A shooting at Carver High School on Friday left one student with non-life-threatening injuries and another student in custody.
Authorities put the school on lockdown after the incident.
According to eyewitness accounts and police, the shooting happened outside of the school building at the end of a scheduled fire drill. Officer Tim Wilson, a school resource officer assigned to the high school, called in the report of the shooting, Winston-Salem Police Chief Barry Rountree said at a news conference after the shooting.
Christopher Lamont Richardson, 18, whom authorities say lives on La Deara Crest Lane, later was charged with assault with a deadly weapon, inflicting serious injury; carrying a concealed gun; possessing and discharging a firearm, and carrying a firearm onto educational property, arrest warrants say.
Wilson, a 25-year police veteran, saw the shooting and arrested the suspect without incident, Rountree said.
The victim was identified as Antwain Deshaun Porter, 15. He was being treated Friday night at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, where he was in stable condition, police said.
Porter was shot with a .38 caliber handgun, according to an arrest warrant. A witness said four or five shots were fired. Police declined to discuss Porter's injuries, citing the on-going investigation.
Richardson was being held Friday night in the Forsyth County Jail with his bond set at $50,000, court records say. He is scheduled to appear in court Sept. 26.
Investigators are trying to determine the circumstances surrounding the shooting, Rountree said. The shooting was a result of on-going dispute between Richardson and Porter, police said in a statement later Friday.
The shots were fired as students were going back into the school after the fire drill, police said.
Before the shooting, Wilson was helping students return to the classes.
Schools Superintendent Beverly Emory praised Wilson for his quick action in arresting the suspect and protecting other students.
"I am grateful that this was taken care of very quickly, and we didn't have any further injuries," said Superintendent Beverly Emory of the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools.
District Attorney Jim O'Neill called the shooting "everybody's worst nightmare," and said he understands that the public wants information about the incident.
However, O'Neill declined to give details about the case because of the police investigation. He also praised police officers and school officials for their quick actions to protect students and the public.
"The SRO (school-resource officer) was outstanding in what he did," O'Neill said.
A contingent of 30 to 60 police officers responded to the scene, police Lt. Jeff Watson said. Officers delayed traffic in front of Carver High School.
Emory said that Carver officials followed the district's lockdown procedures for its schools immediately after the shooting happened.
Police set up an area at nearby Russell Community Center where parents could pick up their children. Authorities allowed school buses one at a time to pick up riders, so police could account for every student, Watson said.
School officials released the students to their parents or buses at about 4:15 p.m. Students were patted down before getting on buses.
School officials postponed the Carver home football game Friday night against Reynolds High School, Emory said.
"That was just a precautionary measure until a complete and thorough investigation is done," Emory said. "We don't even know if these were football players. Until we get to the bottom of this, we didn't want to take any chances with a large crowd at Carver."
The game will be rescheduled, she said.
The school district will have a crisis team at the school when classes resume Tuesday to help students, their parents and staff members cope with the shooting.
School officials notified parents of Carver students Friday about the incident and informed them that the victim had non-life-threatening injuries, Emory said.
The district also told parents that the school was following its lockdown procedures, and told Carver parents that the parents of the injured student had been notified, "so not to panic everyone who is a parent whether or not it was their child or not," Emory said.
Carver, which has about 700 students, is located at 3545 Carver School Road in northeast Winston-Salem.
Despite the shooting, Carver is a safe school, and district administrators work with local law-enforcement agencies to make sure every school in the district is safe, Emory said.
In the wake of the shooting, school officials will discuss with experts the possibility of installing metal detectors at Carver and other schools, Emory said. Since the Columbine shooting in 1999, school districts have used metal detectors, she said.
Emory also questioned how any school could screen several hundred students with a metal detector each morning before classes begin.
"We will look at all of our options," she said. "It's an opportunity to revisit our safety procedures."
Friday's incident was the second time this year that a weapon was involved in an incident at Carver.
On Jan. 31, Carver's school resource officers learned that one of the students there had a handgun on school property. A fight between two juveniles had occurred earlier in the day at Carver.
An officer found an unloaded .22 caliber pistol in a book bag inside a classroom, authorities said. The student who brought the weapon to school was charged with possession of a weapon on school property. The student was a juvenile, and the student's name wasn't released.
Raul Olivera Mejia, 22, who lives on Efrid Street, pleaded guilty in Forsyth District Court in March to a misdemeanor charge of failure to secure a weapon to protect a minor, according to court records. A judge issued a prayer for judgment, which means no punishment was imposed. Mejia was ordered to pay $180 in court costs.
Emory said school officials believe the last school shooting in the school district occurred in the late 1960s.
On May 13, 1969, Ernest Napoleon Carter Jr., 13, was shot and killed at Hanes Junior High School by a 13-year-old classmate, authorities said at the time. Reginald T. Goldsmith was charged with involuntary manslaughter in the shooting.
Carter's mother sued the school system in connection with her son's death in 1970.
Copyright 2013 - Winston-Salem Journal, N.C.
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
