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Maryland School Gunman Dies After Confrontation With Officer Maryland School Gunman Dies After Confrontation With Officer
(about 3 hours later)
GREAT MILLS, Md. — A male student opened fire with a handgun in the hallway of a southern Maryland high school on Tuesday, the local sheriff said, spurring a deputy stationed at the school to confront him less than a minute later. The episode left two students injured — one critically — and the gunman fatally wounded. GREAT MILLS, Md. — A male student at a high school in Maryland shot a 16-year-old girl he knew with a handgun on Tuesday, spurring a confrontation with an armed deputy stationed at the school, the authorities said.
The shooting suspect, Austin Wyatt Rollins, 17, was confirmed dead at 10:41 a.m., said Sheriff Timothy K. Cameron of St. Mary’s County, adding that it was not immediately clear whether or not a round fired by the officer struck the suspect. When the chaos was over, perhaps a minute after it began, the girl was critically injured, a 14-year-old boy was hurt and the gunman, whom the authorities identified as Austin Wyatt Rollins, 17, was fatally wounded.
The sheriff’s office said it received a call of shots fired just before 8 a.m. at Great Mills High School in Great Mills, Md., about 60 miles southeast of Washington. Moments earlier, Mr. Rollins had shot a 16-year-old female with whom he had a “prior relationship,” the sheriff said. Great Mills High School, near a weather-beaten water tower in southern Maryland, became the latest scene of a school shooting, a little over a month after a teenager killed 14 students and three adults at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.
Sheriff Cameron said the school resource officer was alerted to the gunfire and “pursued the shooter, engaged the shooter.” The officer, he said, then “fired a round at the shooter, simultaneously the shooter fired a round as well.” “If you don’t think this can’t happen at your school,” said J. Scott Smith, the superintendent for St. Mary’s County, which includes Great Mills High, “you are sadly mistaken.”
Sheriff Cameron said the officer, Deputy First Class Blaine Gaskill, was not injured in the shooting. He said a 14-year-old male student, who was also shot, was transported to a hospital in stable condition, and the female student was transported to a shock trauma facility, where she was in intensive care “with life-threatening critical injuries.” The shooting here comes amid renewed urgency in the nation’s debate over gun control, with demonstrators around the country planning a nationwide march this weekend.
At the beginning of an early afternoon news conference, Sheriff Cameron said Mr. Rollins had shot both the male and female victims, but in response to questions from reporters he said he could not say with certainty whose gun had wounded the male victim. It is likely to draw further attention to the role of armed personnel in schools, which has been widely discussed after surveillance video showed that a sheriff’s deputy posted at the school in Parkland did not go inside a building to engage the gunman during that shooting, an apparent violation of protocol.
Neither of the victims were identified. The authorities were quick to praise the school resource officer at Great Mills High, Deputy Blaine Gaskill, who they said responded almost immediately to the gunman and fired his weapon. Deputy Gaskill was unharmed in the exchange.
“On this day, we realize our worst nightmare,” the sheriff said, “that our greatest asset, our children, were attacked in one of our places, a bastion of safety and security, one of our schools.” “He pursued the shooter, engaged the shooter,” Sheriff Timothy K. Cameron of St. Mary’s County said. The officer, he said, then “fired a round at the shooter; simultaneously the shooter fired a round as well.”
“The notion of it can’t happen here is no longer a notion,” he added. But it was not immediately clear, the sheriff said, whether or not Deputy Gaskill’s shot had struck Mr. Rollins. And while Sheriff Cameron initially suggested that Mr. Rollins had shot both the 16-year-old and the 14-year-old victims, he said later that he was unable to confirm who had injured the 14-year-old, who was transported to a hospital in stable condition.
The shooting comes just over a month after 14 students and three adults were killed at a high school in Parkland, Fla., which has added new urgency to the nation’s debate over gun control and raised questions about the role of armed personnel in schools. Surveillance video taken during the shooting in Parkland showed Scot Peterson, the sheriff’s deputy posted at the school, did not go inside a building to engage the gunman, in an apparent violation of protocol. Neither victim was identified by the authorities. Sheriff Cameron said it seemed a “prior relationship” had existed between the gunman and the female victim, although he did not say what it was.
Speaking at a late morning news conference, Sheriff Cameron said the school resource officer and witnesses to the shooting were being interviewed by detectives. Other students at the school had been taken to Leonardtown High School, about 15 minutes away, to be reunited with their families. The sheriff said she was in the intensive care unit “with life-threatening critical injuries.”
The parking lot at Great Mills High was filled with more than a dozen police and state trooper cars, the red and blue flashing lights punctuating the gray skies. Officers, some in neon yellow rain jackets, directed traffic in the pouring rain, having blocked off the area in front of the school with cars and caution tape. The F.B.I. and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives sent agents to the school and were conducting a trace on Mr. Rollins’s weapon, Sheriff Cameron said.
