APD and APS Explain Delay in Releasing Students After Shooting
About four hours after the shooting at Price Middle School, APS Superintendent Erroll Davis and Chief George Turner of the Atlanta Police Department told reporters why it took so long for parents to be reunited with their children. The broadcast version of this story.
Superintendent Davis made clear that immediately after the shooting, safety was the department’s first priority. Davis said, “there is nothing more important than the safety and security of our students.”
After the shooting of a 14-year-old student by another student on the campus of Price Middle School, Davis said APD and APS immediately secured the campus and disarmed the suspect. They moved into standard emergency procedures and alerted the parents, he said.
“This was a coordinated safety and security effort between APD and our own officers. We took additional time in releasing the students to ensure all safety and security procedures were followed.”
Davis admitted they couldn’t release the students as quickly as parents wanted, but said they were following safety procedures.
The shooting occurred just before 2 p.m. – and the first buses left the school around 5 o’clock.
APD Chief Turner said they went into “Hard Lockdown” to allow for SWAT teams and other personnel to make sure there were no more injured people or additional weapons on campus.
“That means no one leaves the location or enters into the locations. We maintain security of that particular building and maintain everything is in place and allow our people to go in one room at a time.”
APS Superintendent Davis says they do not yet know how someone got a gun past the metal detector. Nor, he said, do they know if the shooting was accidental.
“Even if it is or was accidental, that still raises the issue of why a child has a gun, and why a child has a gun on our campus.”
According to Chief Turner, it was an armed school resource officer who disarmed and arrested the student suspect.