend Dejah Robinson said the two were planning to celebrate Halloween together this weekend. Robinson was fighting back tears after she said that she was always funny and kept the smile on her face.

Jean Kuczka’s impact on her students has been remembered by many Alumni, one of which is Alexis Allen-Brown. “She was kindhearted. She was sweet. She always made you laugh even when you wasn’t trying to laugh,” Allen-Brown said.

Kuczka claimed in her biography she had been at the school since 2008. I believe that every child deserves a chance to learn, she wrote.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/25/us/st-louis-school-shooting-tuesday/index.html

What happened after a shooter killed 12 students at a KSDK elementary school: Officers and SWAT team members rushed out of the building

Seven other teens were taken to the hospital with injuries. One had a broken ankle. The police commissioner said that they were in stable conditions.

The commissioner said there was no mystery about what was going to happen when he entered. “He had it out and entered in an aggressive, violent manner.”

Adrianne Bolden, a freshman at the school, told KSDK that students thought it was a drill until they heard the sirens and saw their teachers were scared.

Adrianne told KSDK that the class stayed put because the assistant principal came up to one of the locked windows. “We opened it, the teacher said to come on, and we all had to jump out the window,” Bolden recalled.

Math teacher David Williams told CNN everyone went into “drill mode,” turning off lights, locking doors and huddling in corners so they couldn’t be seen.

Sack said that the eight minutes between officers arriving and making contact with the shooter was not long and that officers had to maneuver through a large school with few entrances and crowd of students and staff who were evacuated.

When phone calls came in from hiding people, officers fanned out to look for students and staff to escort them from the building.

A SWAT team that was together for a training exercise was also able to quickly load up and get to the school to perform a secondary sweep of the building, Sack said.

School Shootings Warning Signs Red Flags x Pn: Where Do We Go From Here? What Can We Expect to Learn from the Results?

But “the general public, they really don’t know what to look for,” said former FBI special agent and profiler Mary Ellen O’Toole, who has studied school shootings for more than 20 years.

The key is to notice any drastic changes in behavior, said the past president of the National Association of School Psychologists.

For some, it’s increased outward behavior. “So we will see an escalation in grievances. Possibly in anger, an escalation, if that is what it is. We will see an escalation in difficulty managing their emotions,” Reeves said.

Some of the changes are still significant, but may be coming to an end. “They’re no longer interacting with groups of friends. They are spending more time on the internet.

To the point when the English teacher knows about it, their friends at the lunch table know about it, leakage can also involve a fixation on previous mass shootings.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/26/us/school-shootings-warning-signs-red-flags-xpn/index.html

A State-of-the-Art School Security Threat Assessment Team and the Public Safety of High-School Students, as Observed by a Suspect on Social Media

They are done usually because the person is excited about what they will do. Some people say it’s a cry for help … if they’re discovered beforehand, then they could be used for that purpose,” O’Toole said.

They plan it, for people bent on violence. They think about it. They fantasize about it, as if it were real. They prepare for it. And all of that period of time in which that is done, that’s very pleasant for them. They like it.

In the week before the Oxford, Michigan school shooting, the 15-year-old suspect posted a picture of a gun with the caption: “My new beauty today.” Karen McDonald is the prosecutor for Oakland County.

That post isn’t necessarily a cause for alarm. In Michigan, residents under age 18 can possess a gun under certain circumstances.

A teacher found a drawing of the suspect depicting violence and phrases such as “the thoughts won’t stop help me” and “blood everywhere” on the morning of the shooting.

While a troubling social media post or a disturbing comment in class might not indicate any threat, it’s still worth telling a teacher or school official because others might have additional concerns, O’Toole said.

It is important for students to be given information on the red-flag behaviors and be able to call in on a confidential line.

She said that they strive for prevention because they know what warning behaviors are and how to use appropriate intervention in an objective and compassionate way.

Regardless of how students report concerns, those messages should be actively monitored, and the information should go to a school threat assessment team, according to best practice recommendations from the US Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center and US Department of Education.

The core team should include an administrator, at least one mental health professional (school psychologist, school counselor and school social worker), and a school resource officer/law enforcement.

When we’re doing a threat assessment, we can find out about abuse going on in the home. Or that one parent just got arrested for domestic violence and they’re sitting in jail. The one grandma that they loved the most lost her battle with cancer. Now they feel that they have nobody,” Reeves said.

