Report of shooting at or near wootton

[Anonymous]

At what point are we going to address that high school students can literally be walking around the halls with anything in their backpacks…
We don’t know what’s in there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:White was at Wootton Nov of last year so for those of you saying he had only been there 2-3 weeks that is inaccurate info.

He was expelled from Paint Branch and MCPS sent him to Blake.
This is one of the biggest issues. If a child is expelled from one MCPS school they should not just get to go to another MCPS school.
This happens at the MS level too.

Getting expelled is not easy. You only get expelled for very serious offences. Bringing a gun to school will get you expelled assuming you get caught. Shooting or stabbing someone will also get you expelled. Being a drug dealer might possibly also get you expelled. Not much else really

Yeah, it's hard to believe he was expelled if he has a clean criminal record....but people seem determined to paint a narrative here.

Does anybody have a source for the expulsion? I mean, anonymous people admit here, but I haven’t seen any authoritative or news source on that…

Same with the ankle monitor, right?

I don’t know anything about the ankle monitor..
I do know about the expulsion though, that part is accurate.
He is a juvenile, there can be police reports on him but if no actual charges were filed he wouldn’t have a record that you can see.

What offense could he have committed in school that would be grounds for expulsion but not result in an actual charge?

Fighting, drugs, bullying. Students are rarely charged criminally for those types of offenses, but do have school discipline applied. For the ankle monitor it could have been drugs, theft, vandalism. There are charges that would result in monitoring but shouldn't prevent a student from attending school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:White was at Wootton Nov of last year so for those of you saying he had only been there 2-3 weeks that is inaccurate info.

He was expelled from Paint Branch and MCPS sent him to Blake.
This is one of the biggest issues. If a child is expelled from one MCPS school they should not just get to go to another MCPS school.
This happens at the MS level too.

Getting expelled is not easy. You only get expelled for very serious offences. Bringing a gun to school will get you expelled assuming you get caught. Shooting or stabbing someone will also get you expelled. Being a drug dealer might possibly also get you expelled. Not much else really

Yeah, it's hard to believe he was expelled if he has a clean criminal record....but people seem determined to paint a narrative here.

Does anybody have a source for the expulsion? I mean, anonymous people admit here, but I haven’t seen any authoritative or news source on that…

Same with the ankle monitor, right?

I don’t know anything about the ankle monitor..
I do know about the expulsion though, that part is accurate.
He is a juvenile, there can be police reports on him but if no actual charges were filed he wouldn’t have a record that you can see.

What offense could he have committed in school that would be grounds for expulsion but not result in an actual charge?

Fighting, drugs, bullying. Students are rarely charged criminally for those types of offenses, but do have school discipline applied. For the ankle monitor it could have been drugs, theft, vandalism. There are charges that would result in monitoring but shouldn't prevent a student from attending school.

Just noting there is no confirmation that there even was an ankle monitor.

[Anonymous]

Wootton parent here. This is what we know.

1. A student shot another student.
2. The shooter lives in the Wootton cluster. Went home after the shooting, hid the gun in his backyard. Mother and 15-year old sister were with him and also initially detained. I saw the video. Do not know if they were charged or what happened after the initial arrest, or if they had any role to play other than being with him when the police caught him. There are a lot of stories swirling on their involvement but I don't think we know anything for fact.
3. The shooter does not have a criminal record.
4. The victim was wearing an ankle monitor.
5. Both the shooter and victim have made claims of bullying.

Kids have said there was a fight between them the day prior at a basketball game that continued into the school day on Monday, but we don't really know what happened that led to the incident on Monday.

[Anonymous]

I wonder if there is a way that they could do limited entry searches just for kids that have previously had criminal involvement or discipline for physical interactions or drug use.

My sibling runs a small private school and part of their protocol for drug infractions is that the kids backpack is regularly searched for a period of time after the drug infraction. (They also do drig testing as a condition of remaining at the school). Clearly a big public school can’t do what a private school does, but it does seem to me that they could impose coniditiojs as part of a bond release and/or as consequences for previous disciplinary infractions. It might be more practical than trying to scan every single kid entering the HS. Then maybe you also do random scans of other kids. I wonder how expensive it would be to get the id scanners for the front of the achool, like they have for Costco. My kids say the guards really don’t look at the ids so kids just hold up some random thing and then walk in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wootton parent here. This is what we know.

1. A student shot another student.
2. The shooter lives in the Wootton cluster. Went home after the shooting, hid the gun in his backyard. Mother and 15-year old sister were with him and also initially detained. I saw the video. Do not know if they were charged or what happened after the initial arrest, or if they had any role to play other than being with him when the police caught him. There are a lot of stories swirling on their involvement but I don't think we know anything for fact.
3. The shooter does not have a criminal record.
4. The victim was wearing an ankle monitor.
5. Both the shooter and victim have made claims of bullying.

Kids have said there was a fight between them the day prior at a basketball game that continued into the school day on Monday, but we don't really know what happened that led to the incident on Monday.

