Idaho: Teacher disarms student and hugs her until help comes

In early May, a girl at a school in Idaho shot dead the caretaker and two school children. A teacher stopped the sixth grader – and now described the dramatic incident for the first time in an interview.

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It is one of those tragic incidents of gun violence in US schools that has made sad headlines for many years: On the morning of May 6, a girl at a middle school in the small town of Rigby, Idaho, shoots three people with a handgun . Two classmates, inside and the school caretaker, were hit by bullets but fortunately not seriously injured, Jefferson County Sheriff Steve Anderson later reported.

“The suspect left the building and kept firing, but was quickly disarmed and detained by a teacher,” said Anderson after the attack.

“Run fast and don’t look around!”

The teacher the sheriff spoke of was Krista Gneiting. She teaches math at Rigby Middle School. In an interview with the US broadcaster ABC, Gneiting described the dramatic incident for the first time:

She was preparing her students for the final exams when she heard a shot in the hallway, the teacher reported. When she looked out of the classroom, she saw the school caretaker lying on the floor at the end of the hall. She then locked the door and then heard two more shots.

“So I just said to my students, ‘We’re going to go now, we’re going to run to high school, you’re going to run fast, you are not going to look around, and now it’s time to get up and run,'” Gneiting recalled.

According to Anderson, the shooter was a girl from the neighboring town of Idaho Falls who was in sixth grade at Rigby Middle School. She pulled a gun from her backpack and shot the caretaker and a school child in the corridor. Then she went outside and fired at another school child.

Gneiting told ABC that she was trying to help one of the victims when she saw the girl with the gun. “It was a little girl and my brain couldn’t quite grasp that.” She told the injured school child to stay calm, approached the sixth grader and asked her softly: “Are you the shooter?”

“I just knew when I saw the gun that I had to get the gun,” said the teacher. “I just walked up to her and put my hand over her hand, slowly pulling the gun out of her hand. She didn’t give it to me, but she didn’t fight back. And then after I got the gun, I just got it pulled into a hug because I thought this little girl has a mother somewhere who doesn’t realize she’s breaking down and hurting people. “

From her cell phone, she called the police and hugged the student until the emergency services arrived, Gneiting said. “After a while the girl started talking to me and I could tell that she was very unhappy.” She just kept hugging and comforting the perpetrator and trying to let her know “that we will get through this together”. “I think my presence helped her because she calmed down.”

Perpetrator has already been charged

When a police officer arrested the student, Gneiting told her that the officer had to handcuff her. “She didn’t react to it, she just left him,” said the teacher. “He was very gentle and very kind, and he just went ahead and took it and put it in the police car.”

According to the Jefferson County Prosecutor’s Office, the girl is still in the custody of the authorities and has already been charged. With juvenile justice proceedings in Idaho under lock and key, the charges are not known. Prosecutor Mark Taylor had already stated at a press conference a few days ago that the child could be charged with attempted murder in three cases.

The victims have now all been released from the hospital and the students returned to class last week.

Gneiting, meanwhile, hopes that people can forgive the girl and help her get the support she needs. “She’s just beginning her life and she just needs some help. Everyone makes mistakes,” she told ABC. “I think we need to make sure we get her help and get her back to love herself so that she can function in society.”

Swell: ABC, “East Idaho News”

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