School Shooter May Have Expected Partner Kentucky Sheriff Wonders Why Ninth-Grader Had So Many Guns

Amid talk of installing metal detectors at the school doors and in the first day of a new policy of searching students’ backpacks for guns, a still-puzzled county sheriff wondered out loud whether the 14-year-old boy who killed three of his classmates in an early morning prayer circle acted alone, or expected help.

After the shooting Monday at Heath High School that left three girls dead and five other students wounded, McCracken County Sheriff Frank Augustus said the ninth-grader who confessed to the shootings, Michael Carneal, might not have known himself why he committed the seemingly senseless act.

But Wednesday, the sheriff and others wondered about a possibility that few here want to believe: What if Carneal, who carried five guns into the school Monday, expected someone else to join in the bloody attack in the school lobby?

Or, at least, what if someone else helped plan it? “I may be totally out of whack here,” said the sheriff, “but I believe there’s someone else involved.”

In front of some 40 students, Carneal, who has confessed, shot the students with a .22-caliber semiautomatic pistol after they had just finished a prayer meeting.

But Carneal also had with him four other guns - two shotguns and two .22-caliber rifles - hidden in a blanket wrapped with duct tape. He had told a suspicious teacher that the bundle was part of a science project.

Why would the boy have smuggled so many guns into school, unless he expected to share them with an accomplice, or accomplices, the sheriff wondered.

Carneal has been charged with three slayings, attempted murder and burglary. He stole the guns used in the attack from a neighbor.