Where is this confirmed?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think Taylor’s long letter yesterday was good. It seemed sincere and heartfelt

He's in for the PR to make himself look good. He knew these issues when he took the job and never did anything to fix them, but instead went on a spending spree and cut programs that could have helped these and other students. The BOE is the same...

To be fair, MCPS has a layered approach to safety that likely surpasses what most on the nation has. Nobody can stop all violence. The goal is to minimize it as much as possible by using evidence based best practices and being true to them. I believe McPS' term of art is to "implement with fidelity."

They do need to be far more transparent in their encounter data though. They hide a lot

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wootton parent here. This is what we know.

1. A student shot another student.
2. The shooter lives in the Wootton cluster. Went home after the shooting, hid the gun in his backyard. Mother and 15-year old sister were with him and also initially detained. I saw the video. Do not know if they were charged or what happened after the initial arrest, or if they had any role to play other than being with him when the police caught him. There are a lot of stories swirling on their involvement but I don't think we know anything for fact.
3. The shooter does not have a criminal record.
4. The victim was wearing an ankle monitor.
5. Both the shooter and victim have made claims of bullying.

Kids have said there was a fight between them the day prior at a basketball game that continued into the school day on Monday, but we don't really know what happened that led to the incident on Monday.

6. Whether or not he has a criminal record searchable in the adult system, the shooter was able to obtain a ghost gun within a couple hours of the alleged altercation, or had brought it with him to school for a regular day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
They do need to be far more transparent in their encounter data though. They hide a lot

Universities used to cover up incidents on campus for PR reasons. Then they passed the Clery Act which requires them to report it. Too bad it didn't cover K-12 also.

[Anonymous]

Any update on the victim?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Any update on the victim?

When his mom spoke out, that interview mentioned that he needed more surgery. Haven't heard anything since.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wootton parent here. This is what we know.

1. A student shot another student.
2. The shooter lives in the Wootton cluster. Went home after the shooting, hid the gun in his backyard. Mother and 15-year old sister were with him and also initially detained. I saw the video. Do not know if they were charged or what happened after the initial arrest, or if they had any role to play other than being with him when the police caught him. There are a lot of stories swirling on their involvement but I don't think we know anything for fact.
3. The shooter does not have a criminal record.
4. The victim was wearing an ankle monitor.
5. Both the shooter and victim have made claims of bullying.

Kids have said there was a fight between them the day prior at a basketball game that continued into the school day on Monday, but we don't really know what happened that led to the incident on Monday.

Mother & Sister were arrested in front of Julius West MS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's MCPS standard policy to move a troubled student to another school. If you remember the Damascus locker room gang rape case from a few years ago, the perpetrator was on his third MCPS high school by that point.

They shut down Mark Twain years ago for equity reasons (too many of certain races and gender ended up there), but seems like that would be a useful place to send troubled students, and not to another school to make more tboule.

Oh, and as usual, no MCPS staff changes will be made. In the Damascus case, the principal (who wait until the next day to report the alleged rape to the police) was just reassigned to a cushy job in the central office.

MCPS standard policy in this regard is failing. They need to change re-evaluate it.

They shut down Mark Twain because of the OPTICS related to equity, but not because they actually cared about the equitable outcomes for Black and Hispanic kids, who make up the majority of suspensions and expulsions.

Shutting down Mark Twain for "equity" while not addressing the underlying issues that are the root cause of the behavioral issues and instead just making them another principal's problem, is as bad or maybe worse than shuffling them off to Mark Twain.

I think the real issue is that MCPS is not good at responding to and rehabilitating kids with behavioral issues and so they default to one of two responses:

1) Discard and dispose of the kids and treat them like prisoners, which is not tenable for legal reasons
2) Ignore and excuse the behaviors and make everyone else (other students and their teachers) suffer while you insist anyone who complains is racist

Neither stance is good and leads to the same outcome: Unsafe schools for everyone.

Is this the school system’s job? Some other organization needs to be charged with fixing deeply ruined kids. The school system should be for teaching kids who are ready to learn.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wootton parent here. This is what we know.

1. A student shot another student.
2. The shooter lives in the Wootton cluster. Went home after the shooting, hid the gun in his backyard. Mother and 15-year old sister were with him and also initially detained. I saw the video. Do not know if they were charged or what happened after the initial arrest, or if they had any role to play other than being with him when the police caught him. There are a lot of stories swirling on their involvement but I don't think we know anything for fact.
3. The shooter does not have a criminal record.
4. The victim was wearing an ankle monitor.
5. Both the shooter and victim have made claims of bullying.

Kids have said there was a fight between them the day prior at a basketball game that continued into the school day on Monday, but we don't really know what happened that led to the incident on Monday.

Mother & Sister were arrested in front of Julius West MS.

This is false.

[Anonymous]

Arrested and detained are two different things.
Mom of shooter was sitting in Court when he was arraigned.