Shooting in Essex

If you read the reports here, here, here and especially here, there's not a whole lot to add at this point, except...

It's interesting to note that only the CBS/WCAX article describes the man:

WCAX initially said police were looking for two cars and for a suspect described as a black man in his early 30s, about 6-foot-3, with shoulder-length cornrows. He was reported to be armed with a large-caliber handgun and police were calling him "armed and dangerous."

All schools in the area went into a lockdown procedure when the shootings occurred. My daughter was at soccer practice at her high school in South Burlington (about ten miles from Essex) and when I went to pick her up, I was met at the entrance to the driveway by the Vice-Principal, who was directing traffic in and out of the school. All of the kids had been directed into the gym and were only being released to parents. I don't have a cell phone, so I don't know if they were trying to contact me or not.

My wife, who works at another local high school, tells me the lockdown procedure is something that's been in effect at most (if not all) schools since the Columbine tragedy. At her school, the lockdown drill is practiced twice a year, unlike fire drills, which are practiced monthly.

I imagine this incident will prompt the schools to take a closer look at their lockdown drills, especially in light of the one teacher being shot through the locked door to her classroom. Was she following the procedure correctly or should she have been elsewhere in her room, somewhere out of line of sight from the door? Did it happen so quickly that she didn’t have time to get away from the door? She was, by all accounts, not the intended victim so, why was she shot?

Lots of questions and very few answers at the moment.

One thing, however, I can predict with utmost certainty: a lot of people are going to be calling for tighter gun laws here in Vermont. No doubt Alphecca will be watching this closely.