A Call-by-Name Call from Tom Gomez at Springfield High School During the September 13 – 30 Insights from WIRED
The man who called from Tom Gomez said that he’d heard about the shooting of a dozen students at Springfield High School. According to audio of the call obtained by WIRED, the man was specific. A man who was breathing heavily said that he was locked inside a math classroom with other students and two other men were killing students in a classroom next to him.
Within five minutes, the police were at the scene of the mass murder and descending on the second floor of the high school. The problem is that, according to police records, Springfield High doesn’t have a room 219. There wasn’t a shooting at all.
Through local news reports, police records, and interviews with state and local officials, WIRED compiled a list of 92 false reports of school shooting incidents in 16 states that took place from September 13 to 30. Many of the false reports we tracked align with data collected by the Educator’s School Safety Network. While several impacted states experienced only one such call, others recorded a staggering number, including at least eight in Ohio, 15 in Virginia, and 17 in Minnesota during that three-week period.
In audio of the call to Sangamon County Central Dispatch, the caller indeed had a discernible accent. In a detailed report of the call for service, the dispatcher noted that the caller was a “FOREIGN SPEAKING MALE” and that the caller was “SPEAKING VERY FAST WITH MIDDLE EASTERN ACCENT.” Audio of two calls from Ohio that WIRED obtained appear to be of the same person as the Springfield call’s “Tom Gomez,” and the caller describes the fake shooting with nearly identical details about the incident. Law enforcement officials from six states all said they received the same calls. officials confirmed that a man with a heavy accent called in a mass-casualty attack from an out-of-state number. In some instances the caller reported that the shooting occurred in a specific room number that does not exist and included details about the color of the pants, shirts, and jackets of the alleged shooters.
The voice in the false-report call about Springfield High in Illinois sounds identical to a caller targeting schools in other states. There is one from Ohio that is embedded.
At least 16 Louisiana schools were targeted in the month of September. Lieutenant Lane Windham of the Alexandria Police Department says the explanation is obvious. I do not believe this is a prank. It’s terrorism,” he says. When someone is trying to intimidate the teachers, parents, and students, what else can you call it?
The parents of survivors of the Robb Elementary School massacre in Texas filed a federal lawsuit against the gun manufacturer, the school district and the city.
After walking into Robb Elementary and opening fire into classrooms, 19 children and two teachers were killed.
The Uvalde School Shooter, Daniel Defense, and Oasis Outback, a Dallas, Tx, company that sells guns and ammunition to untrained civilians
According to the complaint, Daniel Defense chose not to perform studies on the effects of their marketing strategies on health and well-being of Americans, and not to examine the cost to families and communities like Uvalde, Texas.
The complaint notes that before the shooting, a Georgia-based company had sent a photo 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 says that Firequest International, Inc., manufactures accessory systems that are similar to illegal bump stocks, and sells them to untrained civilians in Uvalde. These types of devices allow semi-automatic rifles to fire more rapidly, similar to 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 gunman legally purchased two AR platform rifles at a local federal firearms licensee on May 17 and on May 20. Officials said he bought over a thousand rounds of bullets on May 18.
An investigation by a Texas legislative committee revealed that law enforcement’s radio signals were choppy inside the school building. Former Uvalde School Police Chief Pete Arredondo, who was fired, abandoned his radio at the fence of the school, the report stated.
UvaldePD attempted to breech the classroom early, but 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 suit also faults Lt. Mariano Pargas, the city’s acting police chief on the day of the massacre, as well as two other companies, claiming defects in their products were factors in the response to the shooting. The claim stated that the radios used by the first responders were dangerous because they didn’t have enough warnings or instructions to deal with failure.
Schneider Electric failed to lock the doors as they were designed after being shut, according to lawyers.
“What happened in Uvalde was an unspeakable tragedy that we condemn in the strongest terms,” Schneider Electric spokesperson Venancio Figueroa III told CNN. We can’t talk about pending litigation at this time and are reviewing this filing.
There isn’t a response to CNN request for comment from Daniel Defense, Oasis and the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District.
Correction: A young man killed in the fall of a student at a St. Louis high school was killed by off-duty cops
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly included an extra plaintiff’s name. The name was removed from the complaint because the person wasn’t a party.
In the wake of the shooting at St. Louis high school in which two people were killed, the school district announced it will add gun safety to its curriculum.
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.
