A student fired a gun in a Fuquay-Varina school classroom recently. No one was hurt and the shooter was taken into custody. | freestockcenter/Freepik
A student fired a gun in a Fuquay-Varina school classroom recently. No one was hurt and the shooter was taken into custody. | freestockcenter/Freepik
A sixth-grader fired a shot inside a school classroom last week, leading Fuquay-Varina Middle School to dismiss classes for the day before they had even really started.
A teacher disarmed the student before more damage was done.
A first-floor window with a bullet hole was visible when television news crews arrived. Although the bullet did not hit any person, many students were shaken up by the incident.
“I was traumatized a lot,” student Elias Brunson told WRAL afterward. “I was happy my mom was there to calm me down.”
Brunson’s mother works at the school, and they were together in a classroom when police arrived just after 8 a.m. Authorities have determined the threat was not directed at any particular person.
Besides canceling classes on Thursday, school officials determined that Friday would be a teacher work day so students would have more time to process their responses to the situation.
Many parents rushed to the school to pick up their students.
"My son texted me when I was at work,” parent Gerson Ortiz told WRAL. “I thought it was a drill of some sort. He told me, 'No, it's real.' He was scared, told me to please come."
Ortiz said his son was next to the student who fired the gun.
“You hear it on the news, and next thing you know you’re in the middle of a situation,” Ortiz said. “He was sitting next to the kid – actually behind the kid – when the whole situation went down."
Language arts teacher Lynn Guilliams intervened to stop the student from doing any more damage.
Sixth-grader Tessa Dean said she heard another student say he hated the school, then she saw Guilliams jump up and take action.
"My teacher was just like, 'Give me your gun, right now, right now,’” Dean recounted to WRAL. “My teacher called the principal and said, 'I have the gun. It’s in my possession.'"
A Wake County Public School System spokesperson said the student was taken into police custody. It was not immediately clear how the student got the gun.
"It’s so scary when you know the kid, know where they live, they ride the bus with you and you don’t know they have a gun,” Dean said.
This was the second threat to a Wake County public school this week, as all three Wakefield schools were placed on lockdown on Tuesday when police responded to a threat—which was later determined to not be credible—made against the school.
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