“If an individual makes a threat but it is found to be not true, low level, or transient, then law enforcement will not likely need to be directly involved. School personnel can work with the student and parents by implementing a problem solving and/or conflict resolution process,” Reeves and her colleagues wrote.

If the threat is legitimate and the necessary actions need to be taken, then an officer of the law may become engaged in a consultative role. … Reports involving weapons, threats of violence, and physical violence should immediately be reported to local law enforcement.”

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/26/us/school-shootings-warning-signs-red-flags-xpn/index.html

What a student in St. Louis Public Schools told CNN, “I heard a video game filmed in a school hallway”, CNN analyst Elie Honig

The student had been removed from the class and was taken to the guidance counselors office, where he told the counselor that he was making a video game.

“It’s a very low bar for a school to search a backpack or a locker,” CNN Senior Legal Analyst Elie Honig said. It is reasonable suspicion from the Supreme Court.

“Self-reported information is some of the least reliable information that you can have. So you need to find other sources to corroborate what this person is telling you,” the former FBI special agent said.

“So you would certainly want to look for anything else that might suggest that this person is experiencing violent ideation of some kind,” she said. That means talking to the parents, teachers and even law enforcement to see if there have been any reports of incidents at the home.

The team of school psychologists wrote that these types of consequences should always be accompanied by supportive interventions.

Keeping a student of concern supervised at school also means that they have less time to conduct research and plan how to carry out the act of violence.

“We need parents to be more aware of what is happening in their child’s life and what they may have in their possession. We need students and school staff to report but we also need parents to reach out to their child when they are struggling and we need more engagement from parents at home.

The Saint Louis Public Schools superintendent wants all students to read and write, and to be careful with their guns.

The totality of all those behaviors is what it is. So one person may know about leakage. One person may know, ‘Yeah, I heard that he has access to a gun.’” Another person may have a different concern about the same student.

Reeves said students are often in the best position to notice red flags – whether those clues are on social media, in the classroom or outside of school.

A school student, a student, and a teacher: The case of Novah Jones, the student who killed a sixth grade student in a school shooting

On the day of the shooting, another teacher overheard Zwerner say the 6-year-old student was in a “violent mood,” had threatened to beat up a kindergartner at the school and “angrily stared down the security officer,” according to the legal notice.

Novah Jones, a fifth grade student who was located in a different classroom, said they were doing math when an announcement came on saying “lockdown, I repeat lock down.” I didn’t know what to do when it happened, so I hid under my desk.

The Newport News Police Department reported by Saturday that the teacher hurt in the shooting was listed in stable condition.

James Madison University named the teacher that they said was Zwerner, even though authorities and the public school district didn’t.

The 6-year-old boy was taken into police custody and the police chief said that the shooting was not accidental.

Drew said that there was an altercation between a teacher and a student who had a gun. No other students were involved in the firing of a single round.

The school returned with additional security measures, including metal detectors and clear backpacks, after the shooting.

Novah had trouble sleeping that night as she was worried that the man still had the gun and would come to her house.

Novah is one of numerous children to grapple with the trauma of a shooting at school. Shootings in US schools, while still rare when compared with other incidents of gun violence, have become far more common than they are in any other country. In 2022, there were at least 60 shootings at K-12 schools, according to a CNN analysis.

Richneck Elementary has been closed since the shooting, and some parents have expressed their concern ahead of classes resuming. The father of the student accused in the shooting said his son is in the same class as the accused and was distraught after the shooting.

“It is almost impossible to wrap our minds around the fact that a 6 year old 1st grader brought a loaded handgun to school and shot a teacher; however, this is exactly what our community is grappling with today,” Newport News Mayor Phillip D. Jones said in a statement posted on Twitter.

Authorities are “working diligently to get an answer to the question we are all asking – how did this happen? Jones said that the child will get the supports and services he needs as they continue to process what took place.

The First Day of School Instruction at Richneck, Missouri, Following the Decay of a First Grade Student, Dr. George Parker III

The response from the district was swift, with the school board voting to oust Superintendent Dr. George Parker III. The district did not give a location for Briana FosterNewton, who was reassigned to another location.

The school and district leadership have come under fire in the last few weeks after a first grade student shot and seriously injured a teacher in a Richneck classroom on January 6.

Parker resigned on January 25, nearly three weeks after the shooting and one day after the legal notice was sent to the school board. CNN reached out to Parker for comment on Tuesday but did not immediately receive a response.

Karen Lynch will serve as an administrator on a special assignment.

