The Airsoft-gun shooting of Dre Doddington, Part II: The school wanted its side told, too. This was quite surprising to me because I had begged them for it when I wrote of the shooting last week.
Still, I strive to be a fair man in such matters, so I returned the telephone calls of Robert Lees, attorney for Front Range Christian School, and we chatted:
Why was there a pellet gun on the class outing to Great Sand Dunes National Park late last month, and why was Dre Doddington shot with it? And more to the point, why hadn’t the school done or said anything about it?
By way of background, Dre Doddington is a 16-year-old junior at the Littleton school whose folks, Dale and Regina, became incensed when they found out about the shooting. They called in Jefferson County sheriff’s deputies when they felt their inquiries to the school went unanswered.
I told their story.
Lees now says I caught him off-guard with my request for the school’s side that day and wondered whether we could start over.
Yes, he said, Dre Doddington was shot four times with the Airsoft pellet gun. The boy who did it, he said, insists he did not violate school policy by bringing it on the trip but that he found the gun at the park.
The school’s initial investigation, Lees said, indicates the boys involved were fooling around with the gun, and it is not fully clear whether Doddington was a participant in the foolery.
“What we know is that he was not specifically singled out,” he said. This seemed very important for him to point out.
“None of the children were in any imminent danger, and each was informed there would be calls to their parents, that a board would be convened and discipline meted out accordingly,” Lees said.
He was called by the school, he said, the following Monday and was told of the incident and that suspensions or possible expulsions could follow.
“The school in this matter has been extremely safety-conscious,” he said.
It was all thrown into disarray, Lees said, that very same Monday when Doddington’s parents began calling the school “on the hour” and called in a deputy.
“We decided at that point we could not go any further,” Lees said.
It is why he declined to speak with me last week, he said.
“We were complying with the sheriff fully,” he said. “We had already talked to the students and the teachers, but when the sheriff’s deputy arrived, we shut it all down.”
Then we talked about schools and incidents of this kind, of parents’ reactions whenever the word “gun” or “weapon” is involved, and the pressure both feel when their side of the story is not fully aired or cannot be told.
Parents in these times, rightly or wrongly, we agreed, are overly fearful for their children’s safety. We also agreed that schools, whipsawed by law, regulations and the like, step on themselves too many times.
“The guilty parties,” he assured, “will be disciplined.”
Front Range Christian, Lees added, “takes anything that looks like a weapon or is one extremely serious. We want our kids to be safe, you bet.”
Still, it would have been nice to know this the first time out.
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
