Magruder HS Shooting

[Anonymous]

In an early account it was EMS, en route, who raised concerns about the safety and security of the situation they would be walking into at the school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Alston Jr. sure seems to have had a lot of power over the actions of others, including the teacher in the room he wandered into for lockdown, not his class. Why might that be? Was it a regular teacher or a sub not familiar with the students? Were some kind of prison gang dynamics operating?

Fear can be a powerful motivator.

This could have been so much worse with mass casualties.

The victim could have gotten to the hospital much sooner, would that have changed the outcome? No siren vs. medivac for example.

Why in a school that had repeated threats as recently as December was the response so inept?

So your guess is "prison gang dynamics" rather than "teachers are trained to grab kids out of the hall and lock the door during lockdowns?"

OOF.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Alston Jr. sure seems to have had a lot of power over the actions of others, including the teacher in the room he wandered into for lockdown, not his class. Why might that be? Was it a regular teacher or a sub not familiar with the students? Were some kind of prison gang dynamics operating?

Fear can be a powerful motivator.

This could have been so much worse with mass casualties.

The victim could have gotten to the hospital much sooner, would that have changed the outcome? No siren vs. medivac for example.

Why in a school that had repeated threats as recently as December was the response so inept?

What? Prison gang dynamics?

Seems much more likely he ducked into the nearest classroom when they called the lockdown, and made up a story to explain why he was wandering the halls. No teacher is going to leave a student out in the hallway during a lockdown situation, especially if they don’t know why it’s been called.

For a long time teachers weren’t given much info about what was happening, until police figured out who they were looking for and determined that he didn’t seem to have fled off campus. Police didn’t know whether he was still armed, so they had to go slowly and carefully so they could apprehend him without further casualties. Nothing I’ve seen suggested he was holding the class hostage, or threatening the teacher or anything.

I don’t even know what “prison gang dynamics“ might even mean in this context.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm shocked the teachers don't have a text or intranet system of some sort to warn them of danger without alerting the students.
All that needed to happen was a mass alert to staff "where is alston?"

One of the articles said that was how he was found -- texts were sent to the teachers of his picture with a question about whether he was in their classroom. I'd imagine the teacher who got the text and thought "Oh, crap, that was one of the kids I pulled in out of the hallway when the lockdown was called" was pretty shaken.

I'm also wondering why the kids who saw him throw the gun under a chair didn't say something but maybe they were too scared to have Alston see them alert the teacher. That is, I think, different than not calling for help when there's a kid bleeding out on the floor. Or maybe they really didn't see if he was sneaky enough about sliding it under someone else's stuff.

There are a lot of unanswered questions here, including why it took 2 hours to find him.

The photo I saw looked like it had probably been tucked underneath his backpack.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm shocked the teachers don't have a text or intranet system of some sort to warn them of danger without alerting the students.
All that needed to happen was a mass alert to staff "where is alston?"

One of the articles said that was how he was found -- texts were sent to the teachers of his picture with a question about whether he was in their classroom. I'd imagine the teacher who got the text and thought "Oh, crap, that was one of the kids I pulled in out of the hallway when the lockdown was called" was pretty shaken.

I'm also wondering why the kids who saw him throw the gun under a chair didn't say something but maybe they were too scared to have Alston see them alert the teacher. That is, I think, different than not calling for help when there's a kid bleeding out on the floor. Or maybe they really didn't see if he was sneaky enough about sliding it under someone else's stuff.

There are a lot of unanswered questions here, including why it took 2 hours to find him.

The photo I saw looked like it had probably been tucked underneath his backpack.

Where did you see the photo?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Alston Jr. sure seems to have had a lot of power over the actions of others, including the teacher in the room he wandered into for lockdown, not his class. Why might that be? Was it a regular teacher or a sub not familiar with the students? Were some kind of prison gang dynamics operating?

Fear can be a powerful motivator.

This could have been so much worse with mass casualties.

The victim could have gotten to the hospital much sooner, would that have changed the outcome? No siren vs. medivac for example.

Why in a school that had repeated threats as recently as December was the response so inept?

So your guess is "prison gang dynamics" rather than "teachers are trained to grab kids out of the hall and lock the door during lockdowns?"

OOF.

And overlook guns on the floor!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm shocked the teachers don't have a text or intranet system of some sort to warn them of danger without alerting the students.
All that needed to happen was a mass alert to staff "where is alston?"

One of the articles said that was how he was found -- texts were sent to the teachers of his picture with a question about whether he was in their classroom. I'd imagine the teacher who got the text and thought "Oh, crap, that was one of the kids I pulled in out of the hallway when the lockdown was called" was pretty shaken.

I'm also wondering why the kids who saw him throw the gun under a chair didn't say something but maybe they were too scared to have Alston see them alert the teacher. That is, I think, different than not calling for help when there's a kid bleeding out on the floor. Or maybe they really didn't see if he was sneaky enough about sliding it under someone else's stuff.

There are a lot of unanswered questions here, including why it took 2 hours to find him.

The photo I saw looked like it had probably been tucked underneath his backpack.

