(Trends Wide) — The 19-year-old gunman who killed two people and wounded several more at his former high school left behind a note saying his problems led him into “the perfect storm for a mass shooter,” St. Louis.
Orlando Harris graduated from Central Visual and Performing Arts High School last year and returned Monday with an AR-15-style rifle, more than 600 cartridges and more than a dozen high-capacity magazines, Saint Louis Police Sheriff said. Louis, Michael Sack.
Harris died at a hospital after a shootout with officers.
Investigators found a handwritten note in the car Harris drove to school. Sack detailed some of the passages:
“I have no friends. I have no family. I have never had a girlfriend. I have never had a social life. I have been an isolated loner all my life,” the note read, according to Sack. “This was the perfect storm for a mass shooter.”
Given the attacker’s extensive arsenal, the tragedy could have been “much worse,” the police chief said.
Authorities credited the locked doors and quick response from law enforcement, including off-duty officers, with preventing more deaths at the school.
But the attacker did not enter through a checkpoint where security guards were stationed, said DeAndre Davis, director of security for Saint Louis Public Schools.
Davis also said security guards at district schools are not armed, but officers responding to calls at schools are.
“For some people that would cause some kind of stir,” Davis said Tuesday. “For us, we think it’s better for our officers, for the normality of the school for the children, not to have armed officers in the school.”
A heroine teacher and a teenage dancer about to turn 16
Monument in honor of Alexandria Bell, who was murdered weeks before her 16th birthday. Credit: Trends Wide
Professor Jean Kuczka and 15-year-old Alexandria Bell were killed in the shooting.
One of Kuczka’s colleagues, Kristie Faulstich, said the slain teacher died protecting her students.
During the rush to evacuate students from the school, “one student looked at me and said, ‘Mrs. Kuczka was shot.’ And then she said that Ms. Kuczka had gotten between the attacker and the students,” Faulstich said. .
Alexandria, 15, was looking forward to traveling to Los Angeles to celebrate her 16th birthday, her father Andre Bell told Trends Wide affiliate KSDK.
“It’s a nightmare,” he said. “I’m very upset. I need someone, the police, people in the community, whoever, to make sense of this.”
Bell’s father joins the growing list of parents facing the reality of their son being murdered at school.
Across the country there have been at least 67 school shootings so far this year.
As the St. Louis shooting unfolded, a Michigan prosecutor who just heard the guilty plea of a teenager who killed four students last fall said she was no longer shocked to hear of another school shooting.
“The fact that there’s another school shooting doesn’t surprise me, which is horrifying,” Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald said.
“We have to keep the public and educate the public … about how we can prevent gun violence. It’s preventable, and we should never allow it to be something we have to live with.”
How did that man get into the school?
Students mourn near the Central Visual and Performing Arts High School, where two people were killed. Credit: David Carson/AP
Bell, the father of the teenager who lost her life, said he is struggling to get answers about what happened.
“I really want to know: How did that man get into the school?” she told KSDK.
Authorities have said the gates were locked. But the Saint Louis police commissioner declined to detail how the attacker got in.
“I don’t want to make this easy for anyone else,” Sack said.
The attacker did not conceal his weapon upon entering the school, Sack said.
“When he came in, he was out … there was no mystery about what was going to happen,” the commissioner said. “He had her out and she came in aggressively and violently.”
“Miles Davis is in the building”
Faulstich said the school principal announced the code phrase “Miles Davis is in the building” over the intercom to let faculty know there was a gunman in the building.
“Instantly, but calmly, I went to close my door and turn off the lights,” the teacher said. “Then I told my students to stand in the corner.”
A minute after he closed the door to his second-floor classroom, Faulstich said, someone began “push violently on the doorknob, trying to get in.”
“I absolutely commend my students for their response,” Faulstich said. “Even when they were hearing the gunshots around them they kept quiet and I know they did it to keep themselves safe.”
Freshman Adrianne Bolden told KSDK that the students thought the school was having a drill, until they heard the sirens and noticed that their teachers were scared.
“The teacher crawled over and asked us to help her move the cabinets against the door so she couldn’t get in,” Bolden said. “And we started hearing glass breaking and gunshots outside.”
Sophomore Brian Collins, 15, suffered gunshot wounds to his hands and jaw. He escaped by jumping from a classroom window onto a ledge, said his mother, VonDina Washington.
“He told me they heard an active shooter call on the intercom, so everyone in the class hid,” Washington said. According to his son, the attacker entered the classroom and fired several shots before leaving.
As he left the third-floor classroom, Washington said another student opened a classroom window and some of those who were there jumped out.
Brian has numbness in his hands and trouble moving some of the fingers on his right hand.
