The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Shooting at Indiana middle school hits close to home
NOBLESVILLE, IND. —
It’s a scar that will haunt them for the rest of their lives.
That’s how many students and parents feel after Friday’s shooting at Noblesville West Middle School that shook the quiet Indianapolis suburb and sent 29-year-old science teacher Jason Seaman and another unidentified 13-year-old female student to Indianapolis hospitals to be treated for gunshot wounds.
Around 9 a.m. Friday, the shooter, whom police only described as a male student, asked to be excused from Seaman’s classroom and returned with two handguns, according to Noblesville Police Chief Kevin Jowitt.
Multiple students in the classroom said the student began shooting but Seaman stepped up and somehow stopped him, though multiple media accounts vary on whether he tackled the shooter or knocked the guns from the shooter’s hands. The female student was injured in the initial volley of shots, Noblesville Police Lt. Bruce Barnes said.
The shooting happened just one week after an attack in Santa Fe, Texas, that killed two teachers and eight students, and three months after the Parkland, Florida, shooting, where 17 people lost their lives. So far in 2018, there have been 28 elementary and secondary school shootings, resulting in 40 deaths and 66 injuries.
The student police believe to be the shooter was apprehended either in the classroom or in the immediate vicinity, Barnes said.
The injured student was transported to Riley Hospital for Children and Seaman was sent to IU Health Methodist Hospital for treatment, Jowitt said. According to Facebook posts by his mother, Kristi J. Hubly Seaman, the teacher was shot three times — in the abdomen, hip and forearm. She posted on social media late Friday afternoon that he was out of surgery and doing well.
Students and their parents are lauding Seaman as a hero, for acting to subdue the shooter.
Seaman released a written statement Friday confirming he was injured and thanking first responders.
“First of all, thank you to the first responders from Noblesville and Fishers for their immediate action and care,” Seaman said. “I want to let everyone know that I was injured but am doing great. To all students, you are all wonderful and I thank you for your support. You are the reason I teach.”
Seaman has two young children, a toddler son and a one-month-old daughter.
‘You don’t have the answers’
Brianna Smith, a 10-year-old student at nearby Hinkle Creek Elementary, said she wasn’t shocked to hear there was a shooting, even in her small hometown.
“I am a little freaked out about this, but I knew it was going to happen, at some point it was going to happen,” she said.
Sitting on the front porch of her mother’s home directly across the street from Noblesville West Middle School, Smith said when the principal announced the school was on lockdown, she was sure it was just another drill.
“But a lot of my friends were really worried ... they had brothers or sisters who were in the middle school,” she said. “I just thought about it as a drill; I was just trying to calm my friends down.”
Though her daughter is physically safe,Tera Blink, Smith’s mother, said she’s worried about how all the kids in the Noblesville school system will learn to live with the weight of the shooting.
“You got to wonder what’s going through their heads,” she said.