Students Share With Panel Horrors of Shootings

Students who lived through well-known incidents of school violence spoke in quiet, nervous tones Tuesday of shootings and bomb threats that left them scared and feeling helpless, and they urged House lawmakers to work to prevent such tragedies.

The teenagers made several suggestions to a House subcommittee, ranging from more parental involvement to more opportunities for troubled students to get counseling.

They also sparked a discussion of gun control, with one student saying parents should not have a gun when there are young people in the house.

“There’s no reason why a young person should have a gun, period,” said Carla Williams, a student from Sandy Spring, Md.

Ryan Atteberry, a student from Thurston High School in Springfield, Ore., told about being shot May 21, 1998.

“I’m laying down on the ground, paralyzed, my head filled by a deafening ringing sound,” Atteberry said. “I realized something terrible had happened when I saw the blood coming out of my side.”

Atteberry said he still has a bullet lodged near his spine because doctors feel it would be too dangerous to remove it.

Thurston High student Kip Kinkel has been charged in the shootings that killed two and injured more than 20.

Stephen Keene, a senior at Heath High School in West Paducah, Ky., said he still feels fear, anxiety and depression from the December 1997 shootings by fellow student Michael Carneal that killed three students and injured five others.

“The pain never leaves,” Keene said. “You can hardly control yourself sometimes because you’re crying so bad.”

Carneal pleaded guilty but mentally ill to murder and was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.

“If a person has a bad heart, you cannot change it; only God can change a bad heart,” said Adam Campbell of Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo. That’s where two fellow students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, fired guns and set off homemade bombs, killing 12 students and a teacher before killing themselves last month.

Lawmakers had other suggestions regarding school violence, such as introducing more moral teachings into schools and controlling guns. Others said they want to do something, but they weren’t sure what.