"There've been shots fired at St. Margaret's school."
Though school shootings happened everywhere around the world, many people tended to believe it was more of an American problem. Statistically, it was far more likely to happen in the States, as, since 1966, there have been 95 occasions on which someone has used a gun in a school in the US. Those 95 occasions have resulted in 216 deaths and many more injuries. When you compared that to the statistics in Canada, nine shootings, 26 deaths, since 1902 or in Europe, 19 shootings (only 2 in the UK), 87 deaths since 1913, it does seem far more likely to happen in the United States.
D. I. Natalie Chandler's sober announcement galvanized men and women around the squad room into action. Detectives and uniformed Police Constable's hurried out of the room, abandoning paperwork in favor of responding to a potential mass casualty incident. Support personnel dived for their phones, making the necessary calls to ensure that there would be plenty of medical responders as well as armed response units, in case the shooter (or shooters) was still on scene.
Amidst the flurry of activity, Senior Crown Prosecutor James Steel and his junior associate Alesha Phillips, whom had been at the station discussing a few detail of an upcoming trial with the arresting officers, exchanged looks and trailed Chandler out of the station house. A school shooting was the sort of incident that was going to cause and uproar and, while representatives of CPS usually didn't accompany officers to the scene of a crime in progress, it wouldn't hurt to have feet on the ground once the bullets stopped flying.
The thought that someone had opened fire at a primary school, filled with young children, was horrific, but it was their job to respond to such incidents with professionalism and speed.
Chandler piled into the passenger seat beside Detective Sergeant Ronnie Brooks. Brook's partner, Matt Devlin clambered into the back with James and Alesha. In the rearview mirror, she could see their faces, Matt, pale and silent, leaning forward as if he could will the car to move faster, Alesha, nervous and gripping Matt's arm, James, tense and knowing they were about to arrive at a scene one hoped never to see.
The police band radio mounted to the dashboard was tuned to the appropriate frequency and sounds of the first responders echoed through the car. Clearly, the scene was still a mess. No one was quite sure exactly when it happened, just that there were many wounded, some dead and a whole lot of terrified children.
They spilled out of the vehicle, and joined small knot of Officers at the back of the ARV. Superintendent Peters was yelling for a report. Children were crying. There were cries of pain in the air.
Why here? Why attack little children? Natalie knew there could be no answer to that question that would provide comfort.
"We have personnel clearing the building and evacuating any lingering pockets of staff and students. We've one of the shooters in custody, a 15 year old boy. He's unconscious, a teacher hit him with a fire extinguisher, so we've yet to…."
An explosion rocked the ground, debris flying out from the building and smoke billowing freely from the ravaged frame of the school. From the area where all the evacuated students had been gathered, renewed screams of fear and sobbing echoed freely.
Before the tinnitus could even begin to fade, Matt broke away from the huddle of officers, ducking around several vans, sprinting over to the nearby lot where the staff and students were herded. Alesha took a step after him, but James grabbed her, pulling her back to the relative safety of the ARV's armored exterior.
Natalie wasn't sure what her detective thought to do over there, but it wasn't like they were able to do a hell of a lot until armed response cleared the building. Hopefully, there wouldn't be any more explosions. Emergency personnel were treating the less severe injuries and rushing the critical to hospital, but there weren't enough medics to attend to every screaming child, so who knew how many injured there really were.
From the radios, voices called out from inside the building. Mostly, there was hacking and coughing as they choked on the debris clogged air, but a few voices called out.
"Officers down! Officers down!"
"This wall looks like it's going to come down!"
"My leg's trapped…Can't see my partner…"
It was a horrific thing to hear one's colleagues crying out in fear and pain. The officers on the bomb squad were quick to order everyone further back, as the building was unsafe until they cleared it, searched for any further explosives.
"All right," Superintendent Peters barked, "Go interview any teachers you can find. See if any of them can shed any more light on this situation."
It was all they could do for the moment.
The lot across the street was full of sobbing children, terrified teachers and overtaxed rescue workers. Already, parents were gathered further back, but were not being allowed into the area yet, not until all the injuries could be assessed and addressed.
Over in a cluster of children, they could see Matt holding a pair of sobbing little girls, a look of stark relief mixed with dread on his face. "Oh hell," Ronnie muttered, glancing from Matt to the school and back. "I think his nieces go here. Baby sister's a teacher too."
That explained Matt's frantic sprint and the way he kept glancing around the crowd, terror growing in his eyes. He was looking for his sister and not seeing her amongst the crowds.
Taking charge, Natalie said, "Ron, why don't you and James begin with the teachers. Alesha, we'll see to the wounded who aren't being rushed off."
They split into two groups to take statements. The triage area, where injured, but not emergent, cases were waiting, was actually a bit less chaotic than the larger lot. Most of the wounded children were stunned and sniffling and the adults were trying to comfort them despite their own injuries.
"Let me go!" One young woman was struggling against the medics trying to bandage a free flowing gash on her brow. Her left bicep was already wrapped in a tight, white dressing, but from the way she was moving the limb, there was no serious damage. In fact, the medic restraining her was having difficulty.
Even if she hadn't known her young detective had a sibling on staff at the school, Natalie would have mused that the injured young woman looked like she'd sprung from the same gene pool as Matt. Fair skin, leeched pale by blood loss, sharp blue eyes and soft golden brown hair, she had the same delicate, refined features and surprisingly square jaw as her brother.
Beside her, Alesha had clearly come to the same conclusion. "I think that might be Matt's sister," she said and Natalie nodded.
"I'm going to speak with some of the others," the detective murmured, "Why don't you go tell her Mattie's here and looks to have found their nieces safe and sound."
It was nearly six hours later before Natalie got a good look at her people (and James and Alesha) again. The bomb squad had found no further explosives and foot patrol had nabbed the two other shooters while they were fleeing the scene. All that was left was aftermath, the destruction and the desire to find out why they felt the need to shoot innocent children and attempt to demolish a school. It seemed a pyrrhic victory in the face of lost lives.
At some point, rescue and interview efforts had shifted to Emergency, as the injured were taken away for treatment and the children checked over for shock.
Matt was sitting on the edge of his sister's cot, one of his nieces still in his arms. The other little girl was being held by Alesha, while Megan, Matt's sister, was propped up, bandages covering her arm and the left side of her face, but she was speaking softly and clearly. Ronnie and James stood nearby, the latter looking far more ruffled and smudged than he usually did.
In the end they'd been able to piece together the series of events that had led to today's horror. Three boys, teenagers whom had attended St. Margaret's years earlier, decided the school was the root of the social problems they had suffered through out the entirety of their educational careers. So, they'd retuned to the school, planted explosives and opened fire. The plan had been to go down in a blaze of fire, but they had gotten nervous after seeing one of their own smashed in the face by a fire extinguisher.
Apparently, it ran in the Devlin genes to be a lot tougher than their sweet looks would imply, as Megan had been the teacher wielding the extinguisher. Unfortunately, she'd been shot (the bullet passed through the muscle of her upper arm) and cracked her head on a water fountain. She was going to be in hospital for a while.
James said prosecution would be fairly clear cut, aside from the fact that all three boys were clearly disturbed, but they were quite willing to fess up to all the havok they had wrought..
When all was said and done, the best thing that could be said about the day was that it could have been a lot worse.
Well, that turned out rather depressing, didn't it?
Hmmm, perhaps I'll do an aftermath story after the Holidays…..