Martinsville still recovering from school shooting

Suzie Lipps, principal of Martinsville West Middle School, was in her office the morning of March 25, 2011, when two shots rang out just down the hallway.

“A staff member came into the office and told me she heard something that could’ve been a shot,” Lipps said. “When I saw the teacher’s face when she ran into the office, I knew it wasn’t just a disruption in the hallway. I knew it wasn’t just books falling. I knew it was something really horrible because of her face.

“She just had this expression of ‘I can’t believe this.’ Then I ran out the back door to where that was, and the student was there, in the exit or in the little hallway, crumpled. The shooter had already run.”

Lipps raced back to her office to make three phone calls: one to 911, one to the victim’s parents and one to Martinsville Superintendent Ron Furniss.

Furniss was driving to work when he received the call from Lipps. Immediately, he changed his destination.

“I went directly to West and joined in with the police officers who were there,” Furniss said. “I think for all of us, you don’t expect it to happen in your district.”

It’s been one year since the shooting in Martinsville, in which 15-year-old Michael Phelps shot another student, Chance Jackson, also 15, and fled the scene, only to be caught and taken by police a short time after.

Lipps said that, since then, the community as a whole has struggled to heal.     
With the Ohio school shooting several weeks ago, she said all of the Martinsville community members were thrown back to the incident from last year.

“When I started seeing the images on television and online, the images of Ohio students, staff, family, everybody working together through the tragedy, automatically, it put us into recall to remember that spring morning last year in Martinsville,” Lipps said. “We’re still haunted with the question why.”

Furniss said the event shocked the small community.

“This is a good town and never had it happen before,” Furniss said. “I think any adult, certainly any educator, would tell you that’s the worst possible thing that could have happened in our district. It kind of destroyed our innocence.”

Lipps said every member of the Martinsville community has had to find his or her own way to come to terms with the event.

“I think the biggest challenge for everyone’s different,” Lipps said. “As educators, our biggest challenge throughout the crisis and still today is allowing everyone to heal and then move forward.”

The shooting last year occurred just before the state-mandated ISTEP.

Lipps said that, despite the incident, the school administration had no choice but to push forward with the test and with other end-of-the-year events. But they had to balance this need to move forward with the need for discussion about the event.

“It’s hard to walk that line,” Lipps said. “It’s hard to keep everyone on track and say, ‘Hey, we have ISTEP next week, and our school’s splattered all over the news.’ Obviously, in a situation like that there’s all sorts of criticisms from various groups, but you just have to know as a staff we did everything we could.”

Lipps said that at the end of the year, the school still had its honors celebration.
Students organized fundraising events for the victim and his family, and they presented checks to
the family.

From there, Lipps said, Martinsville West Middle School made some policy changes to make sure such an event doesn’t happen again.

For example, since the shooting incident occurred in a hallway where all of the students used to enter at the beginning of the day, the students have now been sectioned off into specific areas before classes start.

Bus students go in through one entrance and stay in the gymnasium until the first bell rings. Students who walk or are dropped off at school go in through another entrance.
“Our 600 students are split up, basically,” Lipps said.

School administrators also had a 10-foot fence built around the school so that strangers cannot come and go from the campus.

Another significant change is that a police officer is now present at Martinsville West Middle School at the beginning and end of the school day to oversee students.

“Every morning, at 6:45, we have a police officer on our grounds until 7:45,” Lipps said. “He moves from school to school to make periodic checks. Then, at the end of the day, he’s back at West Middle School for the bus students and the walker students to leave until the school’s property’s cleared.”

Furniss said the police presence has helped make students and parents feel more secure and that they’re good for students to be around.

“They’re good people, first of all, they’re good models,” Furniss said. “Secondly, it never hurts to have an extra pair of eyes there. I think it gives everybody a sense of well-being.”

Although many things can be done to prevent situations such as this, the Martinsville community recognizes that it could happen again, Lipps said.

“We’re not going to say this is never going to happen in Martinsville again because it happened once,” Lipps said. “You know, people think that if you live in a small town it’s like Candy Land. Everything’s smooth and easy and comfortable. And we do have a bond, and we do have a sense of family, but it doesn’t mean that someone can’t be troubled and we can’t have a problem.”

Lipps said Martinsville is continuing to heal and that the community’s thoughts and prayers go out to all in Ohio who were affected by the recent school
shooting there.

“It’s never going to go away,” Lipps said. “It’s a part of who we are, and I think it makes us stronger. All the compassion in the world to those Ohio people for us because we were there.”