Denver student, wanted for shooting 2 school administrators, found dead
By Johnny Diaz
COLORADO – A Denver high school student whose past behaviour had prompted school officials to require that he be searched before entering the school shot two school administrators Wednesday (22) morning and then fled, authorities said. He was later found dead.
The shooting happened before 10:00 a.m. at East High School, when the two administrators were patting down the student in an office area separate from other students and found a gun, according to the Denver Police Department. The student fired several shots, injuring both administrators.
The two men were transported to an area hospital, where one was in critical condition and the other in serious and stable condition, Chief Ron Thomas of the Denver Police Department said at a news conference. The suspect was identified by police as Austin Lyle, 17, who was wanted on the charge of attempted homicide.
Lyle’s red Volvo was found in Park County on Wednesday night, the police said, and a body was later found nearby, Sheriff Tom McGraw of the Park County Sheriff’s Office said in a brief interview. Park County is about a two-hour drive southwest of Denver.
Early Thursday (23) morning, the Park County Coroners Office confirmed that the body was that of Lyle. It did not specify how he died.
Thomas said that the suspect, a student at the school, had a safety plan in place that required that he be searched before entering the school each day. It was unclear what kind of behaviour might have prompted the safety check requirement, or how many other students were on the safety plan.
He added that the student had been previously searched “and had never had a weapon on him before”.
Superintendent Alex Marrero of Denver Public Schools said that such plans were “particular for each individual student” and that they were based on past behaviour.
“This is common for all schools in all districts,’’ he added.
The school, which has about 2,500 students, was under lockdown and will be closed for the rest of the week, Marrero said at the news conference. In 2020, Denver Public Schools voted to remove school resource officers from its schools and ended its contract with the Denver Police Department, according to the district’s website. Thomas said at the news conference Wednesday that there would be two armed police officers stationed at the school for the remainder of the year.
Marrero said in a letter to school board members Wednesday that he planned to have an armed officer at each comprehensive high school in the district for the remainder of the school year, Chalkbeat Colorado reported.
In recent years, school shootings by students whose behaviour had been flagged to administrators have prompted calls for faster action in the face of threats. A 6-year-old shot his teacher in Virginia in January despite what the teacher’s lawyer described as escalating warnings that the child had a gun. At one high school in Oxford, Michigan, where a shooting killed four students in 2021, safety policies were overlooked, former school board members said.
The Denver shooting came weeks after students at East High School held a memorial for a fellow student, Luis Garcia, who died after a shooting outside the public school, according to The Denver Post.
Luis, who was 16 and a soccer player at the school, died March 1, according to Denver police. The shooting prompted students to walk out of the school over safety precautions and gun legislation.
A fundraiser set up by his teammates has raised more than $200,000 for funeral expenses.
-New York Times
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