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Authorities in Ohio are praising an alert student for preventing a mass shooting at West Geauga High School in Chesterland. Chester Township Police Chief Craig Young said that the student found a bullet in the bathroom and immediately contacted the school's resource officer.
After reviewing security footage showing students entering the bathroom, school officials began pulling them out of class and interviewing them.
During the interviews, they identified Brandon M. Morrissette, 18, as the suspect and found a 9mm handgun with three loaded magazines in his backpack. He admitted that he planned to use the gun to kill his classmates.
After Morrissette was detained, the school was dismissed for the day so the police could do a sweep of the building.
Morrissette was taken to a hospital to undergo a mental health evaluation. Once he is released, he will be taken to jail to be arraigned on felony charges of attempted aggravated murder and illegal possession of a deadly weapon in a school and a misdemeanor charge of inducing panic.
After the incident, parents questioned the response of the school resource officer, wondering why the school was not locked down after the bullet was found.
"Why was the shelter-in-place not enacted until halfway through third period, which I did already hear (a) reply saying it was not to cause panic—which I assure you that teenagers with cell phones already knew what was happening by third period. What if the student with the gun had an accomplice who was not in that classroom and was notified of my son's discovery? But most concerning of all, what did the school district do to protect my child today? My child protected the other students. But what did you do to protect my child today? Because they got somebody else was looking out for them, because it wasn't you," the parent of the student who found the bullet asked during a school board meeting, according to WEWS.
Local officials defended the officer and the decision not to lock down the school immediately.
"I'm frankly very bewildered why there are those criticisms. This was handled, in my opinion, absolutely correctly and properly from beginning to end. And, you know, if you really want to be a Monday morning quarterback, you find the round in the bathroom, you lock down the school. Now you've locked a potential school shooter in a classroom with 20 kids, and he's got a handgun in his backpack. So that would not have been the right course of action. They took the right course of action," Geauga County Prosecutor Jim Flaiz said during a press conference.