Unfortunately, we are starting to live in a world where school shootings are increasing. A recent school shooting happened in Santa Clarita, California on November 14th, 2019. A 16 year old student shot up the school, killing two students, injuring three more students, and lastly shooting himself, but not killing himself. All this happened in less than 16 seconds. After this tragedy, there are several investigators that are trying to figure out the why aspect of his shooting rampage. The investigators don’t know how he got a hold of a .45 caliber or why he chose to do it on his 16th birthday. Within reading more on it, several of his former students said that he was a “normal” teenager and was never bullied. The investigators also came upon find a post on social media that was put under a fake account that said’ “Saugus, have fun at school tomorrow”. This lead them to further believe that the teenage shooter was the one that posted it, but they aren’t sure as to why it was never reported. They also looked into his family history, but what they found wasn’t completely concerning. In 2015 the shooter’s father had been arrested for domestic dispute with his mother, yet no charges were filed. Then two years later his father passed away, and on his online obituary it stated that he was a hunter. That was the only evidence they had on gun use within that family, but it wasn’t enough evidence for the motive on the why, so the question still remains unanswered. It’s hard for many of us to understand the “why”, and sadly many people, living in Santa Clarita, will not get closure on that part because the suspect died a couple of days ago.
https://abc7.com/suspect-in-shooting-rampage-at-saugus-high-school-has-died/5699170/
Whether we want to admit to it or not, school shootings are increasing to the point where schools are adding new techniques to our protocols. ALICE training is one of the new techniques being added to our lock down. ALICE training was created to help student and faculty safety for when there is an active shooter in the school. ALICE has been said to be highly effective and hopefully will hopefully reduce the number of kills/injured.