Grady shooting shows the power of social media
Here is the power and reach of social media. My daughter in New York called to alert me to a shooting at Grady High School in Atlanta as a friend of hers in North Carolina posted a Facebook note about it after getting a text from his sister, a Grady student.
It turned out that a female student accidentally shot herself in the leg in the school parking lot this morning. Police have the gun, and the wounded student is at the hospital. Everyone at the school is safe. Grady is on lockdown, but classes will resume in a few minutes, according to student Facebook postings.
APS has been sending out alerts to worried Grady parents, but it appears that students inside the school were never in danger. (Why a Grady student showed up at school with a gun or why she was handling a gun in the parking lot is not clear.)
If you want to see an amazing photo and read a minute-by-minute accounting of the APS Twitter reports, go to the Southerner, Grady’s award-winning student newspaper. (Evidence of why this student paper wins awards: These dedicated young journalists began posting this stuff in the midst of the event.)
One Grady journalist, Joe Lavine, posted a photo of a gun he spotted on the ground. According to the caption with the photo: “In between the C200 building and the old basketball gym, Southerner staffer Joe Lavine observed this gun, which may have been used as a weapon in the incident that took place today. Nearby the gun, on the sidewalk, Lavine also saw a few drops of blood.”
–From Maureen Downey, for the AJC Get Schooled blog
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69 comments Add your comment
agent
February 28th, 2013
5:50 am
Too bad she didn’t shoot herself so that there would be one less moron in this world. She obviously brought a loaded gun to school to cause harm to another.
public school parent
February 28th, 2013
6:09 am
Midtown Teacher — you are frankly either highly dramatic or are listening to highly dramatic students; Walked those same halls, co taught in that school with a wide variety of students, had my own children attend there and I am currently aware of the safety procedures in place- I have seen them in action. You haven;t been there lately when they are doing a tsa type safety procedure so your comments are nothing but trying to inflame the public into attempting to paint Grady- an award winner in ROTC, newspaper, mock trial, debate, arts and robotics AND the one of the top ranked schools in the state of Georgia for AP exam passing rates- as being some sort of a midtown danger zone. It is a high school that welcomes all students and your damning comments are not the whole truth by a long long mile. My own children walked those halls and I was and still am more than happy that they got a full educational experience- not just useless test prep- at that supportive and welcoming school.
Private Citizen
February 28th, 2013
7:55 am
When I saw the press conference photo, I kept thinking that after the 5 minute podium time, Mr. Davis probably turned around and told the principal, “And by the way, I want you and your staff to pack up your desks and be gone from the building by 5 pm; these officers will escort you.”
Knives are one thing, guns are another
February 28th, 2013
8:22 am
High schools have always had drama, and students have always had fights. I went to a big rough-and-tumble high school twenty years ago, and a lot of the students carried knives.
The concerning aspects of this situation are 1) obviously this person didn’t know how to handle a gun, and 2) she thought it was a good idea to bring a loaded weapon to school anyways.
If she shot herself accidentally, she could have shot ANYONE accidentally. The fact that having a gun seems to be a prestige item for some students at Grady is extremely concerning to me, and I wonder how many other students at the school are trying to ‘live large’ (as the AJC article put it) by bringing a gun to school.
Mountain Man
February 28th, 2013
8:41 am
“No 17-year-old needs to have her life RUINED.”
So what do you propose? She brought a DEADLY WEAPON into a school. What was she going to do with it? Kill the person she perceived to be a bully?
You sound like “oh, she is just a kid, and she made a mistake, and we should give her unlimited chances to turn her life around, and she was brought up in poor conditions, and she is mentally retarded (we are finding out that ALL murderers now claim to be mentally retarded).
We will have MORE of these instances if we do not take a hard line with these perpetrators. See post from 3schoolkids above. This 4th grader may be tomorrow’s school murder perpetrator.
To Private Citizen
February 28th, 2013
8:48 am
If Erroll Davis tells the Principal, the VPs and assorted other top officials to pack and leave, the student body of Grady HS will stage a massive revolt. These kids gave the Royal F.U. to the nitwit Westboro baptists who targeted them for protest because the student body is proudly gay-supporting, and they will do the same to Erroll Davis and the likes of an outsider like you who mess with their home turf. They are highly diverse and intensely brainiac-proud of their wacky little bubble life. Black white and brown they know the girl better than you, they understand their situation better than you, with three of the seniors headed to the best Ivy League schools in the country i’d wager the top 20% are vastly smarter than you, and they’ll take care of their own, happily at your expense. APS may be stupid, but they ain’t that stupid…
MoFaux
February 28th, 2013
9:16 am
Dear “truth” in moderation: Just because you can’t find pictures of dead children online does not mean there is a Sandy Hook cover up. That’s quite a leap there buddy. I guess you also believe Osama is still alive? I personally found your post much more offensive than my light-hearted joke, which was removed for some odd reason. Talk about failure of subjective censorship…
Maureen Downey
February 28th, 2013
9:22 am
@Mo, I don’t see anything from you in either spam or moderation. So, not sure what happened to your post. I can tell you that the blog platform has been doing some odd things this week and your comment may have been a casualty.
