Heroic School Resource Officers Harris and Thompson Stopped Reynolds H.S. Attacker. Mainstream Media Chooses To Ignore Them.

Authorities have released additional information today regarding yesterday’s shooting at Reynolds High School in Troutdale, Oregon. Both the perpetrator and the victim have now been identified. Both were freshman at the school of 2,200, but there is no known connection between the two teens, nor is there a known motive for the attack.

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Chief Scott Anderson of the Troutdale Police Department released the following information about the attack and the attacker:

He was a freshman at Reynolds High School. He arrived at school yesterday morning on the school bus, carrying a guitar case and a duffel bag. He entered the boys’ locker room in the building that housed the gymnasium. He spent a period of time in the locker room, and during that time murdered a fellow student.

We have not established any link between the student and the shooter.

Teacher Todd Rispler encountered the shooter in the locker room. As he was fleeing, Mr. Rispler was shot once, suffering a grazing wound to his hip. Mr. Rispler made his way to the office, where he was able to notify the administration, which then immediately initiated the lockdown.

As the shooter was moving through the main hallway, he encountered officers who were starting to enter from two separate doorways. At that time, he moved into a small restroom. We know there was an exchange of gunfire between one of the first responding officers and the shooter. Based on the autopsy this morning, we do know that the shooter died of a self-inflected gunshot wound.

The shooter used an AR-15 type rifle in the attack and carried, but did not use, a semi-automatic handgun. Investigators also recovered nine loaded magazines with the capability of holding several hundred rounds.

The shooter also had a large knife. He was wearing a non-ballistic vest used for carrying ammunition and other items. He also was wearing a multi-sport helmet with a camouflage design.

The shooter obtained the weapons from his family home. The weapons had been secured, but he defeated the security measures.

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More information will undoubtedly be released later as the investigation continues, but it appears that the presence of armed school resource officers (SROs) Kyle Harris and Nick Thompson who closed with and engaged with the attacker within a minute of the first shots being fired may have averted a much more costly tragedy. Harris and Thompson traded shots with the attacker, forcing him into a small bathroom were he elected to commit suicide instead of surrendering.

The incident seems to echo the December 13 shooting at Arapahoe High School attack in Centennial, Colorado, where Sheriff’s Deputy James Englert, who was that school’s SRO, trapped the attacker down in the library within 90 seconds. That attacker also chose to commit suicide instead of surrendering.

Predictably, Teacher Todd Rispler is the focus of the mainstream media’s adoration for initiating the school’s lockdown procedures after being grazed on the hip by one of the attackers bullets, and we applaud him for doing what was both right and expected of him in that circumstance to ensure that those lockdown procedures were initiated.

It is curious to us, however, how the mainstream media is paying little to no attention—and seems purposefully obscuring—the reality that it was “two good guys with guns” that disrupted the attacker’s plans and once again saved countless lives.

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