When a student opened fire at her Detroit high school in November 2021, killing four students and injuring seven others, Rebekah Schuler let go of the idea of ever feeling truly safe in school again.
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A first-grade Virginia teacher who was shot and seriously wounded by her 6-year-old student filed a lawsuit Monday seeking $40 million in damages from school officials, accusing them of gross negligence for allegedly ignoring multiple warnings on the day of the shooting that the boy had a gun and was in a "violent mood."
The murders would not have happened if the parents hadn't purchased a gun for Ethan Crumbley or if they had taken him home from Oxford High School on the day of the shooting, when staff became alarmed about his extreme drawings, the appeals court said, in a groundbreaking case of criminal responsibility for the acts of a child.
West Charlotte High School had let out only minutes earlier when, hearing gunfire, school officials ordered an immediate lockdown and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department officers swarmed the campus. That incident, the week before Christmas break 2021, was the ninth time a gun had been found at one of Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s most troubled public schools since the start of the school year.
With suicides, including those by gun, the second-leading cause of death for 10- through 34-year-olds — and suicides surging by 35% during 20 years ending in 2019 — it’s important to raise awareness that suicides are preventable and that most of those survive an attempt do not try another.
That’s according to the Convergence Center for Policy Resolution, whose early December report, “Convergence Dialogue on Guns and Suicide Prevention,” highlights interventions, including safe gun storage and efforts to safeguard the mental health of young people and others who may be suicidal.