On May 7, 2019, STEM School K-12 in Highlands Ranch suffered a tragedy brought along by school shooters. Eight students were shot and an 18-year-old student died trying to stop one of the gunmen.

During this event, the school did not have a school resource officer present at the school. Despite this, officers responded quickly in arriving to the scene and getting into the school after the lockdown was called. There was, according to reports, a private security guard on campus. 

“I have to believe that the quick response of officers that got inside that school helped save lives,” Douglas County Sheriff, Tony Spurlock, told The New York Times.

Shootings aren’t a new phenomena, but there has been an unusually high number of school shootings and threats in Colorado.

One of the largest took place on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Jefferson County. When two male high school students killed 12 students, one teacher, and wounded 24 other people before committing suicide in the school library.

Another took place on September 27, 2006, at Platte Canyon High School in Bailey. An adult fatally shot 16-year-old Emily Keyes after taking hostages. He then shot himself.

Not long after on February 23, 2010, at Deer Creek Middle School in Ken Caryl, in the parking lot of the school, a man shot a rifle wounding two eighth-grade students. He was tackled by faculty and arrested.

As well as another in December 13, 2013, at Arapahoe High School in Centennial when a student entered the school carrying a shotgun. The shooter shot one student before killing himself.

Not long before the STEM school shooting, school was canceled for almost all districts on April 17, 2019, due to the potential threat made by an 18-year-old female who was obsessed with the Columbine shooting.

Although schools take precautions and practice drills to keep students safe, school shootings have become normalized for many.

To learn more about our current SRO vacancy, read below:

Mead has been without a Student Resource Officer since mid-April