By Emma MacDonald
Editor’s note: On Thursday morning, two teens were killed and three were wounded at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, California, when a student, identified by police as Nathaniel Berhow, pulled a .45-caliber handgun from his backpack and opened fire on classmates before turning the gun on himself. According to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, Thursday was Berhow’s 16th birthday. The reporting on the following story took place this fall as metro Atlanta teens, like young people across the nation, become increasingly troubled by school violence.
I vividly remember seeing the news notification for the shooting in El Paso, Texas, pop up on my phone that Saturday night in August. I had a friend sleeping over, and as soon as I read the headline, I remember rattling off the death toll to her — 22 people dead and 26 wounded — as I was consistently updated by the various news notifications I have enabled on my phone.
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