When was the chardon ohio shooting

He could not feel joy. He could not get excited about things. He thought and thought about it. One humid day, we sat at a picnic table at a park about twenty minutes from his house.

What eventually stopped him, he said, was the thought of his mom talking and laughing with him. So his mother became a saving grace. There were a few others, like Joan Blackburn, the wise, approachable social worker the high school brought in after the shooting. Danny respected her. A kid could talk to Joan about anything. Andy Fetchik, his principal, was another. In the weeks after the shooting, Danny was walking around the school half out of his mind on assorted drugs.

One day, Andy stopped him in the hall. Danny figured he was in trouble. Instead, his principal asked if he wanted a job. Andy had a friend who ran a drywall company and was looking to hire someone.

Andy told him about Danny, and the friend said, yes, that was exactly who he wanted to hire. One morning in late May, I met Brandon Lichtinger at his beautiful old fixer-upper of a house. We sat on the porch, and he made black tea flavored with mint from his garden.

He waved to his neighbors as they walked by, and tracked a wily squirrel tormenting a cat. He was thinking about grad school. She could take her nursing job anywhere. Maybe Europe. Brandon always had ideas about the future. After the shooting, though, his priorities changed. He felt an overwhelming desire to put down roots.

He proposed to his girlfriend. They set a date and bought the quaint old house. The knowledge that life was short filled him with a grave sense of urgency. Later, a friend would tell him it made sense. Now, looking back, Brandon told me he could see all the ways that day had changed him. How his three years with Teach for America, where he taught prior to Chardon, in a school dominated by gangs and the constant threat of violence, directly fed into the trauma of the Chardon shooting.

How he felt like he was on high alert all the time, on the lookout for potential threats, waking up many mornings at 4 a. About three months before the wedding, after the venue was lined up and the security deposit paid, Brandon went to Staples to buy envelopes for the invitations.

He was miserable at his job, miserable in his life. Not now. She was shocked and hurt and angry. Weddings became fraught affairs after that. All of their friends were getting married, it seemed, and moving on with their lives.

Once, during a fight just before leaving for yet another wedding, Brandon was in such despair that he grabbed a plastic Santa lawn ornament and smashed it on his head. He hated himself for so many things. After she left, he hated himself for that, too. Finally, nearly four years after the shooting, Brandon went to his boss, Andy Fetchik. Andy told Brandon to take a six-month leave of absence, assuring Brandon that his job would still be there afterward, if he wanted it.

But the beauty and the wildlife and the mountains did not cure him. So he came home and tried a strange-sounding therapy recommended by his next-door neighbor, a fellow Chardon teacher, called eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, or EMDR.

Twice a week for eight weeks, he spent an hour or more recalling his memories from that day, working through his emotions and the beliefs attached to them, till he was exhausted. It helped. He could finally accept that the shooting had happened in the past. That it was truly over. He considered becoming a paralegal at a record label, a dream job for a music nerd.

Still, he thought he could leave if the right thing came along. We finished our tea. He thinks about her, he said. Geauga County, where Chardon is located, saw a spike in both concealed-carry weapon licenses and residential mental-health treatment rates for teenagers after the shooting.

The event also caused a sizable cluster of people to seek out EMDR, the type of therapy that helped Brandon. In EMDR, patients recall traumatic memories while focusing on one of a variety of stimuli that oscillates from left to right—handheld pulsers that take turns vibrating, or alternating tones in the ears, or a therapist's finger that moves back and forth in the patient's field of vision.

Department of Veterans Affairs, says it can be an effective treatment for PTSD says the therapy is intended to change the way memories are stored in the brain. Something about the bilateral stimulation may soften the impact of distressing memories, allowing people to see them as events that have passed, rather than ever-present threats.

EMDR success stories passed like good gossip in the small town. Twenty-two staffers in the school district alone tried it, including Jen Sprinzl, about two years after the shooting. The hallway haunted her; she could not forget what she saw that day when she turned the corner, and it seemed as if it might always be there waiting for her.

She was in the student-services office on the morning of , talking to another secretary, when she heard the commotion and the pop-pop-pop , and the kids yelling, He has a gun. She ran toward the cafeteria. Lane fired ten rounds and shot six students. Within the next two days, three died as a result of their injuries.

The remaining three suffered wounds ranging in nature from requiring long-term hospitalization to minor emergency room treatment. Chardon High School assistant football coach Frank Hall was serving as cafeteria monitor that morning. His bravery in chasing Lane from the school was credited in saving more lives.

I immediately saw him [Lane] and chased after him. He draws upon me and I dove behind the vending machine. He fires and I come back around and I see where he's at, and he had gone to the main hallway. I came out to see where he went and one of our secretaries happened to be in the hallway, and he had her at gunpoint and she was screaming Warsinsky, Nate Mueller was grazed by a bullet in his ear, treated onsite, and released.

Parmentor, King, and Hewlin succumbed from their injuries in the hours following the shooting. Nick Walczak, who received several shots including one in his spine, is paralyzed for life Copeland, That's a semi-automatic rifle, a killing machine.

Why haven't we spent more money on mental health for our kids? Why have we not required School Resource Officers in all of our school buildings?

The foundation's mission: to provide effective means to prevent school violence. The foundation has focused on promoting the placement of SROs -- armed police officers who have received specialized training so they can interact with students and spot potential problems -- in every school in the country. Cruz," the paper reported. Runcie, the superintendent of the Broward County Public Schools.

Armelli said that doesn't mean schools don't need them. Lane shot and killed three students at Chardon High School on Feb. He was sentenced to three life sentences. Three other students were wounded. Lane's escape set off alarms in Chardon, Ohio, which is three hours by cars from the prison. The Chardon school district closed its schools on Friday because "the safety and well-being of our students, staff and community remain our highest priority.

Timothy Hewlin, the father of Demetrius Hewlin who was killed by Lane, was outraged by the escape.