High school student stabs 20+ people.

Link

It's a miracle none of the victims died. At least one is in very grave condition but last I heard all are expected to survive. A very troubling situation to be sure.

Amazing the number of people I've talked to about this that are astonished at how many kids got stabbed. A knife in the hands of someone who knows how to use it is far more effective in a crowd than a gun.

I believe I heard the CNN anchor refer to this as another shooting. I suspect it was a Freudian slip.

Last year an attacker injured 15 people in a crowed city street in Germany before some realized what was happening. Even the victims took some time. The attacker vanished in the crowd and was not even identified. I fully agree about a knife being an effective weapon even in the hands of a poorly trained individual.
Luckily the guy in the school stabbing seems to lack serious knife handling skills.

If this high school was like mine, it was like Disneyland at closing time between classes. It doesn't take much in the way of skills to inflict mass casualties in that environment.

Consider the Kunming Railway Station attack earlier this year. 8 attackers with kitchen and work knives left 29 dead and 140 wounded. Also, the Chenpeng Village Primary School in 2012. One attacker, 24 wounded. Same type of crowded environment as Franklin school.

I'm a little surprised at the timing in that there's normally at least 2 weeks between mass casualty events, and Ft Hood was only a week ago.

Am I being cynical assuming that this type of event is going to be "business as usual" for the foreseable future?

I never thought about the dynamics of something like this. You guys brought up some good points. I anticipate more young maniacs figuring out they can do more damage in a crowd if they use a knife.

As a what-if exercise, I wanted to see what people's thoughts were about the report that someone (perhaps a student) had pulled the fire alarm to get people out of the building. Is that a good thing to do when some sort of mass attack is taking place?

I suppose the logic is that it gets people out and away from the danger.

My initial instinct is that it was not a good idea. Warning everyone is smart, but having them flood into the hallways could increase the number of casualties. Basically, I think it's mostly a race against time--how to minimize casualties until the cavalry arrives, whether that's a school resource officer from the other side of campus, first responders from outside, or even people inside the school figuring out what's happening and dealing with the threat themselves. The "fog of war" certainly applies in this situation and it's hard to act when you don't know what's happening.

Hmmm, actually, come to think of it, we don't know who pulled the alarm. The suspect could've pulled it himself to create a "target rich" environment in the hallways.

I forget where, but there was a mass shooting outside a middle or high school by two kids where they deliberately pulled the fire alarm to draw people outside where they could shoot them with a rifle.

I feel so bad for all of those students. It has to affect everyone there to go through something like this in a very formative time of their life like high school.

Arney, here is a link to the shooting you mentioned. It was at Westside Elementary School in Jonesboro AR. One indeed did pull the fire alarm to get everyone outside so they could sniper them from nearby woods.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Johnson_and_Andrew_Golden

at the high school I formerly worked at, after the Columbine Tragedy, we re wrote our emergency management plan...one of the positive practical outcomes was to preposition emergency trauma supplies in our out classrooms, and the quadrants of the building...pressure bandages, Kerlix gauze, petroleum gauze, and gloves are easy to store in Rubbermaid bins...we were fortunate that we had two RN's on staff.... one problem we were not able to address was adequate communication... at a high school, there is always a shortage of portable radios... I argued for a classroom phone system (Siemens made one at the time), that had an "all call" capability with a 2.7GHz portable phone, that a teacher would grab as they went out the door for a building evacuation...and would give multi level communication in a crisis... for you that are classroom teachers... wait till you have a building evacuation ,and the news helicopter shows up overhead... your school switchboard and local 911 call center will be flooded and immobilized... a "private" phone number that is not connected to the 911 system to first responders could be a life saver

The problem with that is, schools train to "lock down" during times of "active assailant" emergencies. They hunker down in their classrooms and barricade the doors. Pulling a fire alarm in that situation would cause mass confusion and scare the kids to death. The kids would be panicking, "Do I stay in my lockdown and burn up, or do I open the doors and make a run for the exits?"


Or away from their relatively safe lockdown, and INTO the danger. Made worse by their panic to "Get out of the fire, and not get shot/stabbed along the way."

If I were an insane student intent on killing/maiming my classmates, one of the first things I might do is pull the fire alarm. Multiple targets come pouring out of classrooms, and once they see their bloodied injured classmates they will panic and create all kinds of confusion. What better than a surging and confused crowd to hide myself in as I made my escape?

I think pulling a fire alarm, on purpose, as a way of "warning" people, would be a very very bad idea.

Back about 20 years, when I ran the school's computer lab, the emergency procedure was to shelter in place. Everybody away from the windows, lock the doors, and close the blinds. The walls were concrete and the doors were steel fire doors. I believe this is still the policy because schools are "locked down" if there's an incident in the area.

During classes, this is by far away the best policy since it secures the vast majority of students within seconds of the bell sounding. But between classes, the student body is vulnerable. A fire alarm may be beneficial then, since it puts the students in a situation where they can readily scatter. The downside is it takes longer then heading for the nearest classroom and they're still vulnerable to gunfire.

A victim pulled the alarm.

http://www.ibtimes.com/nate-scimio-haile...m-after-1569462

For this stabbing, I'm going with good idea. As others said above, the stabber can cause more damage if everybody is not alerted about what's going on. One girl even said she thought the stabber was just wrestling/fighting with another guy in the hallway. That's something that's relatively common in most high schools.

If the alarm is pulled, everybody is on high emergency alert. So, the stabber's advantage is eliminated.