By Chase Rogers
The Dallas Morning News
(TNS)
(The Dallas Morning News)— Dozens of Wilmer-Hutchins High School students walked out of class Wednesday morning in protest, a Dallas ISD spokesperson said, marking their first day back to the school since a classmate brought a gun to campus and opened fire.
As many as 50 students participated in the demonstration at about 11:15 a.m. before returning to the school before noon, Robyn Harris, the Dallas ISD spokesperson, said in an interview. Fewer than 900 students are enrolled at the southern Dallas school.
The protest comes more than a week after police say Tracy Haynes, 17, walked into the school on the afternoon of April 15 and opened fire, injuring at least four students. The shooting renewed discussions around safety in schools because the same campus was the location of a shooting nearly a year earlier.
“We give all of our campuses the ability to exercise their right to do so,” Harris said of the demonstration,” and to make their voices heard. That’s what was done today.”
Harris said additional counselling and mental health resources would be available to students through the end of the school year, in addition to a bolstered police presence.
Haynes turned himself in to authorities the night of the shooting and was held Wednesday in Dallas County jail in lieu of a $3.1 million bond, according to jail records. He faces six charges of aggravated assault mass shooting.
During a news conference last week, Dallas ISD officials said the shooting might not have been preventable, with Dallas ISD police Chief Albert Martinez saying all doors at the campus were “locked and secured,” meaning the door could not be opened from the outside but could be opened from the inside, as fire code requires.
Haynes was let inside the school by another student, an officer wrote in an arrest warrant affidavit.
The shooting marked the second shooting Wilmer-Hutchins students had faced in a year. At the news conference, district officials denied protocol failures allowed the shooting to occur, a contrast from their response to last year’s incident.
Officials last year said the district’s security protocols were not strictly followed when a teenage suspect shot a classmate. Students said they felt unsafe at school and demanded the district do more to protect them, with some walking out of school in protest.
Staff writer Julia James contributed to this report.
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