Report of shooting at or near wootton

[Anonymous]

By peace I meant accepted the fact that nothing will change. If the cold blooded murder of 6 and 7 year old does not shake a nation to its very core, nothing will. Wootton story will be forgotten and we will move on until the next one. I have kids in MCPS, so all of this directly affects me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wootton has been crazy for awhile now. Over 50 staff left over the summer - new principal, half of assistant principals, the head of security, the head of special education, most of counseling, and so many teachers. There was the inadequate handling of racist events. Now this. When is central office going to give Wootton the support they obviously need?

No, they’re going to close Wootton and send their kids to Gaithersburg. Obviously Wootton is being unfairly targeted by MCPS for some DEI agenda.

Or you could say that the Wooton community is finally getting that brand new building they have wanted for so long!

They don’t want a new building in the price of closing their school

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:By peace I meant accepted the fact that nothing will change. If the cold blooded murder of 6 and 7 year old does not shake a nation to its very core, nothing will. Wootton story will be forgotten and we will move on until the next one. I have kids in MCPS, so all of this directly affects me.

I want to agree with and support this poster. My heart broke in a permanent way after Sandy Hook. If a room full of dead 1st graders didn’t change our laws or our ways then nothing will. My son was the same age — those kids would be sophomores in college now if they had lived. I will vote for change, I will support change, but I fully expect this will just keep happening.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can someone who has a student at Wootton confirm if the shooter had been wearing an ankle monitor? My child is telling me this but I don't know if this is complete hearsay.

There are kids all over the county in our high schools wearing ankle monitors. MCPS is required to educate all kids. Where else would kids with ankle monitors go to school?

Which is exactly why MCPS needs to reopen Mark Twain School. That's where emotionally disturbed students with ankle monitors went until MCPS closed it in 2009.

[Anonymous]

Maybe MCPS needs some compassion. The ice storm fiasco, Option H uproar, and now this. What a start to 2026.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can someone who has a student at Wootton confirm if the shooter had been wearing an ankle monitor? My child is telling me this but I don't know if this is complete hearsay.

There are kids all over the county in our high schools wearing ankle monitors. MCPS is required to educate all kids. Where else would kids with ankle monitors go to school?

Ok, so is there anything preventing MCPS from putting this shooter back in school while awaiting trial?

[Anonymous]

[quote=Anonymous]By peace I meant accepted the fact that nothing will change. If the cold blooded murder of 6 and 7 year old does not shake a nation to its very core, nothing will. Wootton story will be forgotten and we will move on until the next one. I have kids in MCPS, so all of this directly affects me.



Exactly what I think. And they were also little kids from privileged families (white, UMC). If their parents couldn’t change the gun laws, it’s not happening anytime soon.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can someone who has a student at Wootton confirm if the shooter had been wearing an ankle monitor? My child is telling me this but I don't know if this is complete hearsay.

There are kids all over the county in our high schools wearing ankle monitors. MCPS is required to educate all kids. Where else would kids with ankle monitors go to school?

Which is exactly why MCPS needs to reopen Mark Twain School. That's where emotionally disturbed students with ankle monitors went until MCPS closed it in 2009.

They still have Blair Ewing and RICA.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can someone who has a student at Wootton confirm if the shooter had been wearing an ankle monitor? My child is telling me this but I don't know if this is complete hearsay.

There are kids all over the county in our high schools wearing ankle monitors. MCPS is required to educate all kids. Where else would kids with ankle monitors go to school?

Which is exactly why MCPS needs to reopen Mark Twain School. That's where emotionally disturbed students with ankle monitors went until MCPS closed it in 2009.

I thought RICA was for kids with priors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can someone who has a student at Wootton confirm if the shooter had been wearing an ankle monitor? My child is telling me this but I don't know if this is complete hearsay.

There are kids all over the county in our high schools wearing ankle monitors. MCPS is required to educate all kids. Where else would kids with ankle monitors go to school?

Ok, so is there anything preventing MCPS from putting this shooter back in school while awaiting trial?

Yes. Attempted murder charges aren’t likely to yield a bail. Maryland law requires detention until court when charged suspect already electronically monitored is alleged to commit a violent felony.

[Anonymous]

What gun law needs to change? It’s already illegal to have a handgun at a school, and illegal to shoot someone. It’s already quite a legal colonoscopy to both buy and get a carry permit in this state, as one would want. We need to treat security more like courthouses, where it’s not just on the honor system for being gun free.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am watching the news. Dismissal seems like a cluster. Why are they trying to move them to Frost?

Yes, why at Frost??

Well Frost is just a short walk over the hill. But why walk them to Frost to be picked up? Why not just load up the buses and get them on their way home? I don't understand what going to Frost accomplishes.

The kids who are taking buses home are taking their regular bus home.

I don’t know why we don’t want a bunch of teens tracing through a crime scene. /s

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Did Frost go into lockdown or did the middle school have regular dismissal?

They were on lockdown for a short time and then they went to regular dismissal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And of course we don’t need resource officers or police in the schools because that is more dangerous 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️
Shame on Montgomery County for continuing to destroy things. Make our kids feel safe in school and stop worrying about discrimination.

Our schools do have officers. Wootton has a full time SRO.

An SRO or a CEO? They are somewhat different, and I thought MCPS got rid of the SROs about 5 years ago. The purpose of a SRO is that they were specially trained to deal with you, and embedded into the school. The idea was that they would build specific relationships within the school and so would be more likely to know if a specific kid has beef with another kid, something brewing that might turn violent, one kid that is known to be troubled or dealing or whatever. It's hard with 3000 kids and one SRO, but the idea itself is sound and has in the past been an effective violence disruptor because kids will come to the SRO and anonymously alert them to an problem.
I personally think the schools need more security officers (probably double what they currently have) and more SROs (maybe 2-4 per school for these monstrously large schools with additional training for the SROs and more opportunity for them to engage positively with the student body, e.g., guest speakers in the health and government classes).

I think the evidence is that SROs are not very effective at stopping the Uvalde type shooters (because those shooters are suicidal and assume they will get taken out), but are decently effective a taking the in-school drug dealing and regular teen violence and pushing it outside the school property. That may push it to the parking lot of a Target, or a public park or an apartment building or whatever, but at least it allows kids that want to go to school in peace to do so.

I've been skeptical of metal detectors because they don't seem practical with 3000 students coming in every morning and also because the security guards I know that work metal detectors said they are actually kind of hard to operate -- you have to be particularly skilled in figuring out what you're looking at, and I just don't think that it's realistic for MCPS to implement this -- plus people would just prop a door and sneak it in the back, and kids are in and out all day long for DE and portable classrooms, etc. Maybe I'm wrong on this, but it just doesn't seem like a real solution.

The official title is CEO. However that was just to appease people so that they could say there are no SROs in schools…. They changed the name from SRO to CEO.
They’ve always been in the schools.
Rockville City has 2 full time CEOs. One assigned to RM and one to Wootton.

CEOs cannot walk the hallways without the Principal's say so, unlike SROs.

That’s not true. They can’t walk the halls a discipline students without the principal’s say do. They can’t walk walk the halls and report issues.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:By peace I meant accepted the fact that nothing will change. If the cold blooded murder of 6 and 7 year old does not shake a nation to its very core, nothing will. Wootton story will be forgotten and we will move on until the next one. I have kids in MCPS, so all of this directly affects me.

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