Marysville school shooting: 911 calls shed light on chaos, teacher's courage

First-year teacher Megan Silberberger has been hailed as a hero, but in a statement after the shooting at Marysville-Pilchuck High School in Washington State, she said she'd rather be known as a schoolteacher.

|
Ted S. Warren/AP/File
In this photo taken Oct. 27, 2014, an edition of The Daily Herald from Everett, Wash. with the headline "Dreaded Day in Marysville" is shown as part of a growing memorial on a fence around Marysville Pilchuck High School in Marysville, Wash. On Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2014, authorities released the 911 calls from students, parents, neighbors, school workers and teacher Megan Silberberger, who tried to intervene when a freshman student, Jaylen Fryberg, opened fire at a group of friends at the school on Oct. 24, 2014.

The 911 calls from the mass shooting at Marysville-Pilchuck High School in Washington State shed more light on the chaos that students, parents, and school staff faced on Oct. 24, when freshman Jaylen Fryberg attacked classmates and then killed himself.

Four of the teen victims died from their injuries. No one knows if more students may have been hurt were it not for first-year teacher Megan Silberberger confronting Jaylen.

Ms. Silberberger ran toward him shouting “Stop!,” but he killed himself before she reached him, Randy Davis, president of the Marysville Education Association, said in a report by The Seattle Times.

In her 911 call, Silberberger said, “I have the shooter. One shooter ... I have him down.... I need help.” She said he was a student but added, "I do not know his name. I tried to stop him before he shot himself.... I don't know how many are down. I tried to stop him."

She’s been hailed as a hero, but in a statement after the shooting, she did not cast herself as such: “I reacted exactly like all my colleagues would in this type of event. I am a schoolteacher, and like all teachers, I am committed to the safety and well-being of my students,” she said, as reported by The Seattle Times.

The teacher indeed acted bravely, but “in these situations, we’re looking for a hero and we have to be cautious,” urges school security expert Kenneth Trump.

It shouldn’t become policy for teachers to be expected to confront shooters, he says, because despite the anecdotes about brave individuals making a difference, there are just as many if not more stories about school staff members getting killed themselves when they move toward a shooter – such as a middle-school teacher in Sparks, Nev., last year.

The 911 tapes also reveal the challenges for families, school officials, and law enforcement when students run out of a school instead of following recommended lockdown procedures, Mr. Trump says.

A crying mother called 911 to report that her daughter had texted her. "My daughter is not following lockdown directions, and she and other kids have run from their classroom," the woman said. "She's away from her classroom right now. What advice can I give her?"

A neighbor called 911 to say a group of students had climbed over her fence and some of them had witnessed the shooting. The operator advised her to have the students stay there until the police could arrive to interview them.

Students will sometimes make individual decisions to flee, Trump says, but generally lockdown is safer because the possible dangers outside the school are unknown. Often school shootings are by individuals acting alone, but that shouldn’t be assumed, he says.

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Marysville school shooting: 911 calls shed light on chaos, teacher's courage
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2014/1113/Marysville-school-shooting-911-calls-shed-light-on-chaos-teacher-s-courage
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe