The 2019-2020 school year has just started and our own district has already faced the scare that has been rattling schools across the nation for the last decade. On Friday, September 13th, Langham Creek High School went on a lockdown for nearly 45 minutes. Students sat in dark rooms, hushed by teachers, sending, what they assumed, could possibly be their last “I love you” text to their parents and siblings.

During the lockdown the only information students could gather about the situation came from pictures and videos posted on Snapchat that quickly circulated around the campus. Videos of armed policemen and campus guards shook the students, many of them beginning to fear for their lives.

“I knew it wasn’t a drill cause when I heard Mr. Hughes [Langham Creek’s Principle] on the announcements the first time he didn’t say drill, he just said teacher lockdown,”  senior Jurnee Stuckey said. “When he came on the second and third time, he sounded so panicked and I knew that my life might end today”.

Students face this fear everyday they attend school. We carry the burden of knowing that at any moment the worst could happen. Every morning we put on our clear backpacks and walk out of the safety of our home not knowing for sure if we will safely make it back. This has become the current reality of attending school in America. Since the beginning of 2019 the U.S. has seen 69 school shootings, 10 of them resulting in at least one death. 

Luckily, all of the students left unharmed, with no shots fired from the armed teen. Rumors, however, quickly traveled about what caused the lockdown, none of them coming close to the real situation. The cause of the panic arose from a student, who had recently been withdrawn from Langham Creek, had entered the campus with a firearm in his possession. After he was discovered, he quickly left the school and was apprehended in a nearby neighborhood. His intentions have not yet been discovered.

“After all of it happened, I look back on it and I never want to have problems or anything with anybody ‘cause it’s not worth it anymore,”  Stuckey said. “My life or that person’s life could end in the blink of an eye”.