Maureen
mystery poster
February 28th, 2013
9:31 am
Truth probably believe the Holocaust was not real, either.
Inman and Grady Safety
February 28th, 2013
9:31 am
“your comments are nothing but trying to inflame the public into attempting to paint Grady- an award winner in ROTC, newspaper, mock trial, debate, arts and robotics AND the one of the top ranked schools in the state of Georgia for AP exam passing rates- as being some sort of a midtown danger zone.”
There’s no need to “paint” the school anything. A school in which (at least) several kids carry guns and in which an actual shooting has taken place IS a danger zone.
A school can certainly be multi-award winning AND a danger zone, and that is exactly what Grady is. How can things be made better if we can’t acknowledge the truth we’re starting with?
Truth in Moderation
February 28th, 2013
9:41 am
@agent
Do you have a sign in your yard that says: I PROUDLY SUPPORT GUN CONTROL: NO GUNS INSIDE!
MoFaux
February 28th, 2013
10:23 am
Sorry Maureen, I see the post in question now. I swear it was missing earlier…perhaps I should have my coffee before making any posts. My bad.
Inman Safety
February 28th, 2013
10:27 am
“She said she didn’t know it was in there in her pocket because she just grabbed her jacket and didn’t know that it was in there,” Tukes’ mother said on Fox news.
Truth in Moderation
February 28th, 2013
10:52 am
“There’s no need to “paint” the school anything. A school in which (at least) several kids carry guns and in which an actual shooting has taken place IS a danger zone.” –
Hmmm. Let’s compare schools:
Grady- State of Georgia has strong 2nd Amendment support.
2012 school shooting deaths: ZERO
Sandy Hook- State of Connecticut has LIMITED 2nd Amendment support.
2012 school shooting deaths: TWENTY-SEVEN.
Also, Sandy Hook had just installed a new high tech security system with bullet proof glass at the front door, an automatic locking door, and a security camera surveillance system monitored by the front office.
Yet the shooter(s) supposedly entered by shooting out the front door glass. To this day, NO SECURITY CAMERA VIDEOS OF SCHOOL ENTRY OF THE SHOOTER(S) HAS BEEN RELEASED.
According to first video interview with “hero” Gene Rosen, who lives next door to the Sandy Hook fire department, and claims he took care of 6 of Ms. Soto’s students when they showed up at the end of his driveway, he heard multiple gunshots nearby at 9:15 am. He said the kids showed up at 9:30 am. THIS CONTRADICTS OTHER REPORTS THAT THE SHOOTER(S) ENTERED THE SCHOOL AFTER 9:30, AND THUS HAD TO SHOOT THE GLASS TO GET IN. In another video, a law enforcement spokesperson said the FIRST RESPONDERS shot through the glass. The entire case is like that. Adam Lanza’s SSI death notice (available on the internet) originally posted his date of death as 12/13/12 and his MOTHER’S as 12/14/12, the actual day of the shooting. The Black Honda Civic was NOT registered in Nancy Lanza’s name as reported by the media. It is clearly audible on the police scanner that the owner is Christopher Rodia. Since this got out, authorities have tried to deny this and say that it was a split track audio, which to those who heard the original UNEDITED version, this excuse doesn’t hold water.
ht tp://www.dailypaul.com/267333/who-is-christo-pher-a-rodia-and-why-was-his-car-found-at-sandy-hook-elm
Even so, this man’s name and address leads to a string of petty crimes and drug possession, including a BAG OF OXYCONTIN not in prescription containers. If you Google the man’s address, you can see a black “Honda-like” sedan parked in the driveway. George Uzar Jr. gave the same home address as Rodia’s when stopped for wreckless driving in 2012. He was 19 at the time. He too has been busted AT HIS PARENT’S home, not far from the Rodia address, for drug, gun and psilocybin mushroom possession. Interestinly, his father, George Uzar Sr. was raided at the family home in 2011 after an elaborate gun running sting operation involving Atty Gen office, ATF, and Connecticut state and local police. The local Mayor even showed up at this house for a drug bust photo op. It seems that Uzar Sr. was manufacturing MACHINE GUNS with sanded off serial numbers and selling them to the local chapter of a major MEXICAN DRUG CARTEL, called the LATIN KINGS. The whole family was there when the raid took place. Uzar Sr. didn’t resist and was arrested. Uzar Jr. was also arrested as they found more drugs, mushrooms and an illegal gun in his room. The wife, Allison Uzar, is never mentioned or charged. Uzar Sr. must have made a deal as he ended up with an unusually light sentence (son as well), but they nabbed around 15 of the gang members operating in Stamford, CT. Interestingly, Allison Uzar works in Stamford as well. She is the CORPORATE COMPLIANCE OFFICER for Perdue Pharma, A PRIVATELY HELD co. that holds the exclusive patent on OXYCONTIN, an opium based pain killer. HMMMMMMM.
