Photo courtesy WFAA
AUSTIN (WBAP/KLIF News) — 13 people have died in five Texas school shootings over the past two years. The worst was the most recent, the ten deaths and ten injuries in Santa Fe May 18 charged to Dimitrios Pagourtzis. Nationwide over the same period of time the death toll is 61. It’s an ongoing nightmare for Texas children, their parents, their teachers and the law enforcement agencies trying to protect them. Believe it or not, there is good news.
For every mass shooting or threat achieved at Texas schools many others are successfully prevented.
According to the Austin American-Statesman more than 170 violent threats were made or attempted toward Austin schools over the past two years. No school shootings, deaths or injuries have occurred. More than a dozen juveniles have been charged with making violent threats.
Austin school district chief of police Ashley Gonzalez says despite the fear that still festers every day the statistics are encouraging. “I would say that more incidents are thwarted than are carried out. The system is working. The more involvement that we have and collaboration that we have between school, police and parents, the more we’re able to accomplish.”
The Statesman quotes Ken Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services who told the paper, “In a twisted way, it should give our communities a glimmer of hope that even though these plots and threats do exist in schools just like they exist anywhere else in the community, there are people who are trained and effectively intervening and preventing incidents and that it’s just not a futile situation.”
Texas state and local authorities are working to fine tune the training and intervention techniques that have worked so far to make school shooting a thing of the past.
