Expert speaks on school violence prevention

By Tonya Root, TheSunNews.com

With the 10th anniversary of one of the nations’ worst school shootings about a month away, a school violence expert said local emergency officials should plan to prevent and manage such an incident here.

The advice came Thursday during the final day of the state’s annual hurricane and emergency management conference.

About 350 people have been killed by guns in schools since 1993, said Allan Garcia, a sergeant with the Middletown, R.I., police department and a nationally recognized instructor in preventing school violence.

“If we had 350 kids killed by fire since 1993, can you imagine the upheaval?” Garcia said.

No mass shootings have occurred along the Grand Strand, but solitary incidents involving guns and knives in schools have been reported, including a 2007 incident in which a Myrtle Beach high school student was shot by a gun he had at school.

Area school officials did not return calls for comment Thursday.

Emergency managers and first-responders were silent as photographs flashed on a screen of Columbine High School and a memorial to the 13 people killed there April 20, 1999.

“The memorial at Columbine High School is probably one of the most chilling places I’ve ever visited. I walked away from it a better person and even more driven to get this message across to prevent it,” Garcia said. “Columbine is known as the Super Bowl of shooter events. Columbine is no different than any other community. Don’t make the grave mistake of thinking it can’t happen here.”

Police, school officials and emergency managers should “think outside the box” when it comes to preparing for violence at a school, he said.

“It’s not always the 17-year-old emotionally disturbed boy,” Garcia said as a photo flashed on the screen of 6-year-old Dedrick Owens, who killed a classmate in 2000 and is the youngest school shooter. “Any threat involving a firearm or mention of a firearm [at a school], we owe it to ourselves and our local community to do something about it.”

School shooters typically exhibit signs of trouble before the incident, so parents, police officers and educators should be aware of rumors about students who talk about using a firearm and investigate those potential problems, Garcia said.

He urged the conference attendees to plan and publicize joint training with school officials and community leaders because “less than one-tenth of 1 percent of educators have training” to deal with a school shooting.

Garcia had attendees role play as students and a teacher and plan what to do when a school shooter walked into the classroom.

Their response was to use their shoes and textbooks to hit the shooter when he walked into the room as they charged him and pushed him to the ground to get his weapons away from him.

“You have to work together to develop realistic school safety plans in response to various threats,” Garcia said. “There’s other things to do besides panic and teachers need to know this.”