Criminal - Hastings

Episode Date: February 19, 2016

In 2010, an eighth-grader brought a loaded gun to a middle school in Hastings, Minnesota. We speak with Jake Bullington and Emma Bolters, two students at the school, and Mark Zuzek, the principal, about the hours in lockdown. Read Jake Bullington's essay, "Yeah, I'm Afraid of Guns."  Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop.  Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Support for Criminal comes from Apple Podcasts. Each month, Apple Podcasts highlights one series worth your attention, and they call these series essentials. This month, they recommend Wondery's Ghost Story, a seven-part series that follows journalist Tristan Redman as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home. His investigation takes him on a journey involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums, and leads him to a dark secret about his own family.

Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts. Hey, it's Scott Galloway, and on our podcast, Pivot, we are bringing you a special series about the basics of artificial intelligence. Thank you. So, tune into AI Basics, How and When to Use AI, a special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS, wherever you get your podcasts. I've always been like a jumpy person, even before this, where loud noises, sudden noises just make me jump out of my skin. But especially that, where it's deathly silent, and then all of a sudden there's glass falling next to us, that was a very, very loud noise that really just, I think everyone was too scared to scream. But it was definitely people shifted in their seats quite a bit as far as being scared quite a bit. This is Jake Bullington. Back in 2010, he was an 8th grader at Hastings Middle School in Hastings, Minnesota. He was in math class on a Monday morning when the principal came on the loudspeaker and announced that the school was going into lockdown. He and his classmates assumed it was a drill.

They had drills all the time. His teacher locked the classroom door, turned off the lights, and told the They had drills all the time. His teacher locked the classroom door, turned off the lights, and told the students to hide in the corner. And that's where I was like, oh, here we go, another one of these darn state-regulated lockdown drills. We would usually giggle and whisper to each other, and the teacher would be like, hey, shut up. And then that would be the end of it. It would be like 10 minutes ago, it would go by, all the principals would walk around and check all the doors and make sure they're all locked. And then, you know, that would be, you know, the end of it. It would probably take 10, 15 minutes total and then we'd go right back to class.

But there was something about the way that his teacher was acting that made Jake think something might be really wrong. It was almost kind of like, I think it was like a paralytic kind of fear in her eyes that kind of just looked like, you know, I knew that this was not ordinary behavior for my math teacher to be doing. I thought maybe someone had, you know, like done something offensive that had made her angry or something. But moving with motivation towards the door. Once she turned around from closing the door, it was kind of, that's where the, I knew there was a sense of panic that had kind of set over the classroom. Jake's teacher told the class that this drill was going to be different than other drills. She kept calling it an enhanced lockdown drill. She said something

along the lines of, you know, well, this is going to be, you know, they're going to start coming around banging on the windows and trying to knock locks and everything, and they're going to really test the durability of the doors and the windows, as to kind of explain why someone might be trying to break the glass or trying to break in the door. Because I think she knew at the time that there was someone in the building with a gun. There was someone in the building with a gun. There was someone in the building with a gun, a gun that would end up malfunctioning. This is a look at the minutes and hours inside a school where someone with a gun was running loose, and the impact that day continues to have on a student who had no idea that gun wouldn't fire.

I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. We were sitting there for a very long time, but when we started to hear people running through the hallways and loud voices and yelling outside in the distance. I think that's when it became even more real and even more very frightening. And we were using, you know, textbooks to kind of just like hug, I guess. And maybe like, you know, who knows what that could, you know, as like to stop a bullet or something, you know, it's even when I was in eighth grade, you know, school shootings were not

something that was unheard of in America. So I think we had heard about this type of thing on the news and we're, you know, trying to imagine ourselves in this position. Where was your teacher sitting or hiding? She was sitting behind all of us up in a desk. She wasn't properly hiding. And I remember keep looking back at her like as if she's crazy because she's not hiding as much as we are. Like she was just kind of sitting there watching. When I knew that there was someone in the hallway trying to cause me harm, I guess is what I'll put it, was when he used the butt of his revolver to try to smash the glass out of the door to unlock the door from the inside.

So, yeah, take me through that a little more. So you start hearing it's quiet for a long time. Yeah. And then you start hearing things in the hallway. What kinds of things are you hearing? Like I said, like people running through the hallways, someone angrily yelling. And then eventually I heard someone try the doorknob, try to kick the door. And then eventually someone hitting the glass really, really hard. And it never got to the point where glass was really, really falling

because it was the security glass where it has those kind of like small metal bars within the glass. But there was definitely some like glass dust, I guess I could say, that fell to the ground near me because I was in such close proximity and some of my classmates were in such close proximity to that door. You are looking at this door and there's glass everywhere. The guy had broken this glass window that's in the door. So we're like, oh my God, someone's going to try and get into the room. This is Emma Olkers.

