Faith guides boy, family after school shooting
He just WEST LIBERTY — wanted to check his hair.
Logan Cole’s West Liberty-Salem High School mock trial team had a courtroom competition in an hour or so, but the team adviser’s substitute was late. So even as the hallways emptied and the kids should have already been on the road, their bus sat idling out front. Given the extra minute, Logan popped into the bathroom to peek into the mirror.
He rounded the corner toward the sinks and stalls, and there he saw him: a masked teenager holding a gun.
“And it happened,” Logan said.
Ely Serna, a 17-year-old senior who later confessed to authorities that he used the 12-gauge shotgun his grandparents had bought him one Christmas, fired the first of at least six rounds that morning.
It slammed into Logan’s chest, a fraction to the right of his heart.
He saw the gun, heard the blast, felt the rush of air. Yet his mind could not understand what had happened.
“It felt like a concussion, a grenade hitting the side of my body,” Logan recalled six weeks later, sitting on the couch with his parents in the living room of their rural West Liberty farmstead. “It didn’t go through my mind that somebody shot me with a shotgun. I mean, shotguns aren’t allowed in school.”
He doesn’t even remember the second shot in the back, the one that missed his spinal cord by about the width of a thumbtack. He only remembers falling down, his face smashing onto the cold tile, the pain of three upper teeth shattering.
Authorities said later that Logan surprised Serna and likely threw off his plan for whatever widespread destruction he sought to carry out at his high school.
It is easy to chalk it up to chance that Logan was in that bathroom in that hallway at that moment on that day.
But for the Coles — parents Ryan and Julie and their seven children, including Logan — it is no such thing.
“The amount of things that have lined up in a miraculous way that made this turn out to be not so bad. It’s just ... “Logan said, pausing. “It’s God. That’s the only explanation I can think of.”
Fifteen days in Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus fighting for his life. Three months wearing a neck and back brace to protect his damaged vertebrae. A potential lifetime of complications from the hundreds of lead birdshot still in his body that could slowly poison him. How can he call any of this a miracle?
Logan, a junior who turned 17 last month, halfsmiled and shrugged. He said simply: “Because I’m alive.”
It was Jan. 20, and Principal Greg Johnson had a substitute-teacher shortage in this rural western Ohio district of about 1,250 students. He was trying to figure out what to do about it when a teacher in that back hallway called the front office and said someone was shooting.
The warning went out over the intercom: “Active shooter in the building. This is not a drill.”
After hitting Logan, authorities said, Serna fired more rounds into the hallway and into two classrooms, then retreated back into the bathroom. The shots blew holes in the wooden doors and shattered windows, but no one else was seriously wounded. One other student, senior Adam Schulz, was hit by a single pellet.
Just another in a long list of miracles, as Johnson sees it.
West Liberty is a combined school, and the wings and classrooms of various grades jut from the main office hub like spokes of a wheel. Johnson headed through the building that morning hoping the report of shots fired was a mistake.
What he remembers most is the silence. Many students already had pushed open doors and broken out windows and fled into the surrounding countryside. Others were huddled in their classrooms, afraid to make a noise.
As Johnson and Assistant Principal Andy McGill neared the bathroom, Johnson heard a voice. It was Logan Cole.
“We heard it. ‘You don’t have to do this. You haven’t killed anybody yet. You don’t have to do this,’” Johnson recalled.
The men charged in. Serna immediately surrendered.
“For Logan Cole to do what he did that morning, to have the strength and the calm and the courage in that situation to try to stop anyone else from being hurt,” Johnson said. “God had the right people in the right places at the right time. I know it.”
The Coles live only a couple of minutes from the school. That morning, they had planned to head to Marysville to watch Logan’s team compete. Ryan had just loaded their youngest, 4-year-old Shiloh, into her car seat when Johnson phoned with the news about Logan.
They raced to the scene and someone immediately ushered them into the bathroom.
A no-nonsense businessman who does pretty well at keeping his emotions in check, Ryan cannot do so when he speaks of seeing his son crumpled there on that floor.
“He looked up at me and said, ’I love you, Dad,” he said, choking up. “I said, ’I love you too, buddy.’” He paused, tried to shake off the emotion. “You’re just trying to make sense of it. So I asked him, ‘Logan, who did this to you?’ He told me ‘It doesn’t even matter, Dad. It doesn’t even matter.’”
Logan’s words surprised her, Julie said, but she knows they shouldn’t have.
“Compassion has always been his love language, if you will. It’s how he communicates,” she said. “So right away Ryan and I thought that if it didn’t matter to Logan, then it shouldn’t matter to us.”
That doesn’t mean they don’t want justice. Serna remains in juvenile detention and faces 13 charges, including two counts of attempted murder and three counts of felonious assault. Prosecutors want his case transferred to adult court, and so do the Coles. Justice, however, shouldn’t be confused with vengeance, Julie said. Of that, they have none in their hearts.
As the setting sun cast an orange glow through the floor-to-ceiling windows in the Cole family living room, Julie looked at her son.
“Do you want to do this now?” she asked. “We may as well get it over with.”
Six weeks have passed since the shooting, and Logan has been back at school full time for about a week. His body aches at the end of the day. His wounds itch. His broken teeth keep him from eating as he wants. And the brace he must wear makes this nightly dressing of his wounds an ordeal.
He is, quite simply, exhausted.
To clean and salve the wounds, the brace must come off. His dad climbs atop the bed and straddles Logan while his mom steadies his neck and pushes from the side to ease him back onto a patchwork quilt. Logan winces as his mom pulls each bandage off. The fistsized wound in his chest has healed well. The larger, deeper one in back will need more time.