“He’s very good at drawing,” Washington said. “He went to CVPA for visual arts, and we hope he can draw again.”
Math teacher David Williams told Trends Wide that everyone went into “instructional mode” — turning off the lights, closing the doors and huddling in the corners so as not to be seen.
He said he heard someone trying to open the door and yelling, “Everyone is going to die.”
A short time later, a bullet went through one of his classroom windows, Williams said. The classroom is located on the third floor, where Sack said police confronted the shooter.
Officers arrived about 4 minutes after the shooting began.
Security personnel were at the school when the shooter arrived, St. Louis Public Schools director of communications George Sells said.
“We had seven security personnel working the building who did a wonderful job of getting the alarm going off quickly,” Sells said.
The commissioner said the fact that the school gates were locked probably delayed the shooter.
“The school was closed and the gates were locked,” Sack told Trends Wide affiliate KMOV. “The security staff did an outstanding job of identifying the suspect’s attempts to enter and immediately notifying other staff members and ensuring they contacted us.”
After widespread controversy over the late response by security personnel at schools in Uvalde, Texas, and Parkland, Florida, Sack said responding officers in St. Louis wasted no time entering the school and stopping to the attacker.
“There was no discussion,” Sack said. “There was no, ‘Hey, where are you going?’ They just walked in.”
The call about an active shooter at the high school came in around 9:11 a.m., according to a timeline provided by the commissioner. Police arrived at the scene and made entry four minutes later.
The agents found the attacker and began shooting to arrest him at 9:23 am Two minutes later they reported that the suspect had been killed.
Asked about the eight minutes between officers arriving and contact with the attacker, Sack said “eight minutes is not a long time” and that officers had to maneuver through a large school with few entrances and crowds of students and personnel who were in the midst of the evacuation.
Police found the suspect “not just listening to the gunshots, but talking to the kids and the teachers as they left,” Sack said.
As phone calls poured in from people hiding in different locations, officers fanned out as they scooped out students and staff to evacuate.
Police officers who were at a church down the street at a co-worker’s funeral also responded to the shooting, the commissioner said.
A SWAT team assembled for training also rushed to the school to conduct a secondary sweep of the building, Sack said.
Some agents were “off duty; some were in T-shirts, but they had their (bulletproof) vests on,” the commissioner said. “They did an excellent job.”
(Trends Wide) — The 19-year-old gunman who killed two people and wounded several more at his former high school left behind a note saying his problems led him into “the perfect storm for a mass shooter,” St. Louis.
Orlando Harris graduated from Central Visual and Performing Arts High School last year and returned Monday with an AR-15-style rifle, more than 600 cartridges and more than a dozen high-capacity magazines, Saint Louis Police Sheriff said. Louis, Michael Sack.
Harris died at a hospital after a shootout with officers.
Investigators found a handwritten note in the car Harris drove to school. Sack detailed some of the passages:
“I have no friends. I have no family. I have never had a girlfriend. I have never had a social life. I have been an isolated loner all my life,” the note read, according to Sack. “This was the perfect storm for a mass shooter.”
Given the attacker’s extensive arsenal, the tragedy could have been “much worse,” the police chief said.
Authorities credited the locked doors and quick response from law enforcement, including off-duty officers, with preventing more deaths at the school.
But the attacker did not enter through a checkpoint where security guards were stationed, said DeAndre Davis, director of security for Saint Louis Public Schools.
Davis also said security guards at district schools are not armed, but officers responding to calls at schools are.
“For some people that would cause some kind of stir,” Davis said Tuesday. “For us, we think it’s better for our officers, for the normality of the school for the children, not to have armed officers in the school.”
A heroine teacher and a teenage dancer about to turn 16
Monument in honor of Alexandria Bell, who was murdered weeks before her 16th birthday. Credit: Trends Wide
Professor Jean Kuczka and 15-year-old Alexandria Bell were killed in the shooting.
One of Kuczka’s colleagues, Kristie Faulstich, said the slain teacher died protecting her students.
During the rush to evacuate students from the school, “one student looked at me and said, ‘Mrs. Kuczka was shot.’ And then she said that Ms. Kuczka had gotten between the attacker and the students,” Faulstich said. .
Alexandria, 15, was looking forward to traveling to Los Angeles to celebrate her 16th birthday, her father Andre Bell told Trends Wide affiliate KSDK.
“It’s a nightmare,” he said. “I’m very upset. I need someone, the police, people in the community, whoever, to make sense of this.”
Bell’s father joins the growing list of parents facing the reality of their son being murdered at school.
Across the country there have been at least 67 school shootings so far this year.
As the St. Louis shooting unfolded, a Michigan prosecutor who just heard the guilty plea of a teenager who killed four students last fall said she was no longer shocked to hear of another school shooting.
“The fact that there’s another school shooting doesn’t surprise me, which is horrifying,” Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald said.
“We have to keep the public and educate the public … about how we can prevent gun violence. It’s preventable, and we should never allow it to be something we have to live with.”
How did that man get into the school?
Students mourn near the Central Visual and Performing Arts High School, where two people were killed. Credit: David Carson/AP
Bell, the father of the teenager who lost her life, said he is struggling to get answers about what happened.
“I really want to know: How did that man get into the school?” she told KSDK.
Authorities have said the gates were locked. But the Saint Louis police commissioner declined to detail how the attacker got in.
“I don’t want to make this easy for anyone else,” Sack said.
The attacker did not conceal his weapon upon entering the school, Sack said.
“When he came in, he was out … there was no mystery about what was going to happen,” the commissioner said. “He had her out and she came in aggressively and violently.”
“Miles Davis is in the building”
Faulstich said the school principal announced the code phrase “Miles Davis is in the building” over the intercom to let faculty know there was a gunman in the building.
“Instantly, but calmly, I went to close my door and turn off the lights,” the teacher said. “Then I told my students to stand in the corner.”
A minute after he closed the door to his second-floor classroom, Faulstich said, someone began “push violently on the doorknob, trying to get in.”
“I absolutely commend my students for their response,” Faulstich said. “Even when they were hearing the gunshots around them they kept quiet and I know they did it to keep themselves safe.”
Freshman Adrianne Bolden told KSDK that the students thought the school was having a drill, until they heard the sirens and noticed that their teachers were scared.
“The teacher crawled over and asked us to help her move the cabinets against the door so she couldn’t get in,” Bolden said. “And we started hearing glass breaking and gunshots outside.”
Sophomore Brian Collins, 15, suffered gunshot wounds to his hands and jaw. He escaped by jumping from a classroom window onto a ledge, said his mother, VonDina Washington.
“He told me they heard an active shooter call on the intercom, so everyone in the class hid,” Washington said. According to his son, the attacker entered the classroom and fired several shots before leaving.
As he left the third-floor classroom, Washington said another student opened a classroom window and some of those who were there jumped out.
Brian has numbness in his hands and trouble moving some of the fingers on his right hand.
“He’s very good at drawing,” Washington said. “He went to CVPA for visual arts, and we hope he can draw again.”
Math teacher David Williams told Trends Wide that everyone went into “instructional mode” — turning off the lights, closing the doors and huddling in the corners so as not to be seen.
He said he heard someone trying to open the door and yelling, “Everyone is going to die.”
A short time later, a bullet went through one of his classroom windows, Williams said. The classroom is located on the third floor, where Sack said police confronted the shooter.
Officers arrived about 4 minutes after the shooting began.
Security personnel were at the school when the shooter arrived, St. Louis Public Schools director of communications George Sells said.
“We had seven security personnel working the building who did a wonderful job of getting the alarm going off quickly,” Sells said.
The commissioner said the fact that the school gates were locked probably delayed the shooter.
“The school was closed and the gates were locked,” Sack told Trends Wide affiliate KMOV. “The security staff did an outstanding job of identifying the suspect’s attempts to enter and immediately notifying other staff members and ensuring they contacted us.”
After widespread controversy over the late response by security personnel at schools in Uvalde, Texas, and Parkland, Florida, Sack said responding officers in St. Louis wasted no time entering the school and stopping to the attacker.
“There was no discussion,” Sack said. “There was no, ‘Hey, where are you going?’ They just walked in.”
The call about an active shooter at the high school came in around 9:11 a.m., according to a timeline provided by the commissioner. Police arrived at the scene and made entry four minutes later.
The agents found the attacker and began shooting to arrest him at 9:23 am Two minutes later they reported that the suspect had been killed.
Asked about the eight minutes between officers arriving and contact with the attacker, Sack said “eight minutes is not a long time” and that officers had to maneuver through a large school with few entrances and crowds of students and personnel who were in the midst of the evacuation.
Police found the suspect “not just listening to the gunshots, but talking to the kids and the teachers as they left,” Sack said.
As phone calls poured in from people hiding in different locations, officers fanned out as they scooped out students and staff to evacuate.
Police officers who were at a church down the street at a co-worker’s funeral also responded to the shooting, the commissioner said.
A SWAT team assembled for training also rushed to the school to conduct a secondary sweep of the building, Sack said.
Some agents were “off duty; some were in T-shirts, but they had their (bulletproof) vests on,” the commissioner said. “They did an excellent job.”
