At 7:15 a.m., on Oct 21 2013, a shooting occurred in Sparks Middle School in Nevada, wounding two students and killing one math teacher. Students on that Monday morning were recently returning from a week long break, when just before the start of the day, chaos erupted. The shooter has been reported to be a student of Sparks Middle School, but his intentions and reasons for the shooting remained unclear. After fatally shooting the math teacher, the boy committed suicide.
The two wounded students, having been rushed to the hospital, were declared not to have life threatening injuries. However, as of that afternoon, one has been announce fair condition while the other serious condition. The late teacher himself was confirmed to be Micheal Landsberry, a war veteran with a wife and two step daughters. At his death, he was regarded as a hero, giving up his own life to intervene the incident.
Classes for Sparks Middle School has been cancelled for the rest of the week. Governor Brian Sandoval of Nevada, along with many other state their condolence. Solutions such as help to the student population focus on tasks like bullying and gang activity.
For more info, find it at the original New York Times article.
After reading the article, I realized that it’s apparent that more and more violence has been occurring in schools, specifically actions that are aimed to kill. It strikes me to see that the patterns have changed, escalated quickly and drastically. Schools are no longer places where children can feel safe. Instead, they can be in constant threat to strangers that act spontaneously to shoot and kill children of young age, evident in the Connecticut Elementary school shooting of 2012. Now it has come to a point that peers will threaten peers, including arming themselves.
What I find important during this situation is that this shooting did not surge without substance; certainly the child shooter had a reason, unknown as they are. But it makes it so that there are more possibilities as to why he carried a gun. Perhaps he was bullied by those in school or received violent attacks from formed gangs. At any rate, it is germane that schools and the board of education get to the root of the problem.
– Mavis Dai