Students at Oxford High School heard rumors that a school shooting would occur on Tuesday. Those rumors turned out to be true.
Three students were killed and eight others were injured in the Detroit suburb.
Tate Myre, a 16-year-old football player, died in the back of a patrol car as a police officer tried to race him to a hospital. 14-year-old Hana St. Juliana and 17-year-old Madisyn Baldwin also succumbed to gunshot wounds.
A fourth teenager was on a ventilator Tuesday night. “It’s looking very tough for this young girl,” said Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard.
Little is known about the 15-year-old suspect, a sophomore, who was apprehended by police just five minutes after his shooting spree began. Bouchard said he was still in the school and had seven rounds of ammunition loaded in his gun when he was arrested.
“I believe they literally saved lives having taken down the suspect with a loaded firearm while still in the building,” Bouchard said.
The suspect’s semi-automatic handgun was reportedly purchased by his father on Black Friday, just four days before the fatal shooting . Bouchard said neither the suspect nor his family has been cooperative.
The Detroit Free Press reports:
Law enforcement searched the suspect’s home Tuesday, located in Oxford, and seized the suspect’s cellphone. While Bouchard said he was not sure what else law enforcement found at the home, he appeared open to the idea that the suspect’s parents could face charges related to the use of the father’s gun.
“That will all be up to the prosecutor,” Bouchard said, when asked whether the parents of the suspect could face charges.
The Free Press adds:
Multiple parents told the Free Press that their children enrolled at the school heard rumors of some violence ahead of school Tuesday; some took it seriously enough to prevent their children from attending classes in person.
The Associated Press says that the shooting may have been foreshadowed in social media posts:
Bouchard said authorities were made aware of allegations circulating on social media that there had been threats of a shooting at the roughly 1,700-student school, but he said they didn’t know about the rumors until after the attack. Bouchard stressed how crucial it is for tips of the kind to be sent to authorities, while also cautioning against spreading social media rumors about the attack before a full investigation.
Undersheriff Mike McCabe downplayed the significance of an incident in early November when a deer head was thrown off the school roof, which he said was “absolutely unrelated” to the shooting. The vandalism prompted school administrators to post two letters to parents on the school’s website earlier in November, saying they were responding to rumors of a threat against the school but had found none.
The AP continues:
A concerned parent, Robin Redding, said her son, Treshan Bryant, is a 12th grader at the school but stayed home Tuesday. Redding said her son had heard threats that there could be a shooting.
“This couldn’t be just random,” she said.
Bryant said he texted several younger cousins in the morning and they said they didn’t want to go to school, and he got a bad feeling. He asked his mom if he could do his assignments online.
Bryant said he had heard vague threats “for a long time now” about plans for a shooting.
Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald said she’ll likely file charges against the shooter on Wednesday.
Before speaking at an event in Minnesota on Tuesday, President Joe Biden offered his condolences: “As we learn the full details, my heart goes out to the families enduring the unimaginable grief of losing a loved one.”