“This could have been much worse,” police Commissioner Michael Sack said. “The individual had almost a dozen 30-round … high-capacity magazines on him. That is a lot of victims there.
Alexandria was going to the Sweet 16 with her father. Her daughter told CNN that she was looking forward to retiring in a few years.
Sack said the man died in a hospital after a gun battle with officers. He was identified as Orlando Harris, who graduated from the school last year.
The Michigan prosecutor who just heard the guilty plea of a teenager who killed four students in fall said she is no longer shocked to hear of another school shooting. “The fact that there is another school shooting does not surprise me – which is horrific,” Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald said.
“We need to keep the public and inform the public … on how we can prevent gun violence. We should never allow that to be something that we have to live with.
Alexandra Allen-Brown, a high school student and mentor to the gymnastics team, discusses her experience with Jean Kuczka
Alexandria was an outgoing person and was a member of her high school’s dance team.
Her friend Dejah Robinson said the two were planning to celebrate Halloween together this weekend. “She was always funny and always kept the smile on her face and kept everybody laughing,” Robinson said, fighting back tears.
Alexis Allen-Brown was among the alumni who fondly remembered Jean Kuczka’s impact on her students. “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 that she had been at the school since 2008. She believes that every child is a unique human being and deserves a chance to learn.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/25/us/st-louis-school-shooting-tuesday/index.html
The shooting death of a 14-year-old student at a KSDK school: a police officer’s look and description of the incident
Seven other teens were injured, some with gunshot or graze wounds. One of them had an injured ankle. The police commissioner said they were all in good shape.
The commissioner said there was no mystery about what would happen when he entered. “He had it out and entered in an aggressive, violent manner.”
Adrianne told KSDK that students thought the drill was a drill until they heard the sirens.
“The teacher, she crawled over and she was asking for help to move the lockers to the door so they can’t get in,” Bolden said. We heard glass breaking and gunshots outside the door.
David Williams said his students went intodrill mode, turning off lights, locking doors and crouching down in corners to not be seen.
When asked how long it was between officers’arrival and contact with the shooter, Sack said “eight minutes isn’t very long,” as officers had to maneuver through a large school with few entrances and staff who were evacuated.
When people were hiding in various locations, officers fanned out to search for them and take them out of the building.
The secondary sweep of the building was done by a team that was training together and quickly got to the school, Sack said.
When the 911 Caller Calls: It’s a Case Study of a Chaotic Officer Responding to a School Shooting
The caller was a student. She was a young child at the time. It would be 40 minutes from the time of her first call until law enforcement forced their way into her classroom.
According to reports, the newly surfaced recordings include more than 20 calls, including those between officers and dispatch, and reveal a chaotic response. There have been times when a Dispatcher gave incorrect information to personnel.
Since the shooting, law enforcement’s response has been widely criticized, with agencies failing to take responsibility and blaming each other. Several top officials have been fired.
He was one of the many officers who helped children and teachers. He had the rank to easily take charge, but he had important information about the shooter and a call about victims in the classroom, which others looked to him as a commander.
The police officer from Uvalde told him that there was a child on the line. Nolasco didn’t even bother to check whether help was going to Khloie, who survived the massacre, or her classmates or teachers because they were too busy to think about it.
While they were aware of the person in the one room, they did not know what was happening behind the closed doors because they did not hear screams or cries.
He acknowledged there were victims at 12:20 p.m., saying on footage obtained through another officer’s body cam that “We have victims in there. I don’t want to have any more. You know what I’m saying?”
Mary Ellen O’Toole is a former FBI special agent who has studied school shooting for more than 20 years.
The key to school safety is for people to look out for changes in behavior.
For some, it’s increased outward behavior. There will be an increase in grievances. It is possible that it was an increase in anger. We will see an escalation in difficulty managing their emotions,” Reeves said.
There are still significant changes but they may be withdrawing now. They are not interacting with groups of friends anymore. They’re starting to spend more time on the internet.”
School shootings warning signs red flags-xpn: a case study of a hate crime offender who intentionally stablizes a school shooter
It can also involve a fixation on previous mass shooting to the point where the English teacher knows about it, their friends at the lunch table know about it.
“They’re typically done because the offender is really excited about what they’re going to do. If they are discovered before, they can be used for that purpose, even if they say it is a cry for help.
They plan it for those with a violent bent. They think about it. They fantasize about it. They plan for it. And all of that period of time in which that is done, that’s very pleasant for them. They like it.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/26/us/school-shootings-warning-signs-red-flags-xpn/index.html
The 2021 School Shoot in Oxford, Michigan, was not a “Fake News” Post by a 15-year-old suspect
A few days before the 2021 school shooting in Oxford, Michigan, the 15-year-old suspect posted a photo of a gun on Instagram with the caption: “Just got my new beauty today. SIG SAUER 9mm,” Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald said.
By itself, that post isn’t necessarily a cause for alarm, Reeves said. In Michigan, residents under age 18 can possess a gun under certain circumstances.
The lead prosecutor said a teacher saw a drawing by the suspect that included a semi-automatic handgun pointing at the words “the thoughts won’t stop help me”. She said it also included a drawing of a bullet with the words “blood everywhere” written above it, along with the words “my life is useless” and “the world is dead.”
A troubling social media post or a disturbing comment in class are not indicative of a threat, so it’s still worth telling a teacher or school official.
In order to make it more accessible for students to call in if they are having trouble, O’Toole wants to educate the students and the faculty about red-flag behaviors.
“We strive for prevention – based on knowing what warning behaviors are, how to spot them and how to use appropriate intervention in an objective and compassionate way,” she said.
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.
They wrote about how the core team should include an administrator, at least one school psychologist, school counselor, and a school resource officer.
“Oftentimes, when we’re doing the threat assessment is where we find out there’s abuse going on in the home. Or that one parent just got arrested for domestic violence and they’re sitting in jail. One of their caretakers who was loved by them has died. They feel that they don’t have anyone.
If an individual makes a threat but it is found to be not true, then law enforcement will probably not need to be involved. The school can help the student and parents by implementing a conflict resolution process.
If the threat is legitimate and the necessary actions need to be taken, an officer may become involved in a consultative or direct 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
When does a student go home? Responding to the student’s feelings and concerns via social media, tweets, and in the classroom
The student was “immediately removed from the classroom” and taken to the guidance counselors’ office, where he told a counselor “the drawing was part of a video game he was designing,” the school district’s superintendent said.
CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig said it is a low bar for a school to search a backpack or locker. The Supreme Court has reasonable suspicion, which is very low.
Some of the less reliable information that you can have is self-reported information. So you need to find other sources to corroborate what this person is telling you,” the former FBI special agent said.
She said that you would probably want to look for something else that would suggest that this person is having violent thoughts. 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 said that the consequences should only ever be implemented after careful team consideration and with supportive interventions.
On the other hand, keeping the student of concern supervised at school “decreases the opportunity for them to be at home alone where they have more 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. While we need students and school staff to report, we also need more parent engagement at home and also need them to reach out when their child is struggling.”
“Not just reading, writing, and arithmetic but reading, writing, arithmetic and gun safety,” Saint Louis Public Schools Superintendent Kelvin Adams said.
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.’” And another person might report a separate concern about the same student, O’Toole said.
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.
The 2011 May 24 Massacre in Uvalde, Texas, a daughter of a 10-year-old trapped boy, told CNN that her daughter had no courage
Khloie urged her family to call the police when she was a 10 years old and trapped at Robb Elementary School. 11 years old, Khloie survived.
The long, chaotic response on May 24 has been decried as failure for months. Texas’s top cop didn’t give an update on what happened at a public meeting last week, as expected, but full details of when and what happened are still being hidden. Instead, Col. Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, listened to family members’ anger and acknowledged some mistakes, before saying his officers “did not fail the community” of Uvalde.
CNN has obtained the calls from a source and has used them with the approval of Khloie’s parents. CNN also informed families who lost people in the massacre that this story was coming.
Ruben said he was impressed with Khloie’s actions, and compared them to the officers who took no action after he heard the call. He said the things his daughter did that day were incredible. Of the adults who responded, he said: “None of them had courage that day.”
The Room Call Delay in the Elementary School Shooting: An Emergency Medical Officer and a 911 911 Emergency Medical Responder for a Child in the Emergency Room
I need help. Have y’all captured the person?” The fourth graders asked at 12:12pm. You want me to open the door right now?
The girl is talking on the phone as officers try to gain entry to the room next door. Loud, prolonged bursts of gunfire can be heard as the dispatcher tells her: “Stay down. Get up. Don’t go down. Do not move.
EMT! he shouts as he asks how to get to the victims in “Room 12.” One officer shrugs. Another who’s been on the scene for more than 20 minutes says, “No, we hadn’t heard that,” apparently referring to injured children.
