Alpine High School Active Shooter Story Unfolds Differently; Officer Involved Shooting Wounds One

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Category: Crime

Published on Saturday, 10 September 2016 14:35

Written by Janet Walker

A freshman girl in West Texas committed suicide with a single self-inflicted gunshot this week after wounding a fellow female student at Alpine High School after the directed incident escalated resulting in an officer involved shooting of a fellow first responder.

While some are blaming the frenzied response on media crazed stories and instant access to unfolding tragedies and mass shootings, the facts remain the same an adolescent girl, in ninth grade committed suicide with a self-inflicted head wound.

The chaos at the scene, after the report of an active high school shooter, is as much from unknown as fear of the possible. In this case, the 14-year-old single shooter took her own life after wounding a fellow classmate.

Alpine, Texas is a small, almost closed door, community, geographically segregated from bigger city influences of Dallas, Houston or El Paso even Midland is some distance from the small community with a student body of 250.

A local Sherriff on patrol happened onto the scene entered the building and found what was initially considered a secondary shooter in the girl’s restroom, dead. The girl, new to the area, and by all accounts a good student died by her own hand.

According to police at the time of the shooting, four active crime scenes including two bomb threats were targeting this small community. The high school chaos brought in Homeland Security and every available Federal, State and local officer to a scene where the incident was over, in reality, before the police arrived.

Student and faculty went into panic mode. Some students reported seeing blood in the hallways and only knowing the totals of dead from mass shootings ran; others exited the building in a more orderly fashion.

In our culture and society, the police presence and protocols are important and necessary to stop any threat.

By the end of the day the only other shots fired were officer involved.