A North Texas community is shaken following the tragic fatal shooting at a local high school.
In Arlington on Monday morning, a student opened fire on the Lamar High School campus, killing one peer and sending another to the hospital.
As previously reported in The Dallas Express, the Arlington Police Department (APD) responded to multiple calls about gunfire outside Lamar High School just before 7 a.m. When they arrived, they found two students injured — one male and one female. The former died of his wounds after being transported to a hospital.
NBC 5 reported that APD had determined the suspect used a long gun, specifically a shotgun, after finding shotgun shells in the suspect’s backpack.
Students, parents, and campus staff are now grappling with the incident, some of whom witnessed its aftermath.
Ninth-grader Stephanie Escamilla told WFAA that she saw one of the victims lying on the ground, stating, “I thought they were like passed out or something, because it didn’t seem that bad because two people were covering it, the principal and a police officer.”
Parents wrestle with what some say is a new normal as the district sent notifications of the shooting.
“You can’t even send your kids to school nowadays. This isn’t something they should have to get used to, but it seems to be that this is our norm,” said Lamar High School parent Charmeka Smith, speaking with The Dallas Morning News.
The grandmother of a Lamar High School freshman also expressed her anxiety after reuniting with her granddaughter once the school’s lockdown lifted.
“This is my first time dealing with something like this,” Marti Sanchez told WFAA. “You don’t know nowadays, it can happen in a mall, it can happen in a grocery store, it can happen anywhere.”
Tim Ciesco, a spokesperson for APD, told The Dallas Express that homicide detectives are still trying to determine a motive for the shooting and have yet to figure out how the suspect got the weapon.
The 15-year-old suspect, whose name has not yet been released by authorities because they are a minor, was arrested off-campus shortly after the shooting and is being charged with capital murder. They are currently in juvenile detention and will not have another hearing for 10 days, WFAA reported.
“The Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office has publicly identified the victim as 16-year-old Ja’Shawn Poirier. They determined his cause of death was shotgun wounds to the head and chest and his manner of death was homicide,” Ciesco informed The Dallas Express.
School security has been a pressing issue weighing on the minds of Texans, especially after the massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde last May exposed several vulnerabilities on the campus, as previously reported in The Dallas Express.
Even closer to home and just one day after the Lamar High School shooting, another school shooting occurred at a Dallas Independent School District (DISD) campus. As reported by The Dallas Express, a student was shot in the arm shortly after school let out at Thomas Jefferson High School in Dallas on Tuesday.