There was a huge amount of confusion at the start of the massive response to the school shooting, which began when a man shot his grandmother in the head and crashed a truck near the school.
“We don’t know if he has anybody in the room with him, do we?” asks an officer in the hallway outside the classrooms. “He does,” comes the reply. “Eight or nine children.”
While some are talking about gas masks and shields and a command post, an emergency medic from Border Patrol arrives. He also knows about the children.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/01/us/uvalde-911-classroom-call-delay/index.html
The First Police Call – How the Officers Smelled: Khloie speaks to the Students in a School where the Shooter was killed
Khloie tells the police how she was able to make the emergency call without having her phone unlocked as her dad had, and how she used her teacher’s phone.
She told how she had time to try to help her friends when the teacher was injured in the classroom next to where they were shot.
The girl is alive. She was able to speak to one of the responders on the phone from the hospital, where she was taken with other injured classmates.
By then, armed responders were stacked up outside the connecting classrooms 111 and 112, where they waited and talked and checked equipment and looked for tools until a team finally entered the rooms and killed the gunman.
They gave their room number to Khloie and they could also hear her trying to help her teacher, who died after being shot. And when Khloie relays the operator’s directive for them to all keep quiet, Miah tries to hush her panicked and injured fellow fourth graders.
All the officers who were there should listen to the audio so they can understand what the kids are going through.
The parents of Miah want the police to hear her call as she recuperates from the injury she suffered when she flew a piece of glass into her head.
The children calling and saying they are hurt in the classroom shows the responding officers that they are a bunch of sleevs.
The call Miah had made to her parents was the first time they had ever heard it and they said it gave them a better idea of what she had gone through.
“Hi, can you please send help?” Miah asks at 12:19 p.m., 46 minutes since the shooter was seen entering the room but still more than 30 minutes from when he was stopped.
Have they been in the building? she asks repeatedly about the law enforcement response. Miah thought officers were trying to find a way to get close to them, but never thought they were stacked up on the other side of the door.
Her family has tried to shield her from learning more about the failed response, but last month she found some of the body camera video online showing the distraction, delay and lack of communication.
Miah was able to tell CNN days later how she smeared blood on herself and played dead in the hope the gunman would leave her alone if he came back from the adjoining classroom. She even testified to the US Congress, sending a video message to a House committee investigating gun violence when she said what she wished for was “to have security.”
Her mother said that Miah is now afraid of loud noise because she used to love playing prank on her siblings.
Nolasco, the Elementary School Shooter, and the State of the Art: Who Did You Shoot? An Interview with the CNN Investigative Report from May 24, 2009
Uvalde County Sheriff Ruben Nolasco rushed toward Robb Elementary School when calls came in that a man was firing his gun after crashing his pickup truck on May 24.
But despite more than 30 years of law enforcement experience for the city and county, despite knowing not only his own staff but many in the command structures in the multiple agencies that arrived at Robb, Nolasco chose to stay at a different crime scene, already under control, as a far greater disaster initially unfolded. He did not take charge when he did arrive and did not ensure that cries for help from girls trapped with injured classmates and teachers were acted on.
In the days after the massacre that killed 19 children and two teachers, as demands rose for answers to why it took 77 minutes to stop the gunman once he got into the school, Nolasco was comforted by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and US Sen. Ted Cruz, his political allies.
An elected leader answering only to voters, he has not been subject to the same scrutiny as the school police chief – now fired; the acting city police chief – now retired before he could be fired; and members of the Texas Rangers and the Texas Department of Public Safety, who have all faced official scrutiny, leading to suspensions and at least one termination.
Nolasco was angry and emotional nine days after the attack. He said that some of the questions were insulting, but that he didn’t do anything wrong. I have nothing to hide.”
It’s not clear whether Nolasco was aware that the 18-year-old who had shot his grandmother was also the school shooter. But under questioning by a Texas Ranger, he said, “it’s not going to take a rocket scientist” to connect the two, according to a record of an interview obtained by CNN, which has not been previously reported.
Who did this to you? CNN obtained a previously undisclosed recording from a body camera worn by one of his deputies, in which Nolasco can be heard asking. The footage was uploaded to police server within hours of the shooting and made available to the Texas Rangers, but has not been made public.
