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April 24, 2006
Preventing tragedy by listening to kidsTwice in the last week, authorities say they prevented mass shootings in schools. The first is in Riverton, Kan., where five teenage boys fully intended to go on a shooting spree at their high school but were stopped after one of them discussed the plot on a Web site, law enforcement and school officials said.
The latest is in a small town near Anchorage, Alaska, where six seventh-graders suspected of plotting a deadly attack on a school were arrested this weekend. Nine other seventh-graders also were suspended in possible connection with the elaborate scheme to kill faculty and classmates using guns and knives at the school, where about 500 sixth- through eighth-graders have four weeks until summer vacation, AP reports. The name of the school (really) is North Pole Middle School, and is about 14 miles southeast of Fairbanks. The group wanted to seek revenge for being picked on, the town's police chief said.
What led to these nick-of-time arrrests?
In Kansas, authorities were alerted to threats on the Web site myspace.com. That quickly led to the identification of the five suspects and the recovery of an undisclosed number of weapons at the home of one of the suspects. In Alaska, a student told a parent about threats overheard at school last Monday, the day before the shootings were to occur. USA Today has updated info here.
So something is working. Some kids are talking to parents, and some authorities are slowly waking up to the reality of how much of kids' lives are now lived on the Internet. There likely are other examples of prevented tragedies like this across the country that have not made the news. Listening to kids is more important than ever.
Posted April 24, 2006 2:28 PM | School Boards | School Safety
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