Police Chief Steve Drew said that there have been no School Resource Officers assigned to Richneck. The district tells CNN that doors in classroom areas have been repaired or replaced.

Following the announcement of her appointment Sunday, administrator Lynch sent an email to students’ families highlighting new protocols for the first day of full instruction.

Lynch encouraged families to send their children to school with a normal mode of transportation, and asked that they not bring a book bag because the school will provide clear bags for use on Monday.

The school will be limiting visitors in the school leading during this first week of instruction to allow “staff the opportunity to establish routines and procedures with students,” according to the email. Parents are not allowed to enter classrooms and those who chose to walk their children to class must show identification and are also subject to search, it added.

The shooting of a 6-year-old boy at an elementary school: Garcia’s emotional support message to the teachers in Virginia is Horrifying

The school shared an Amazon Wish List of emotional support items that the teachers requested for their students in a post on the school’s Facebook account Sunday evening.

“This is a scary situation, my son is still scared,” Garcia told CNN. He wants to go back to school, but he wants to know that he’s going to be safe.

The school’s alleged failure to act is “horrifying,” Garcia said, adding, “The people who know about this failed us and they failed the security measures of everyone that’s inside of that school.”

Zwerner was critically injured when a bullet passed through one of her hands and struck her chest, police have said. The teacher has since been released from hospital.

Police were alerted to the gun on campus after a group of students on a school bus with the 6-year-old that morning told the school’s secretary he showed them the weapon and bullets.

On January 19, the family said the boy has an “acute disability” and was receiving care at the school. A family member usually went to class with him, but not the week of the shooting, they said.

If an adult leaves a gun in such a way that it could endanger a child under 14 years of age, it is a felony in Virginia. It is not allowed for a person to allow a child under the age of 12 to use a firearm.

A Six-Year-Old High School Student had a Gun and Left a Shot in the Footsteps of an Elementary School

The allegations were detailed in a January 24 legal notice by attorney Diane Toscano, who sent the letter to the Newport News School Board to inform officials of a lawsuit her client, teacher Abigail Zwerner, plans to file against administrators at Richneck Elementary School.

The child had warning signs of violence, according to examples described in the legal notice. The student’s family said previously the child has a disability.

CNN obtained the legal notice from the Newport News School District. The document was given to CNN by the district.

The school district told CNN that it couldn’t comment on the matter because there was an ongoing investigation.

A woman in Pennsylvania and a man in North Carolina were charged this week after a six-year-old in each case brought a gun to school, officials said, marking at least three times an elementary school student has brought a weapon to campus this year, including when a six-year-old allegedly shot his teacher in Newport News, Virginia, last month.

The mother was arrested in Pennsylvania for allowing her son to bring a gun to school.

The Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office said that Jasmin Devlin turned herself in Tuesday and was charged with endangering the welfare of a child and reckless endangering for not securing a gun in her home. It’s unclear if he has an attorney.

The police believe the boy found a gun. Arms semi-automatic handgun – in a dresser in his mother’s room the night before bringing it to school, prosecutors said. The news release stated that his brother took out the bullets from the gun and pointed it at his brother, pretending to shoot him. The 6-year-old told detectives he returned to his mother’s room in the middle of the night, put the firearm in his backpack and took it to school, according to the release.

“I would like to commend the children who notified school officials immediately, thus preventing another tragedy at a school,” Norristown Acting Police Chief Michael Bishop said in the news release. The children were the true heroes in this unfortunate incident. Their notification to school officials resulted in an immediate response by Norristown Police, ensuring the safety of everyone at the school.”

Marvin Ray Davis, 58, charged with a violation of the gun safety act in Nash County, North Carolina, is not related to a child

Devlin’s bond was set at $50,000 and she’s been ordered to not have contact with children as part of her bond conditions. A preliminary hearing in the case is set for February 24.

In North Carolina, Marvin Ray Davis, 58, was arrested and charged with a violation of the gun safety act after a gun was found in a child’s backpack at a school.

Davis is not related to the child but did live in the same home, a department spokesperson told CNN. He was issued a $4,000 bond and is scheduled to appear in Rocky Mount Court on March 1, the release said.

CNN has tried to contact Davis, but it is not clear if he has an attorney. CNN has reached out to Nash County Public Schools.

The situation should remind gun owners to secure their weapons in a safe manner so that children cannot possess them, according to the police chief. He pointed out that the situation was preventable.