A teacher who is also a reserve police officer trained in firearm use ‘accidentally’ discharged a gun Tuesday at Seaside High School in Monterey County, Calif., during a class devoted to public safety, school officials said in a statement. A male student was reported to have sustained non-life-threatening injuries.
The weapon, which was not described, was pointed at the ceiling, according to a statement from the school, and debris fell from the ceiling.
Seaside Police Chief Abdul Pridgen told the Monterey County Weekly that a male student was “struck in the neck by ‘debris or fragmentation’ from something overhead.” Pridgen said whatever hit the student was not a bullet.
However, the student’s father, Fermin Gonzales, told KSBW 8 that it was his understanding that fragments from the bullet ricocheted off the ceiling and lodged in the boy’s neck. The father said the teacher told the class before pointing the gun at the ceiling that he was doing so to make sure his gun wasn’t loaded, something that can be determined visually.
“It’s the craziest thing,” Gonzales told the station. “It could have been very bad.”
Gonzales said he learned about the incident when his 17-year-old son came home with blood on his shirt and bullet fragments in his neck.
The boy’s mother, Crystal Gonzales, told the Associated Press Wednesday that the incident took place about 10:30 in the morning and that the class continued after the gun discharge, even though her son was injured. She said she did not hear about it until her son called her hours later and went to a relative’s home.
“I’m still really upset no one called a nurse or a paramedic to come check on the students,” she told the AP. “They just sat there until the bell rang.”
“He’s shaken up, but he’s going to be okay. I’m just pretty upset that no one told us anything and we had to call the police ourselves to report it,” the father told the TV station.
The teen was treated at a hospital where the boy’s parents took him.
A spokeswoman at the Monterey Peninsula Unified School District told The Washington Post Wednesday that they would not comment further until an investigation was completed.
The teacher was identified by police as Dennis Alexander, who teaches math as well as a course in the administration of justice. Alexander is a reserve police officer for Sand City and a Seaside city councilman. He did not respond to emails from The Washington Post seeking comment. He has reportedly apologized for the incident.
The Monterey County Weekly, quoting Sand City Police Chief Brian Ferrante, reported that Alexander had his last gun safety training less than a year ago. “I have concerns about why he was displaying a loaded firearm in a classroom,” Ferrante told KSBW. “We will be looking into that.”
Exactly why the teacher was displaying the weapon at all was not entirely clear. Police said he was “providing instruction related to public safety.”
The father told KSBW that the teacher was preparing to use the gun to show how to disarm someone.
Daniel “PK” Diffenbaugh, superintendent of the Monterey Peninsula Unified School District, told the Weekly on Tuesday that the incident occurred during the administration of justice class, a career track course offered by the school. “Clearly, we will revisit this incident to ensure that something like this would never happen again.”
Diffenbaugh noted that state law and school policy forbids carrying firearms on campus without authorization. Alexander, he said, was not authorized.
“I think a lot of questions are on parents’ minds are, why a teacher would be pointing a loaded firearm at the ceiling in front of students,” Diffenbaugh told KSBW. “Clearly, in this incident, protocols were not followed.”
The teacher has been placed on administrative leave while an investigation takes place, according to the school. The Sand City Police Department also placed Alexander on administrative leave.
The incident comes amid a national debate on how to protect students from mass shootings like the one that took the lives of 17 people in Parkland, Fla., on Feb. 14. Among the proposals advanced is training and arming teachers, an approach favored by President Trump, among others, but opposed by a majority of the teachers in the National Education Association, including many who said in an NEA survey that it would make them feel less safe.
In some places, demonstrators chanted and held signs. At other schools, students stood in silence. In Atlanta, some students took a knee.
Thousands of New York City students converged on central locations — Columbus Circle, Battery Park, Brooklyn Borough Hall, Lincoln Center.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, stretched out on the sidewalk as part of a “die-in” with students in Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan, the former home of the Occupy Wall Street protests.
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
Hundreds sat in the middle of West 62nd Street for several minutes before rising to their feet and shouting, “No more violence.” A cry of “Trump Tower!” sent dozens of protesters marching toward the Trump International Hotel and Tower across Broadway. Onlookers gave them fist-bumps.
