School a Memorial Site for Slain Teacher

Scores of grieving children, parents and colleagues brought flowers and notes Saturday to the middle school where a popular English teacher was fatally shot on the last day of classes.

In a courtroom across town, a judge ordered that 13-year-old Nathaniel Brazill remain in custody while a grand jury considers what charges should be brought against him in Barry Grunow’s death.

State Atty. Barry Krischer, known to back zero-tolerance attitudes in dealing with juvenile crime, said he decided to charge the teenager as an adult, the Miami Herald reported in today’s editions.

“It shouldn’t be so easy for juveniles to get a gun,” Krischer told the newspaper, “just because they have no impulse control.”

The seventh-grader had been sent home by an assistant principal Friday about 1 p.m. for throwing water balloons in class. According to police, he rode his bicycle back to school about two hours later with a semiautomatic pistol in his pocket.

He had stolen the pistol, a compact, 5-inch model called a Raven, and four bullets from his grandfather’s dresser drawer a week before, Police Chief William Smith said.

Brazill was trying to talk to two girls in Grunow’s class. When the teacher told him to leave, police said, he pulled out the gun and shot Grunow, 35, in the head.

Early Saturday, Brazill, wearing a two-piece khaki jail uniform, his wrists shackled, appeared before Palm Beach County Circuit Court Judge Jorge LaBarga and a courtroom packed with cameras and reporters.

His parents were visibly distraught but the boy’s expression was obstructed from view. He was flanked by two public defenders, who said they are still working on how to best represent their client.

Brazill is being held at the Palm Beach Regional Juvenile Detention Center in West Palm Beach. The grand jury has to review the case by June 17.

Outside Lake Worth Middle School, a memorial of flowers and posters covered a 40-foot section of the school’s fence.

Parents and children hugged, cried and tried to console one another. Many of the messages were addressed to “Shaggy,” a nickname given to Grunow because of his hair.

Students, parents and school officials said he was well-liked and known for unconventional methods, such as reading J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” aloud in class with different voices for the characters. Students said he regularly joined them in pickup basketball games after school.

At least 200 people stopped at the school Saturday to speak with grief counselors, who also planned to be there today.

“I know how my children are taking this, and I just don’t have the answers,” said Beverly Hart.

Her 12-year-old daughter Amber should have been in Grunow’s class, but her mother asked her to stay home. It’s a practice Hart has followed the past few years with all her children on the last day of classes, out of concern that kids are likely to bring weapons or fight, she said.