“What we know thus far is that Great Mills High School began its school day this morning at 7:45 a.m. like many other days,” Sheriff Cameron said, “except for on this day a male student produced a handgun and fired a round wounding a female student and another male student in a hallway of Great Mills High School just before classes begun.” Deputy Gaskill’s intervention could increase calls for more schools around the country to add school resource officers, who play hybrid roles sometimes described as part security guard, part educator and part counselor. Currently, 30 percent or more of schools in the United States are believed to have such officers.
James Scott Smith, the superintendent of St. Mary’s County Schools, said that Great Mills and other schools in the district did not have metal detectors, although officials had discussed the possibility of getting them after the shooting in Parkland. But some opponents argue that a police presence in schools increases the chances students will be arrested unnecessarily for minor infractions.
There are few statistics on the effectiveness of school resource officers, although the Alabama-based National Association of School Resource Officers pointed to other incidents in which it credited the presence of the officers for saving lives.
In a 2013 shooting at Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colo., that resulted in one student’s death, for example, a school resource officer was credited with preventing more carnage after pursuing the gunman into the school library, where he killed himself, according to Mac Hardy, chief of operations for the association.
Great Mills High, like so many other schools across the country, was already reckoning with school violence in the aftermath of the Florida shooting. There had been new discussions about school safety. There was an ominous Snapchat posting about a possible threat, which stirred worry but was found to be a hoax. Last week, there was a walkout by students calling for stronger gun control measures.
And then, shortly before 8 a.m. on Tuesday, the authorities said, Mr. Rollins pulled out his weapon and opened fire.
“It sounded like a shelf, like something fell,” said Shawnye Willis, 17, who was standing in the hallway, near an art class.
But then he saw a girl fall forward, and collapse on the ground. When she dropped, he said, he knew it was serious. Teachers yelled for students to get into classrooms, and people began to cry.
The principal, Jake Heibel, announced on the loudspeaker that the school was going into lockdown.
Saar Shah, 15, was working on a robotics assignment when he saw the flashing lights of police cars pull up to the school.
“I was thinking about this project,” Mr. Shah said. “I didn’t think my school was going to get shot up.”
Even students who had been deeply involved in gun control activism after the Parkland shooting, like Mollie Davis, who handed out stickers to fellow students during last week’s walkout, were stunned to find themselves at the center of an issue that had seemed urgent but far away.
“I’m part of this now,” said Ms. Davis, 17, outside the nearby Leonardtown High School, where Great Mills students were taken to reunite with their parents. “It’s weird.”
The shooting here was all but certain to spur new questions about the best way to protect schools. Mr. Smith, the superintendent, said Great Mills High and other schools in the district did not have metal detectors, although officials had discussed the possibility of getting them after the shooting in Parkland.
“There is an associated cost related to that, as well as staff,” Mr. Smith said.“There is an associated cost related to that, as well as staff,” Mr. Smith said.
He added, “This is just the beginning of a very long and tragic process that we will go through in St. Mary’s County.” Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, described the shooting as a call to action. As states around the country considered new gun control and school safety measures in recent weeks, Mr. Hogan proposed putting $125 million into school protection and $50 million to pay for school resource officers. He complained that the State Legislature, which is controlled by Democrats, had not passed legislation to do so.
The F.B.I. and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives sent agents to the school and were conducting a trace on Mr. Rollins’s weapon. “It’s outrageous to me that we haven’t take action yet on something so important as school safety,” Mr. Hogan said.
Gov. Larry Hogan said his office was closely monitoring the situation, and that he was praying for the victims and the Great Mills community. Alexandra Hughes, chief of staff for Michael E. Busch, the speaker of the state House of Delegates, called the governor’s complaints “unfortunate” and said the Legislature had included $30 million for school safety measures. She said Mr. Hogan had filed the school safety measure late in the session, but that lawmakers had advanced other measures, including a ban on bump stocks, an “extreme risk” law that would allow judges to take weapons away from dangerous persons, and legislation to remove guns from domestic abusers.
“But prayers are not enough,” Mr. Hogan said, in an emailed statement. “Although our pain remains fresh and the facts remain uncertain, today’s horrible events should not be an excuse to pause our conversation about school safety. Instead, it must serve as a call to action.” Back in Great Mills, some students and parents said the shooting had pushed them to get involved in coming protests for stricter gun control. As Rayshawn Dickens, 38, went to pick up her 16-year-old daughter, Laquana, after the lockdown, she decided she would spend Saturday driving to Washington to join the “March for Our Lives” protest there.
“They’re not safe in school,” Ms. Dickens said, of her daughter and her friends. “It’s scary.”