Shooting at Dance Spurs Advice to Heed Threats

As in other school shootings around the nation, the 14-year-old boy accused of slaying a teacher had talked about killing people. Experts say that such warnings can no longer be ignored.

“It is eerie that this is repeating itself,” said Burt Singerman, director of psychiatry at St. Francis Medical Center in Pittsburgh. “I really think this has occurred enough times that teachers, principals and guidance counselors need to think about how they would handle students who make these statements about wanting to hurt people.”

In the northwest Pennsylvania town of Edinboro, Andrew Wurst opened fire at an eighth-grade dance Friday, killing teacher John Gillette and slightly wounding a second teacher and two teenage boys, police said.

“He’s devastated,” said his lawyer, Phillip Friedman, who met with Wurst in prison Saturday and with his parents Sunday. “This family’s devastated. Their hearts go out to the Gillette family.”

The violence followed school shootings last month in Jonesboro, Ark.; in December in West Paducah, Ky.; and last October in Pearl, Miss. The toll from all four shootings: 11 killed and 25 wounded.

At a news conference, Edinboro police refused to discuss a motive. They said they were still investigating classmates’ reports that Wurst had talked of killing and suicide.

At a memorial service Sunday for Gillette, sympathy cards for both him and the Wurst family adorned the entrance of First Evangelical Lutheran Church.

Classes will start two hours late today at the General McLane School District to allow teachers to prepare for handling grieving students.