How Moses Lake processes a deadly school shooting 30 years later: ‘If you try to bury it, it’ll get to you’

MOSES LAKE – Football Coach Jason McLean won’t ever forget the exact date he started teaching: Monday, Feb. 4, 1996.

“I know that day very well,” the Moses Lake educator said. “I met some very special people.”

He’d been asked to take over teaching an algebra class at Frontier Junior High the Sunday night before.

“At first I wasn’t sure I was the right person for the job,” McLean recalled. “But then again, who could be?”

It was just days after a 14-year-old student brought a rifle to the school and opened fire in that algebra classroom the afternoon of Feb. 2. The shooter, who remains in prison, killed teacher Leona Caires, 49, and two 14-year-old students, Arnold “Arnie” Fritz and Manuel Vela Jr. Natalie Hintz, then 13, suffered multiple bullet wounds in her arm and chest, but survived the shooting.

“On that first day, I saw courage. I saw resilience that left a lasting impact,” McLean said. “Despite all the weight of the tragedy we had all just experienced, these students showed up for each other.”

He said he recalls all surviving students in that algebra classroom, with the exception of Natalie, returned to school that Monday. They wanted to “respect and follow through on what Mrs. Caires would expect from them,” he said.

Much like they did 30 years ago, all but four of the students in that classroom returned to Frontier Junior High, now Middle School, in Moses Lake for a “We Remember” gathering just before the shooting’s 30 -year anniversary on Monday. Some returned to Moses Lake from as far as Arizona, New York or California.

“It was time I felt, after 30 years, that we needed to get together and not to rehash or relive what happened, but really to hug on one another,” said Jon Lane, the gym teacher who disarmed Barry Loukaitis, the shooter, and helped students escape the classroom.

Though solemn, the gathering was meant as a way to heal, Lane said, he helped organize the event with the Caires family. Over 100 former students, family of those killed, staff, first responders and community members filled the school’s cafeteria. Lane hoped that by bringing people together, no one would have to suffer in silence.

“It was a terrible tragedy; nobody should go through it, but the only way you can get through it is through hugging and loving on one another, talking it out,” Lane said. “If you try to bury it, it’ll get you. I really believe that.”

It was a bittersweet gathering, said Vela’s parents. Each member of his family wore a button with his yearbook photo on it.

“It was hard back then, but as we’re aging, to me it’s getting deeper,” said Cristina Licha Vela, Manuel’s mother.

The couple remember their son as a “respectful kid that loves family,” father Manuel Vela Sr. said.

“The reason we had Dylan, my son, is because he kept bugging us for more siblings,” Vela Sr. laughed.

Licha Vela was five months pregnant with Dylan “when (Manuel) was taken from us,” she said. The couple named him Dylan Emmanuel in honor of their middle son.

“Manuel was my little best friend,” she said.

Vela Sr.’s recited a favorite memory with Manuel. The two were driving, and Vela Sr. hollered at a motorcycle that cut him off, “You stupid animal!” Manuel was around 4 at the time.

“Then anytime after that when he saw a motorcycle, he thought they were called animals,” Vela Sr. said.

As they embraced classmates of Manuel’s, now graying and in their 40s, the couple could only wonder what their son would be like at that age.

“Even though I can get teared up, it’s because I love it, you know?” Vela Sr. said, voice breaking. “It helps me know how great my son was and could have been, and that’s what makes me feel good.”

Nyla Fritz still has the correspondence her brother Arnie sent her while she was away at college. Seven years his senior, she sent him a few already addressed and stamped envelopes so he could write her letters.

Instead of filling an envelope with a letter for his sister, Arnie crammed his message on the outside of the envelope. It was endearing, Fritz said, thinking her brother didn’t understand how to send mail.

“I was reading the whole thing thinking, ‘Oh, he just didn’t get it,’ ” She recalled. “Then the last line it said, ‘P.S. Next time send some paper.’ ”

Arnie was a typical funny and awkward teenage boy, his sister said. Evelyn Ellestad, Arnie’s grandmother who will turn 100 in June, said she was incredibly close with her grandson. He loved the outdoors, frequently taking camping trips.

Though he was shy, “he was very friendly and loving to everybody,” Ellestad said.

“He’s a good boy,” she said.

Nyla Fritz, now an educator herself, said the gathering was an important time to reflect on what they’d been through, especially pertinent since mass school shootings of this caliber were relatively uncommon 30 years ago. Survivors and family members were left grappling with something that didn’t even seem like a possibility .

“They didn’t have the term ‘school shooting’ to even explain what happened,” she said. “To see now that active shootings are almost normal, that is a shame.

“It was one of the first and I will always say, what if we had responded as a country differently?”

Much like Manuel’s family, Nyla Fritz was happy to see the students commune with each other, she said. It was a step toward healing that many didn’t realize how badly they needed.

“I’m really, really happy that it happened,” Vela Sr. said of the gathering, which he initially planned to miss. “It’s helping me already.”

Elena Perry can be reached at (509) 459-5270 or by email at elenap@spokesman.com.