CNN analysis of radio traffic as well as footage from body-worn and surveillance cameras indicates the name – which CNN is not repeating so as not to fuel his notoriety – was not immediately shared with officers at the school, even as they sought that information through other means.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/07/us/uvalde-sheriff-ruben-nolasco-robb-elementary-massacre/index.html
Investigating the Uvalde Elementary Massacre: Lt. Mariano Pargas, the sheriff, and a state police sergeant
Acting Uvalde police chief Lt. Mariano Pargas, who like Nolasco could have taken command, chose to resign after CNN reported that he knew children needed rescuing and did not organize help.
CNN has also revealed the actions and inaction that have seen a Texas Ranger and a state police captain put under review, and a state police sergeant terminated. Another officer who quit the state force while she was under investigation and took a job with the Uvalde school district was fired by that district after CNN showed how she waited outside the school during the attack but said it would have been different if her own son had been inside.
Nolasco told CNN he was not at the school for at least the first 35 minutes of the standoff.
He told the investigator he “had a good reason” for the delay, saying he stayed to arrange the EMS transport, persuaded a neighbor to get off the street while the shooter was loose and then made some calls.
But there was no effective communication that active shooter protocol should be followed – that the threat should be neutralized as quickly as possible – either on the scene or among the many teams, some under DPS leadership, that were heading there. As he arrived at the scene, he still believed they were dealing with a barricaded subject.
The DPS captain himself is under investigation for his actions that day. He told investigators he asked Nolasco while he was driving if he had a command post set up, and again when he arrived as he thought the sheriff was in charge. He said in an interview that he thought the sheriff was running the show.
In a second interview with an investigator, he elaborated, “I know the sheriff has operational control there at the time, and we’re getting with the sheriff to get firsthand information from the incident as it was occurring.”
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/07/us/uvalde-sheriff-ruben-nolasco-robb-elementary-massacre/index.html
A Lieutenant Sheriff whose job it was to lock down a student in the classroom with a shooter: That wasn’t the case for Nolasco
Nolasco had a different opinion to CNN. “It’s his impression, that’s on him. He is a captain. And if that is the case, then it was an assumption. It was not validated.”
CNN reported last month that Pargas was aware that children and teachers were trapped in their classrooms with the shooter.
The noise from the helicopters and radios was too much for Nolasco as he complained to CNN and an investigator about the malfunctioning radios.
The sheriff was with the captain of the Department of Public Safety when they stopped the entry to the classroom that was being used for the shooting.
“When you have hostages in there, you really don’t want to break down doors,” he said, in direct contradiction of active shooter training for law enforcement, which calls first for officers to neutralize the suspect and “stop the killing,” even if it puts responders or hostages in danger.
After an hour of questions, near the end of the interview, he talked about the suffering of his deputies and said, “It’s been very traumatic for me as well.”
As police investigate the circumstances that led to a 6-year-old boy allegedly shooting and injuring a teacher at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, Virginia, Friday, a student at the school described the harrowing moment the lockdown was called.
“We were doing math … an announcer came on she was like, ‘lockdown, I repeat lockdown,’” said fifth grader Novah Jones, who was located in a different classroom. I felt like my first-ever locking up was terrifying. I hid under my desk, like everyone else, because I did not know what to do.
An Elementary School Teacher Shot in the Foot: Abby Zwerner, a 6-Year-Old Student and the First Grade Grade Teacher
The teacher wounded in Friday’s shooting, whose injury was initially described as life-threatening, was listed in stable condition by Saturday, according to the Newport News Police Department.
Authorities and the Newport News public school district did not name the teacher, but her alma mater, James Madison University, identified her as Abby Zwerner.
The 6-year-old boy was taken into police custody, Police Chief Steve Drew said in a news conference, adding that “this was not an accidental shooting.”
There had been an altercation between the teacher and the student, who had the firearm, Drew said. One round was fired and there were no other students involved.
Following the shooting, all students at the school were evacuated from their classrooms with their teachers and taken to the gymnasium, where they were with counselors and officers, Drew told CNN affiliate WTKR.
Novah had trouble sleeping that night because she was worried that the man still had a gun and was going to 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.
The elementary school will remain closed Monday and Tuesday in order to give the community time to heal.
It is easy to forget that a 1st graders brought a loaded handgun to school and shot his teacher, however, this is exactly what our community is trying to deal with today.
How did this happen is a question that authorities are trying to get an answer to. We are also working to ensure the child receives the supports and services he needs as we continue to process what took place,” Jones said.