She was in the classroom with Jake that day. And our teacher held up this piece of paper on a notebook, whatever it was saying. Maybe they're testing the windows. And then at that point, I think, we're like, what is she thinking? That's going to cost the school a lot of money. Like, they're not testing the windows. She said that a few times, that like, don't worry, like, they're just testing it, like, this is okay, like, I knew about this ahead of time, kind of things, where it's like, I knew that was kind of crap, but I think I believed it at the time because I wanted

to believe that I was safer than I was. My name is Mark Zuzik. I'm in my 18th year as principal. I started here in 1998. I grew up one block away from the campus that I'm principal at. So, you know, this community means a lot to me. Here's what Principal Zusak learned. Around 10 a.m., a student walked into a science class

and pulled out a loaded.22 caliber handgun. He told everyone to get on the ground. His science teacher said, let's stay calm. What can I do and how can I help you? And that worked. The student left the classroom and the science teacher initiated the school's lockdown procedure. We called 9-1-1 and on this, you know, really nice day in April, we locked the building down, and we were looking for the student. The student walked through the hallways, trying to get into other classrooms, breaking windows in the process. But most of the doors were already locked. At one point, he encountered school staff in the hallway,

pointed his gun at them, and said, bang. One staff member told police that he'd heard a click and believed that the student had pulled the gun's trigger, but no bullets came out. Ultimately, the police did encounter the youngster and encountered him really as he was running out of the building. He knew that the police were en route and he exited the building and he was taken into custody, largely without incident. As he left the building, there was a squad car sitting right there. There

were police waiting for him to leave the building through any opening a squad car sitting right there. There were police, you know, waiting for him to leave the building through any opening, and he was taken into custody. The student was 14 years old, an 8th grader. Emma says she sort of knew who he was, and Jake didn't know him at all. Principal Zusick didn't want to discuss anything specific about him, but newspapers reported that he was relatively new to the school and had told police he'd felt bullied. The next step was to check inside every single classroom and make sure there were no other suspects or weapons. And one of the most interesting moments

of the day was when I was with an officer and we entered a room and we made sure that everybody in the room was okay and that everybody, you know, was safe. And this kiddo from the back said, hey dad, and it was the police officer's son. And, you know, the emergency responders responded with such grace and dignity and professionalism. But to remember that they too have children in these schools was just remarkable to me. Finally, after hours in lockdown, the middle school students were let out of their classrooms. No one had been heard. In the immediate aftermath, meaning that day, as odd as it seems, you also have to think about really pragmatic things. Like, for instance, I've got, at the time, we had 1,350 kids,

and they hadn't eaten lunch yet. And they've been locked down, and now it's 1240, 1245. And how is it that we're going to get all of those kids to the cafeteria and get them fed? I remember the door opening, and then we got released to go down to lunch. I mean, who would want to eat? Right, and that's the thing. So I remember going into the lunchroom, and everyone's just kind of sitting there.

Like, people aren't really eating. Some people are, depending on, like, what classroom you are in. And you look over, and there are some people who are hysterically sobbing. There are some people who are just going about their day. Terrified parents were showing up and taking their kids home immediately. Jake says he distinctly remembers texting his mom on his flip phone. Text messages cost 15 cents each, and that she came to get him. After every student had gone home safely,

Principal Zuzik and his staff got together and made a plan. We had a staff meeting where we went through the incident and what we knew of our continued care plan that would start right away that next morning. Then we really relied heavily on parents to let us know if their kiddo was still struggling. We talked about how natural it is that kids will regress. And for instance, there are kids that, because of this trauma, did not feel comfortable sleeping alone. And so they wanted a parent to sleep in their room or they wanted to sleep on the floor in their parents' room. There were kids that it would be three weeks later and somebody would drop a plate and they would hear that crash on the floor and it would be a trigger for the kiddo. And so keeping our ear to the

ground and really trusting the judgment of parents and helping kids during the day to deal with whatever is on their mind, it was really the good work that our staff continued to do. In spite of that, one of the most disconcerting things about this story is that both Jake and Emma say that almost immediately, their classmates just stopped talking about it. No one talked about it. It wasn't something that people talked about. Yeah, I think a big part of that was just, you know, that was something that our class as that grade decided. I kind of like unspoken rule of thumb is to just not bring that up.