Just A Teacher
February 28th, 2013
11:31 am
A 17 year old can (and, in this case, definitely should) be charged as an adult. Bringing a firearm to a public school is a felony and discharging one at the same location is probably at least another felony. There is no reason for her to bring a loaded gun to school, and she should serve time for doing so.
Truth in Moderation
February 28th, 2013
12:06 pm
“and she should serve time for doing so.”
Yes, she and HSBC banking executives.
“U.S. Justice Department granted a total walk to executives of the British-based bank HSBC for the largest drug-and-terrorism money-laundering case ever. Yes, they issued a fine – $1.9 billion, or about five weeks’ profit – but they didn’t extract so much as one dollar or one day in jail from any individual, despite a decade of stupefying abuses.”
ht tp://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/gangster-bankers-too-big-to-jail-20130214#ixzz2MDLmDDI0
Truth in Moderation
February 28th, 2013
1:28 pm
“Just because you can’t find pictures of dead children” –
I was just challenging readers to find the COVERED bodies of any Sandy Hook victim being brought out of the school. Or pictures and interviews of the survivors. As for the “death” photos of the children, those cannot be made available to the public by a Connecticut LAW which was passed, at the threat of resignation by Dr. Carver, the Chief Medical Examiner, just a year before the Sandy Hook incident. Everything I asked to be posted, was readily available after the Columbine shootings. The press actually did their job. I am not saying that no one died. But NO PROOF has been shown to the public. The parents of the alleged victims WERE NOT ALLOWED TO VIEW THE BODIES. They were only shown photos. ALL the funerals had closed caskets. Gunshot wounds to the face are not uncommon. Morticians have experience handling such situations.
Even in ancient times, citizens demanded PROOF that a conquered foe had been killed. Heads of enemies were displayed, or bodies were dragged through the streets. Gruesome, yes. But it left no doubt.
In the past, I worked for a television news network. I know for a fact, that even years ago, a fake photo of Barney Clark (first Jarvik heart transplant recipient) recovering in his hospital room, was aired because they didn’t yet have a post surgery video or photo. It was done by physically cutting out an earlier photo of Clark’s head and gluing it onto another photo a different person in a hospital bed. It only ran once, and was replaced with a real photo:
http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2009/12/dayintech_1202jarvikheart/
You are naive to think certain powers would not use the media to present a fabricated account of things. Something happened at Sandy Hook. Exactly what, I don’t know. Give me PROOF, and I will.
BTW, did you check out the fake CNN video footage, actually filmed at a nearby Catholic school, NOT Sandy Hook?
Ole Guy
February 28th, 2013
1:37 pm
BS! This event has little-to-nothing to do with the…power of social media. IT’S GOT EVERYTHING TO DO WITH FREQUIN STOOPID (mis-spelled purposely) PEOPLE. I realize they’re are those who view my comments as archaic, ole fashioned, and the thoughts of arogance, however, they are, nonetheless, REALITY. The only way to impose a little discipline (translate that into the removing of one’s head from the dark recesses) is to make the kid EXTREMELY UNHAPPY, thereby giving the kid cause to THINK about one’s actions. Endless second chances do not/will not serve this purpose…ONLY the “gentle” reminder of such ole fashioned devices as the paddle, and long-term grounding (complete removal from anything resembling a social life) will serve the purpose. Anything less…you adults are only fooling yourselves and doing the kid the greatest disservice.
Pride and Joy
March 1st, 2013
3:40 pm
College for the shooter? really? What college would take a gun-toting and shooting “student” ?
Answer: No college that my child would ever attend.
This little miscreant needs to be expelled permanently from all USA schools. She cam get her GED online. NOW do you understand why we want to SEPARATE from those who are South of the city?
Guns and stupidity. They are in ample supply in South Atlanta and South Dekalb.