From the school office, the sound of gunfire in the nearby cafeteria was unmistakable. School resource officer Kent Hall sprinted the 50 feet down the hallway. The Butler County Sheriff’s Department deputy arrived about eight seconds later to find a chaotic scene. Multiple kids were running to Hall’s left. Some were on the floor, bleeding, as administrators tended to them. A single person ran out the front of the school, but Hall could not be certain it was the shooter, until an administrator pointed to him.
The shooter, 14-year-old James “Austin” Hancock, had fired seven rounds that day in 2016, striking two students. Others suffered injuries from shrapnel or while trying to flee. By the time Hall realized which student was the suspect, Hancock had too much of a head start to be caught on foot. But Hall knew the area around the school intimately because he had graduated from there and served as the chief of the community’s volunteer fire department and EMS. Hall correctly suspected that Hancock would run into a nearby field. Hall ran to his cruiser and drove it to a location that would make Hancock’s escape from that field difficult. A canine officer arrived, and the dog tracked down Hancock, who police arrested without incident.
Hall told NASRO that Hancock had not been on anyone’s radar. Neither he nor the school’s disciplinary officials had any interaction with him before the shooting. The investigation determined that Hancock felt that nobody wanted him, including his parents. He had been abusing the drug Adderall for about a year. He had stolen a gun from his grandmother’s home and showed it to several other students, some as early as 7:30 a.m. the day of the shooting. Not a single student reported the gun to school officials before Hancock started firing.
Four months after the shooting, a court sentenced Hancock to juvenile detention until age 21.
The community made many changes after the incident. Hall had been covering a K-12 school on a schedule of six hours per day. Officials changed that to eight hours and added another SRO. On the day of the shooting, the school had no two-way radios. Now, it has 60, enough for every teacher. The school bought metal detectors and began random checks of students. More recently, it received a grant for a full-size airport-style metal detector, which it plans to use on random days.
To encourage more reporting of issues like armed students, the school established anonymous hotlines. Teachers and staff constantly reach out to kids to make sure they know about hotlines and understand the importance of using them. These are just a few examples of safety changes at the school.
Hall is convinced that the response time made possible by his presence made a big difference. “If there’s no SRO, now, you’re waiting three to six minutes for the first law enforcement officer to arrive and locate the shooter, who could be long gone,” Hall said. In addition, outside patrol officers are unlikely to know the campus layout as well as does an SRO, Hall explained.
Do you have a similar SRO success story? If so, contact NASRO PIO Jay Farlow, [email protected].