Parents demand improved security after shooting at Denver high school
DENVER — Outraged Denver students and parents demanded better school security and pushed for tighter firearm controls Thursday, a day after a 17-year-old student shot and wounded two administrators at a city high school beset with violence.
More than 1,000 students rallied at the Colorado Capitol to push gun reform legislation, while school board members endorsed the district superintendent’s abrupt reversal of a policy that had banned armed officers from Denver schools.
The shooting at East High School near downtown occurred as trwo unarmed administrators were searching for weapons on suspect Austin Lyle, who fled from the scene and was found dead Wednesday night in the mountains southwest of Denver.
He died from a self-inlflicted gunshot wound, the Park County coroner said.
Educators for decades have grappled with how to keep students safe as violence has intensified, and the Denver shooting stoked an immediate backlash among parents who said security was too lax.
The uproar echoed community outrage after other school shootings — from last year’s unchecked rampage by a gunman in Uvalde who killed 19 elementary school children and two adults, to January’s shooting of a Virginia teacher by a 6-year-old student.
The tragedies underscore a chronic problem: keeping guns out of schools even as they proliferate in the community.
“We’re scared to go to school,” East High School sophomore Anna Hay said during Thursday’s rally at the Capitol. “We want to have these legislators look us in our eyes when they tell us they won’t pass gun legislation.”
As Wednesday’s shooting unfolded, Hay heard sirens from emergency vehicles and had a sinking realization that the danger was real.
“Watching your friends and the fear in their eyes ... it’s the worst feeling in the world,” she said.
The Colorado shooting was one of at least four at or near a school this week in the U.S.
On Monday, a 15-year-old was arrested in the fatal shooting of a student outside a Dallas-area high school. On Tuesday, a student was hurt in another Dallasarea school shooting, and on Wednesday two teenagers were killed and a third was wounded in a shooting near a North Carolina middle school.
East High School parent Steve Katsaros said putting police into schools was just part of the solution. He also wants the campus closed to outsiders and a ban on students wearing hooded sweatshirts so they can be more easily identified after disruptions.
Experts also say putting civilian administrators in charge of searching a student for weapons was a mistake. Such tasks should be left to trained, armed school resource officers fitted with body armor, said Mo Canady with the National Association of School Resource Officers.
“This place is a ticking time bomb,” Katsaros said.