Utah School Shooting Narrowly Avoided When Teen Gunman Is Disarmed on Campus by his Own Mom
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The world narrowly escaped another deadly school shooting this week, because at the last minute the would-be shooter was tackled and disarmed by his own parents.
According to the Associated Press, a 15-year-old boy brought guns to school and fired one in a classroom yesterday morning at Mueller Park Junior High in Bountiful, Utah. Just after he fired the first shot, his parents burst into the classroom and managed to grab him and take the guns back.
The parents told police that they thought their 15-year-old seemed to be acting oddly yesterday morning. After he left their home to walk to school, his parents noticed that he’d taken their shotgun and handgun with him, and they ran after him as fast as they could.
Police say the boy walked to school with a shotgun, a 9mm handgun, and a box of ammo for each under a long jacket. According to the Associated Press, police say the boy got the guns out of his family’s gun safe, but they do not know how he got them out of the safe. It seems like it must have either been unlocked, or he must have known the combination. Either way, he was able to get the guns and ammo and sneak them out of the house and all the way to school.
A girl in the class told the BBC that the teacher heard the boy cock the gun before he entered the room, and the teacher ran to try to stop him. The shooter fired the shotgun gun into the ceiling, and then girl says he glared at the cowering students and pointed the shotgun in their direction. She said the gun was pointing right at her face when the shooter’s mom ran into the room and told him to give her the gun, and he handed it to her. Then the witness said the shooter’s mother slapped him across the face, and his father ran into the room and tackled him and dragged him out into the hallway.
The student said the parents wrestled their son out of the room, and then the mother came back in and asked if everyone was OK and if anybody had been injured, then she went back to help her husband hold their son in place until police arrived. At that point a teacher called 911 and another student locked the door to the classroom, where the students all cowered in a corner until police arrived, arrested the shooter, and searched the premises for other signs of danger.
The boy was taken into custody by police is reportedly facing two charges of theft of a firearm and two counts of taking a weapon into a school.