I don't think I ever heard someone talk about it of all of high school. That's totally surreal i mean that that it would happen and then be like this understood pact between eighth graders that they were just gonna move yeah i mean it was i think that kind of thinking back on it now it struck me to how quickly classes resumed and how quickly everyone just kind of agreed that that was, you know, well, that was crazy. All right, now what's, you know, what's next chapter in math? So I think a lot of it was just kind of willfully ignoring the fact that that had just happened to us and a lot of repressed emotions and repressed memories.

I wonder if it feels like you couldn't talk about it or make a big deal about it or, um, because no one got hurt. I mean, no one got shot. And so it's like, what's the big deal? We were all okay. Right. You know, and that means that you can't, you know, man up. You know, it's not a big deal. I think definitely the man up thing was very present.

And exactly that, everyone was fine. So it was kind of, there was no motivation to talk about anything because of the fact that no one had been injured. It was just kind of a, you know, all right, well, it's fine. Let's move on. We wondered what Principal Zuzik thought about this, about what Jake and Emma said. It's not a criticism in any way or even a conversation about the type of counseling these children, for these students who had grown up knowing about Columbine, that they felt like they didn't have a right to talk about their trauma, right? Because no one got shot at our school. That, you know, I'm just thinking about that a little bit,

you know, not that the resources weren't there, but even if the resources were there, you know, hey, keep your mouth shut, you know, everyone's seemingly okay. Yeah, I, you know, I could imagine that that might have been the case. I think one of the important messages at that time, and that I deeply feel this now. Everybody has a right to their own feelings. And I think it's important that we not judge other people's feelings. What I would be curious about is how could we help kids to not judge their own feelings. If they themselves were feeling that they shouldn't still be, you know, let's say that it's three months from now. Well, I still shouldn't be struggling with this. I should have moved on. I should be okay with this by now.

Those are hard feelings to deal with because, frankly, I don't even know how we would know that kids were feeling that way. The student told police that he'd taken the gun from his house, where it was in a locked cabinet. He found the key. Police eventually recovered three bullets from the school. The bullets were.22 caliber bullets, but they were long bullets, the kind you'd use in a rifle,

and didn't fit properly in the gun. He was charged with five felonies, three counts of assault, one count of terroristic threats, and one count of criminal damage to property. It must be apparent to everybody that you can't bring a gun to school and brandish that weapon and threaten other people. And because the perpetrator in this case was a juvenile, the child had consequences legally. And we still have the responsibility to care for and educate and care about the child. He was tried as a juvenile and placed in a long-term program at a juvenile detention center. Jake Bullington is 20 now

and a sophomore at Drake University in Iowa. In December, he wrote an essay called Yeah, I'm Afraid of Guns. You know, the second semester here, a new semester just started here at Drake, and I've walked into new classrooms, and I was kind of reflecting on this, just how easy it would be for someone just like what happened in eighth grade to happen again right here in my school. And so I think it's kind of struck a certain level of paranoia. I mean, it's not always on the mind, but it definitely has its moments where it's just like, wow, this could really happen

and every single one of us in this classroom could die. It's this little inkling in my mind that just keeps coming back when I walk into a classroom. Just even for a split second, I think that's a huge impact that I don't think any of me or any of my classmates really deserve. Criminal is produced by Lauren Sporer and me.

Audio mix by Rob Byers. Special thanks to Alice Wilder, Chelsea Corinta, and Russ Henry. Julianne Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com, where we also have a link to Jake's essay. Criminal is recorded in the studios of North Carolina Public Radio, WUNC. We're a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a collective of the 13 best podcasts around. Radiotopia from PRX is supported by the Knight Foundation and MailChimp, celebrating creativity, chaos, and teamwork. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. Radiotopia from PRX. Your own weight loss journey is personal. Everyone's diet is different. Everyone's

bodies are different. And according to Noom, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Noom wants to help you stay focused on what's important to you with their psychology and biology-based approach. This program helps you understand the science behind your eating choices and helps you build new habits for a healthier lifestyle. Stay focused on what's important to you with Noom's psychology and biology-based approach. Sign up for your free trial today at Noom.com. hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Hand-selected for their inherent craft, each hotel tells its own unique story through distinctive

design and immersive experiences, from medieval falconry to volcanic wine tasting. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of over 30 hotel brands around the world. Find the unforgettable at AutographCollection.com.