A 14-year-old student pulled a pair of butcher’s knives yesterday during a fight at a Reno High School and swung them at other students before advancing upon an armed school resource officer, who promptly dropped him with a single shot.

A student brandishing a knife at Hug High School was shot by a Washoe County School District police officer Wednesday morning, sending the campus into lockdown for the rest of the day as police went room to room accounting for all students and finding witnesses.

Justin Clark, who identified his son Logan Clark, 14, as the student shot Wednesday by a police officer during school, said the family is being represented by Reno attorney David Houston.

The Washoe County School District and Reno Police Department, heading the investigation, wouldn’t identify the student shot by police but said he’s in critical condition at a local hospital.

Reno police spokesman Tim Broadway said the officer who shot the student is on paid administrative leave. Police aren’t yet releasing the officer’s identity.

It is routine procedure to put officers involved in shootings on leave.

“A student is in the hospital, and a thorough investigation is underway,” said the district in a statement, emphasizing that it immediately called Reno police, the Washoe County Sheriff’s Office and the FBI for assistance following the shooting.

Reno Police Chief Jason Soto said the incident began at 11:25 a.m. with an altercation between two students. One of those students drew a knife and tried to attack others. At that point, a school police officer told the student to drop the knife, Soto said. When the student didn’t cooperate, the officer shot him and then provided medical attention, he said.

Witness testimony and videos posted to social media on Wednesday also depict the incident.

It’s unfortunate that young Logan Clark brought knives to his school to deal with the personal problems he had with other students. It’s unfortunate that the officer felt Clark was enough of a threat that he needed to shoot him.

One of the videos taken of the incident posted online captures a large part of the incident. I’ll caution that the language is profane and that the video captures both the shooting and the immediate aftermath.

Amazingly (or maybe not), Justin Clark is blaming everyone but his son for the incident.

Clark started by blaming the school resource officer for shooting his son with a firearm instead of using a taser.

As regular readers of Bearing Arms are well aware, single officers must respond with lethal force against lethal force weapon, and butcher knives are most certainly capable of killing. Tasers are only to be used against non-compliant unarmed suspects, or if officers have the numbers, in support of an armed officer squaring off against a suspect with impact weapons such as a knife or club. As this school resource officer was responding to this incident unsupported, deploying his firearm was absolutely the correct response.

If anything, the officer put his life at greater risk by not firing the more typical response of two or more rounds. He fired a single shot, and it is quite possible that Logan Clark is in critical condition instead of the morgue because the officer was willing to take that risk.

Instead of reaching out to attorneys in hopes of profiting from the city for the officer’s actions, he should be thanking the officer for having such great restraint when he would have been justified in shooting Logan to the ground, and for being the very first person to start trying to save Logan Clark’s life, visibly applying pressure to and sealing with his hand the sucking chest wound that penetrated his son’s lung. If it were not for this school resource officer’s actions, Logan Clark’s last words might have been “I can’t breath” before tension pneumothorax killed him.

But Justin Clark isn’t grateful. He’s blame-casting, and he’s not done yet.

At no point does Justin Clark actually blame his thug of a son for bringing weapons onto the school campus, or for lashing out at other students with those knives.

Did i just call a 14-year-old a “thug?”

You’re darn right I did.

According to Logan Clark’s own Facebook page he was a far from being the victim his father is attempting to manufacture. He’s already been arrested and incarcerated on multiple occasions, and was only been out of juvenile lockup a little over two weeks before he was shot at Procter Hug High School .

Perhaps instead of blaming everyone else, Justin Clark may want to take long, hard look in the mirror at what kind of father he has been, and at the violent young criminal he appears to be raising.

If he doesn’t, there’s a darn good chance that his son’s going to be in the ground before he’s old enough to vote.