Once settled, Logan asks his dad to take a photo. Because of the collar and his inability to bend his neck, he can’t see the damage done to his rangy, soccer player’s body.
His dad grabs his phone, snaps a photo, shows it to Logan.
“Oh, that looks soooooo good,” Logan says, smiling.
As his mom rubs lotion onto his scars, she notices a fresh black dot just under his skin. Everyone in the room pulls in closer to get a look.
Logan says it is a shot pellet that has come to the surface. He laughs. “It’s like my party trick,” he says. “You want to feel my pellet?” That’s so Logan. Home-schooled until the sixth-grade, his cousins are his best friends. He volunteers during his study hall to herd first- and second-graders in gym class and would rather supervise the church nursery on Sundays than sit in the sanctuary.
He loves history and kicks around the idea of teaching it. But he also hopes to be the third generation to run his family’s successful packaging business, Colepak, in nearby Urbana.
“When you’re a kid, that’s a dream, right? To work alongside your dad,” he says. “That’d be cool.”
He will not let what has happened derail him. He still carries a 4.0 grade-point average and, despite missing half the season, finished as high scorer on his school’s Quick Recall quiz team.
“I’m kind of a nerd,” he says with a laugh. “And I’m OK with that.”
On a Wednesday in early March, Principal Johnson asked the West Liberty-Salem students to take a seat on the bleachers in the gymnasium.
Army Capt. Evan M. Peck, the officer in charge of the recruiting command in this area, stepped forward. He had heard Logan’s story, and bravery like that cannot be overlooked.
“Here in the military we have a sacred duty to recognize heroes ... and to honor valor when we see it,” Peck said, turning to Logan to present an award of courage. “Not all heroes wear uniforms.”
He also recognized McGill and Johnson for running into the unknown without hesitation that morning.
This latest framed honor was added to the shelves at home that hold inspirational items and meaningful gifts that have been sent to Logan from friends and strangers.
And the community has been so generous, donating to GoFundMe pages and supporting multiple fundraisers.
The Coles donated $22,000 of the money raised to the district to build what will be known as the Tiger Strong Field House. #TigerStrong became the ubiquitous hashtag to show support for the West Liberty Tigers student body and community after the shooting.
“We’ve cried ourselves to sleep plenty, just like any parent would,” Julie said. “But this community and its love, they’re the reason I’m not crying myself to sleep every night.”
Logan said the prayers and support have overwhelmed him. But all of this attention makes him uncomfortable.
His parents, however, said it is all part of the plan. “As Christians,” Ryan said, “it is not for us to ask why it happened, but to ask what we can do with what we have been given.”
Logan, who so casually responds when people ask him about being shot with a simple, “Yeah, it’s a bummer,” doesn’t like to talk about his fears. But he has them. Sometimes, it is the little things: Will I miss my senior season of soccer? When can I drive again? He hates not being able to lift his younger siblings in a bear hug. He’s annoyed by not being able to sleep on his side. His teenage skin is a mess with blemishes from that stupid neck collar.
Sometimes, the big stuff creeps in. Things like Serna’s mask. Serna made it from duct tape and wrote “(expletive) you” where his lips would have been. Logan said he’s not sure why that troubles him so. “I can’t get it out of my mind.”
And he doesn’t like being in public situations with a lot of unknowns. Noises startle him. Quick movements catch his eye. “My heart starts racing.”
Then there is his long-term health, with the lead the most pressing concern. Doctors have repeatedly told the Coles that there is little precedent for this. People who are shot like he was generally don’t survive.
A blood-lead level of 5 or higher requires monitoring; Logan’s last monthly test on March 31 came back at 40.
At his most-recent appointment, Dr. Hannah Hays, his toxicologist at Nationwide Children’s, told him she was encouraged that the levels have stayed steady. Yet she explained that sustained levels of more than 20 put him at especially high risk for chronic fatigue and high blood pressure. Greater than 30 or 40, and his kidneys could be in danger.
The Coles asked Logan’s medical team about the possibility of surgery to try to capture the pellets lodged in his upper body. Some might be removed, the doctors said, but others, like the one in his pulmonary artery and the two in his spinal column, are simply too risky.
That’s not what Logan wanted to hear.
“I don’t want to have organs that have problems when I’m 70 because of lead poisoning. I don’t want to have to deal with that,” he said. “My biggest worry is that I won’t be able to live my life like I would have.”
He has marked the days off on a wall calendar, and now it’s finally here: April 20. If the X-rays show what everyone hopes, Logan will shed his brace.
Maybe he can sleep on his side now. Maybe he can drive again, get a haircut. Maybe, even, he will be cleared for sports.
The technicians and nurses must first check to see if the vertebrae are healed enough for him to bend and stretch his neck.
The technician unstraps him, and for the first time in three months, Logan stands with neither human nor apparatus supporting his upper body.
And it is frightening. “Oh, man,” he says, rubbing his sore neck and giving a nervous laugh.
She tells him not to go crazy, but now he must move. Look up, down, to the left and to the right.
“Oh my gosh,” he says. “It seems scary.” But he bobs his head. He cannot hide his big smile.
Finally, Logan’s neurosurgeon, Dr. Jonathan Pindrik comes in. He pats Logan’s knees and gives him the news: no more brace.
He can run again, ride a bike, lift weights ( just not over his head quite yet), the doctor says. Logan interrupts him.
“I play soccer,” he says, and tells him that senior-season practice starts in June.
Yes, the doctor tells him. You can play.
This marks three months to the day since the shooting.
And for Logan, it served only as the latest reminder that God is good indeed.