In Washington, thousands left their classrooms in the city and its suburbs and marched to the Capitol steps, their high-pitched voices battling against the stiff wind: “Hey-hey, ho-ho, the N.R.A. has got to go!” One sign said: “Fix This, Before I Text My Mom from Under A Desk.”
Members of Congress, overwhelmingly Democratic, emerged from the Capitol to meet them. Trailed by aides and cameras, some legislators high-fived the children in the front rows, others took selfies, and nearly all soon learned that the young protesters had no idea who they were.
Except, of course, for “BERNIE SANDERS!” which the protesters screamed at the Vermont senator, as well at some other white-haired, bespectacled legislators.
PhotoA screenshot of a Snap map for student walkouts in the New York City area.
Asked by reporters about the walkouts, Raj Shah, Mr. Trump’s deputy press secretary, said the president “shares the students’ concerns about school safety” and cited his support for mental health and background check improvements.
As the hours passed, the walkouts moved west across the country.
“It’s 10 o’clock,” said a man on the intercom at Perspectives Charter Schools on Chicago’s South Side. With that, hundreds of students streamed out of their classrooms and into the neighborhood, marching past modest brick homes, a Walgreens and multiple churches.
PhotoPosters advertising the walkout at Perspectives Charter Schools in Chicago. Credit
Alyssa Schukar for The New York Times
Several current and former Perspectives students have been killed in recent years, the school president said.
“You see different types of violence going on,” said Armaria Broyles, a junior who helped lead the walkout and whose older brother was killed in a shooting. “We all want a good community and we all want to make a change.”
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
At Santa Monica High School in Southern California, teachers guided hundreds of students to the football field. It felt like a cross between a political rally and pep rally, with dozens of students wearing orange T-shirts, the color of the gun control movement, and #neveragain scrawled onto their arms in black eyeliner.
“It is our duty to win,” Roger Gawne, a freshman and one of the protest organizers, yelled to the crowd.
Video
What Makes #NeverAgain Different?
The protests calling for stricter gun control measures come on the heels of other youth movements, but the momentum they have gained makes them stand out.
By NEETI UPADHYE on Publish Date February 24, 2018.
Although the walkouts commanded attention on cable television and social media for much of Wednesday, it also was clear that many students did not participate, especially in rural and conservative areas where gun control is not popular.
At Bartlesville High School in Bartlesville, Okla., where hundreds of students walked out of class last month to protest cuts in state education funding, nothing at all happened at 10 a.m.
“I haven’t heard a word about it,” the principal, LaDonna Chancellor, said of the gun protest.
In Iowa, Russell Reiter, superintendent of the Oskaloosa Community School District, suggested that temperatures below 40 degrees may have encouraged students to stay indoors, but he also said that “students here are just not interested in what is going on in bigger cities.”
There was opposition even in liberal Santa Monica. Just after the organizers of the walkout there read the names of the Parkland victims, another student went on stage, grabbed the microphone and shouted “Support the Second Amendment!” before he was called off by administrators.
‘We Need More Than Just 17 Minutes’
Some of the day’s most poignant demonstrations happened at schools whose names are now synonymous with shootings.
Watched by a phalanx of reporters, camera operators and supporters, hundreds of students crowded onto the football field at Stoneman Douglas High shortly after 10 a.m.
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
A month after the Feb. 14 shooting, notes of condolence, fading flowers and stuffed toys, damp from recent rain, still lay on the grass outside the school and affixed to metal fences.
The walkout was allowed by the school, but several students said they were warned that they would not be permitted back onto the campus for the day if they left school grounds. Despite the warning, a couple of hundred students marched to a nearby park for another demonstration.
PhotoStudents from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., gathered at the nearby Pine Trails Park. Credit
Saul Martinez for The New York Times
“We need more than just 17 minutes,” Nicolle Montgomerie, 17, a junior, said as she walked toward the park.
An email from the school soon went out telling students they could return.
In Newtown, Conn., where 26 people were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, hundreds of students at Newtown High School gathered in a parking lot near the football field. Two hours later, it was Columbine’s turn.
