March 20--A teenage boy who fired at classmates and exchanged gunfire with a school resource officer at Great Mills High School in Southern Maryland is dead, and two other students were injured in the incident, officials said Tuesday.
Investigators with the St. Mary’s County Sheriff’s Office were still sorting out which bullets hit which individuals, as the investigation into the nation’s latest school shooting continued.
Officials identified the alleged shooter as Great Mills student Austin Wyatt Rollins, 17. They said he fired a Glock 9-millimeter gun at a 16-year-old girl, who was critically injured, and a 14-year-old boy, who was listed in good condition Tuesday.
A school resource officer, Deputy First Class Blaine Gaskill, responded quickly to the scene in a first-floor hallway at the school, the sheriff’s office said. As Gaskill fired at Rollins, Rollins almost simultaneously fired his gun.
Gaskill was not injured in the shooting.
St. Mary’s County Sheriff Tim Cameron said said there is an “indication that a prior relationship existed between the shooter and the female victim.” Officers are working to determine if that was part of the motive, and they are trying to determine which shots struck which individuals.
"While it’s still tragic, he may have saved other people’s lives,” Gov. Larry Hogan said of Gaskill, who has been assigned to Great Mills since the start of the school year.
The male victim is being treated at MedStar St. Mary’s Hospital. The girl was taken to University of Maryland Prince George’s Hospital Center, and is battling life-threatening injuries, Cameron said.
The shooting happened in a first-floor hallway just before 8 a.m. at the school at 21130 Great Mills Road, county spokesman Tony Jones said from the emergency operations center. The St. Mary’s County school was placed on lockdown and students were evacuated, Jones said.
Cameron said multiple law enforcement agencies and fire departments assisted in the "mass response" at the school.
"This is what we train for. This is what we prepare for and this is what we pray we never have to do," Cameron said. "And on this day we realized our worst nightmare that our greatest asset — our children — were attacked in a bastion of safety and security, one of our schools."
Officers from multiple agencies assisted with the investigation into the shooting, which included searching a car and a home, combing through social media accounts, interviewing witnesses, reviewing footage from surveillance cameras and tracing the ownership of the gun used by the student. Cameron said there weren’t any immediately obvious warning signs on social media, but that investigators still needed to take a deeper look at social media.
Gaskill, the school resource officer, was in uniform at the time of the incident. He’s been with the sheriff’s office for nearly six years, after four years as a correctional officer.Senior Terrence Rhames was standing with his friends outside their first-period class around 8 a.m. when he heard a shot. He said he knew instantly what the loud crack meant.
He started running, heading to a first-floor bathroom before thinking to himself, “This is a dead end.” He turned to instead sprint toward the nearest exit. Out of the corner of his eye, Rhames said, he saw a girl fall.
“I just thank god I’m safe,” said Rhames, 18. “I just want to know who did it and who got injured.”
Great Mills, which enrolls about 1,600 students, is about 90 miles outside of Baltimore. Parents were asked to meet their children at a reunification site on the Leonardtown High School campus, where counselors and other support staff were on hand.
Lexington Park resident Shonita Somerville said her daughter heard a gun shot, but did not see anything and is not hurt. She's since reunited with her daughter.
“I’m so happy to see her face,” Somerville told The Sun in a Facebook message, as she waited with several dozen other parents inside the Leonardtown High School auditorium.
No one answered the door Tuesday afternoon at Rollins' home in Lexington Park.
Toni Foreman, who lives across the street, said she was shocked to learn that Rollins might have been involved in the shooting.
He would often walk her son, 13-year-old Ivan Foreman, home after school, and just last week, the two boys played catch, she said. "I didn't know he had any guns," she said. "He was a very good kid."
She hesitated to say she regretted letting Rollins watch her son. "I don't know what the situation was," she said. "I wish he would have reached out for help."
The Great Mills shooting comes just over a month after a deadly rampage in a Florida high school. Seventeen people died in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, catalyzing a national conversation about gun violence in schools.
