Littleton Public Schools has many questions to answer on how school officials mishandled or missed the
Yet those officials refuse to talk about what they knew about Pierson or whether procedures have changed since the teen stormed Arapahoe High School last Dec. 13, shooting and killing student Claire Davis before killing himself.
Littleton Public Schools Superintendent Scott Murphy at a press conference Friday deflected questions, saying federal privacy laws cover all students, even dead ones.
Meanwhile, Sheriff Dave Walcher and District Attorney George Brauchler both urged the public to continue to seek answers.
“The public needs to ask the hard questions of everyone, everyone involved,” Brauchler said.
“Shame on us if we don’t learn,” Walcher said. “We want to look at every piece of this we can, from a community standpoint, from the schools, law enforcement… .”
Three months before the shooting, Pierson shouted that he wanted to kill his speech and debate coach. A sheriff’s deputy took a report at the time but said no crime occurred, leaving it to the district to deal with Pierson. Administrators later concluded Pierson was not a high-level threat.
What led school officials to conclude he was a low-level threat? His coach clearly seems to have thought otherwise.
say officials didn’t respond to their concerns about Pierson, ignoring a report of him looking at gun websites on his laptop at school.
Murphy said he wouldn’t discuss allegations from individual staffers. He also told the press he wouldn’t talk about the district’s safety and security measures so as not to reduce their effectiveness.
It is clear the district doesn’t want to say anything that could be used in a lawsuit.
The public must continue to ask school officials how they missed Pierson’s signs and whether they have learned from their mistakes.
And it is time for the district to start providing answers.