Assume so, wasn't in his hand when he walked into the room.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Other than speculation, what’s the evidence for this being gang related? And what sort of “gangs” are we talking about here? Gangs with international ties like MS13?

I see a lot of allegations about gangs on DCUM, but I don’t have a sense of what kind of evidence there might be for activity like that among students.

So then explain why the witnesses did nothing ? I can’t contemplate any other possibility unless sociopathy is a lot more common now

But I can’t see why doing nothing, then tweeting the name of the victim and shooter, is indicative of gang activity, either. That definitely doesn’t fit the “snitches get stitches” code. Unless they thought they were tweeting anonymously? I didn’t get that impression, though.

[Anonymous]

Had he not chosen to separate the gun into 3 parts no reason it could not have been fired again in 2 hours. MCPD and MCPS got lucky in that there could have been many more victims.

"Chose to slow down" was a ridiculous cya attempt.

As was the minimized response to a student bleeding out in a bathroom.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm shocked the teachers don't have a text or intranet system of some sort to warn them of danger without alerting the students.
All that needed to happen was a mass alert to staff "where is alston?"

One of the articles said that was how he was found -- texts were sent to the teachers of his picture with a question about whether he was in their classroom. I'd imagine the teacher who got the text and thought "Oh, crap, that was one of the kids I pulled in out of the hallway when the lockdown was called" was pretty shaken.

I'm also wondering why the kids who saw him throw the gun under a chair didn't say something but maybe they were too scared to have Alston see them alert the teacher. That is, I think, different than not calling for help when there's a kid bleeding out on the floor. Or maybe they really didn't see if he was sneaky enough about sliding it under someone else's stuff.

There are a lot of unanswered questions here, including why it took 2 hours to find him.

The photo I saw looked like it had probably been tucked underneath his backpack.

Where did you see the photo?

https://wtop.com/montgomery-county/2022/01/teen-accused-in-magruder-hs-shooting-held-without-bond/
About halfway through the article.

[Anonymous]

https://blog.e-chatter.net/2019/10/how-gangs-use-social-media/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why was 911 not called immediately after discovering the poor victim. A call was made 4 mins later…That was the first flaw.,

Think of incentives. MCPS security officers do not have an incentive to make incidents big -- it makes them look bad like they aren't keeping the school secure.

SROs (not there, of course) are part of the police department and have a huge incentive to call for backup, since that's what they usually do outside of school, and the more incidents at school, the more they can justify being there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Other than speculation, what’s the evidence for this being gang related? And what sort of “gangs” are we talking about here? Gangs with international ties like MS13?

I see a lot of allegations about gangs on DCUM, but I don’t have a sense of what kind of evidence there might be for activity like that among students.

So then explain why the witnesses did nothing ? I can’t contemplate any other possibility unless sociopathy is a lot more common now

But I can’t see why doing nothing, then tweeting the name of the victim and shooter, is indicative of gang activity, either. That definitely doesn’t fit the “snitches get stitches” code. Unless they thought they were tweeting anonymously? I didn’t get that impression, though.

More like an announcement of something having taken place than trying to change the outcome...

https://blog.e-chatter.net/2019/10/how-gangs-use-social-media/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why was 911 not called immediately after discovering the poor victim. A call was made 4 mins later…That was the first flaw.,

Think of incentives. MCPS security officers do not have an incentive to make incidents big -- it makes them look bad like they aren't keeping the school secure.

SROs (not there, of course) are part of the police department and have a huge incentive to call for backup, since that's what they usually do outside of school, and the more incidents at school, the more they can justify being there.

EMS did not seem eager to walk into a volatile or non-secure situation. Didn't they question the no siren too?

Of course, if the victim was your kid you would want medivac.

[Anonymous]

This is not reassuring


Jones: “The first call, as I noted, was an injured person call that went out first. So, therefore a police officer would not have been dispatched in an injured person call at a school.”

Lewis: “The dispatch says a possible stabbing victim”

Jones: “That’s not how No, not at first.”

Lewis: “That’s what the recording says...”

Jones: “But in the end Please help me. I’m trying to help you understand. Okay. Once we understood that, again, this was the sheriff’s deputy that arrived at 1:12 p.m. who was the CEO assigned to that school handling another incident. He arrived there in seven minutes. Then you have to think about the time that it takes him to get out of the car, go into the school, find where the scene is, assess what’s happening, okay, and then based upon the needs and based upon the info that’s being shared, and remember what I said, the victim did not share, okay, the victim did not share information that would have helped us get police officers there quicker to deal with what we dealt with. So, we had a school lockdown. We had the building locked down. So, that was already taken care of. So, now it was really a matter of slowing everything down for us to be able to figure out where the suspect was.”

Lewis: “But, if there’s a school lockdown at a high school. Shouldn’t that automatically call for a priority response from police? And just to be clear, the recording says at 1:03 p.m., a possible stabbing victim.”

Jones: “But again, at the end of the day, we still had everything. We had enough officers on the scene based upon what we had. There was never a problem with that.”