Last Wednesday, Great Mills students participated in a nationwide “school walkout” on the one-month anniversary of the Parkland shooting. The students called for an end to gun violence and more school safety measures, according to local news reports.
One of the student activists from Marjory Stoneman Douglas tweeted her anger about the Great Mills incident.
“Less than a WEEK ago Great Mills High School students walked out with us to protest gun violence...now they’re experiencing it for themselves,” Jaclyn Corin wrote. “The state of our country is disgusting - I’m so sorry, Great Mills.”
School safety has been a prominent topic in the deliberations of the Maryland General Assembly since the Parkland shooting.
Less than a month ago, after the Parkland shooting, Hogan proposed spending $125 million next year to enhance security at schools in the state, including by reinforcing doors and installing panic buttons to prevent and react to shooters.
He also suggested $55 million for two ongoing spending initiatives, including $50 million for “school safety grants” that could pay for armed school resource officers, technology and counselors at public schools, and increased funding for the state’s Center for School Safety, which would include money to hire social media experts to scour the internet looking for threats.
The proposals are currently being considered by lawmakers in Annapolis, who have already given initial approval to three tougher gun-control laws.
Speaking in St. Mary’s County, Hogan expressed frustration that his funding proposal for school security has languished in the General Assembly.
“To me, it’s outrageous that we haven’t taken action yet,” Hogan said.
Sen. Steve Waugh, a Republican who represents St. Mary’s County, said his Annapolis office had become a clearinghouse for information in the hours after the incident.
Waugh, with the support of the Senate’s Democratic leadership, recently introduced a package of four bills dealing with school security. He said he’s sure Tuesday’s shooting will focus attention on it.
“It certainly adds urgency to it,” Waugh said. “I’m just grateful we have a vehicle for us to begin the decision.”
Waugh said the legislation is a bipartisan effort, with Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller co-sponsoring the four bills.
Miller wrote on Facebook that the proposed emergency measures would strengthen background checks, increase mental health services, fund safety measures such as lockable classroom doors and assign more school resource officers, like the one who intervened at Great Mills Tuesday.
“Working in a bipartisan manner,” he wrote, “we will have a comprehensive legislative package on the Governor’s desk before the end of session to ensure that we are doing everything we can to protect all school children throughout our great state.”
The Maryland House of Delegates opened their session Tuesday with a moment of silence for the shooting victims in St. Mary’s County.
But Del. Matthew Morgan, who represents St. Mary’s County, said Tuesday he was pessimistic about whether proposed legislative actions, such as a ban on bump stocks, would make a real difference.
“I don’t know if there is a policy fix,” he said, calling on parents of troubled teens to step in to counsel their kids. “Parents: take the opportunity to connect with your child.”
U.S. Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin was giving a speech in Washington about water infrastructure when he learned of the Great Mills shooting. He said his immediate reaction was "shock, anger, just frustration that now it happened in Maryland."
He said this latest school shooting underscores the need for more gun control. Cardin added that while school resource officers play an important role in schools, he remains opposed to the idea of arming school teachers as President Donald Trump has advocated.
Education secretary Betsy DeVos called the incident at Great Mills a “horrifying situation,” and said her agency stands ready to help.
“Our hearts and prayers are with those impacted, and our deep appreciation goes out to the first responders,” she wrote on Twitter.
Since the Parkland shooting, many districts around the country have seen an spike in threats made against schools. In late February, local media reported that police were investigating a social media threat against Great Mills, warning of an upcoming school shooting.
Police increased their presence at the high school, according to TheBayNet.com, though the threat was not substantiated. There has been no indication that Tuesday’s incident is related.
This weekend, thousands of students are expected to flood Washington for the “March for Our Lives,” a national protest to demand an end to mass shooting in schools.
Great Mills High School will be closed Wednesday, and potentially through the end of the week, said St. Mary’s County Public Schools superintendent James Scott Smith.
“This is just the beginning of a very long and tragic process that we will go through in St. Mary’s County,” Smith said.
Baltimore Sun reporters Kevin Rector, Jessica Anderson, Scott Dance, Michael Dresser, Erin Cox and Catherine Rentz contributed to this article.
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