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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

School Attack Worst Ever In Washington Deaths May Push State Onto 10 Most Violent List

Carla K. Johnson Staff writer

Friday’s shootings at Frontier Junior High in Moses Lake were the state’s first firearms fatalities inside a school and the worst episode of school violence in state history.

“This is a wake-up call to all of us,” said State Superintendent Judith Billings.

“It is incredible,” she added. “It’s such a tragedy that this would be the way a 14-year-old child would take to work through something.”

The killings should alert policymakers to the need for increased school security and training for students in conflict resolution, Billings said.

“All my compassion and sympathy goes to the families of the teacher and students,” Billings said. “I can’t imagine what it must be like to have something so totally unexpected crash into your life.”

Still, violence in schools is too commonplace. Since 1992, 137 people have been killed at U.S. schools, according to the National School Safety Center in Westlake Village, Calif., which tracks school-related violent deaths.

Friday’s deaths may push Washington state into the top 10 states for school violence, according to center estimates.

California with 32 deaths heads the center’s list of states. Washington had ranked 11th with four deaths.

Those four deaths include two suicides that occurred outside schools when classes were not in session.

They also include the shooting of a teacher outside Whitman Middle School in Seattle by a former student who claimed to have been abused by him, and a Seattle 18-year-old who was shot and killed in a parking lot near a school dance in September 1994.

The center’s numbers do not include the death of a 16-year-old girl who died in March 1994 after she was shot in the head outside Ballard High School in Seattle. That incident was a gang-related drive-by shooting.

Spokane Superintendent Gary Livingston called the Moses Lake shootings “an incredible tragedy.”

“I’ll say what I’ve said before: If it’s happening in our community, on the weekends and in homes, the next step is it’s probably going to happen in a school,” Livingston said.

“What are we going to do collectively to support kids so they don’t look at this as their last recourse?”

This school year, Spokane School District has counted 29 weapons incidents, including two involving guns. The district expelled two students in those cases: one who brought a .22-caliber rifle to the Vocational Skills Center and another who brought a .22-caliber pistol to Ferris High School.

, DataTimes