‘I AM EXTREMELY LUCKY’
BPS worker describes halting lobby gunman
As two teens scuffled and a gun was fired in the lobby of the Boston Public Schools headquarters in Dudley Square last week, a data analyst on his way to work suddenly found himself facing a life-and-death choice. Dane Holding’s quick action, School Superintendent Tommy Chang said yesterday, was “nothing short of heroic.”
Police Commissioner William B. Evans hailed Holding and another BPS employee for tackling the teens and a woman who works in the Bruce C. Bolling Municipal Building for kicking the .40-caliber semi-automatic out of harm’s way after a 15-yearold allegedly pulled it from his backpack and fired at the other boy, who was in the building with his mother to register for a school assignment. Evans said the gun was jammed by the first bullet’s casing. No one was injured.
Holding, 29, who taught English in Korea and India before coming to Boston more than a year ago, says in hindsight his actions were “reckless,” but the Eagle Scout in him overrode selfpreservation. Holding described what happened to the Herald’s Laurel J. Sweet:
The adrenaline just kind of kicked in. It was pretty intense, I was just walking into work. I didn’t hear the gunshot. I thought I was just going to break up two young men who were fighting. Then I heard someone shout, ‘He’s got a gun, he’s got a gun!’ I believe it was the mother of one of the two young men, who was trying to pull who I believe was the gunman off her son. At the point where I heard about the gun, I was maybe 2 feet from the fight. The fightor-flight instinct kicked in, and I guess I opted for fight, to get one of the kids off the other. I was not sure where the gun was at any point during this confrontation.
I was very much focused on the young man who turned out to be the would-be victim, because he seemed at the time to be the more aggressive of the two, which is completely understandable. I put my hand on his shoulder. I remember trying to pull him off the shooter.
I stepped forward, I placed my knee on his back, and once he was on the ground face down I put my hands on his wrists. He just went with it. I should have realized he was probably just happy to be out of the situation. He asked me very politely to please let him move. I declined that request. He didn’t say anything to me after that.
When police arrived, I got off to the side, I gave a statement and then I went upstairs and back to work. My bosses told me to take the day off. What I did was incredibly reckless. One of the first things you learn in Boy Scouts is that you should assess the situation before you step in. I did not assess the situation. I am extremely lucky that that gun jammed — as is everyone else.