Every shooting at a school in March 2025

Number of shootings on campus continue to trend down. Serious incidents like a teacher suicide, student killed "execution style" at dismissal, and shot fired into elementary classroom still persist.

March 2025 continues a pattern of good news at schools and public places across the United States as the number of shootings and other violent crimes continue to fall (see: Ep 37. Realtime database shows violent crime is falling nationwide).

As of now, we are on pace for 202 shootings on campus this year which would be a 39% drop compared to 2024.

While the numbers are finally trending in the right direction, this problem isn’t solved yet. There were some very serious incidents in March including:

• Student was killed “execution style” in front of his Baltimore County school at dismissal.

• Teacher committed suicide inside his classroom in Tennessee.

• Bullet was fired through the window of an occupied elementary school classroom in Texas.

In March 2025, there were still double the number of shootings on campus compared to 2018 (the month after the Parkland attack).

Most of the shootings in March were during the school day.

Like every other version of this monthly summary, most of the shootings were outside of the school building.

If you missed it, I released a couple of really interesting podcast episodes this month based on new research that is very applicable to parents, police officials, and school administrators:

• Ep 37. Realtime database shows violent crime is falling nationwide

• Ep 36. School shooters are bad at killing. We can make them even worse.

• Systematic Failures: Why Predictable Problems Repeat at Schools (I’m a guest on the Coptimizer Podcast)

• Ep 35. Six evidence-based ways to prepare teachers for a school shooting

If you already listened to these episodes, THANK YOU!!! Less than a year into recording episodes, I have listeners in 92 countries.

Looking back at Denver East High shooting in March 2023

Last week, Denver schools put plans for a $800,000 "secure vestibule" at East High School on hold after pushback from parents and staff. This security upgrade has been in the works since a shooting on campus back in 2023.

Two years ago, a student who was on a safety plan needed to be searched every morning when he arrived at school. Normally a security officer searched him but when the officer was out on leave, two administrators were assigned to do the search instead. When they took him into a school office, the teen shot both of them causing critical injuries. He then fled from the campus and killed himself.

The student was on a safety plan because:

• He had been seen on campus with a gun weeks before the shooting.

• Other students submitted multiple reports on the Safe2Tell app about him.

• His father kept unsecured guns inside their house.

• His mother (separated from his father) found an assembled AR-15 ghost gun in his bedroom.

• He told staff it was his 2nd Amendment right to have a gun at school (he wasn’t a troublemaker and he was an honors student interested in engineering).

At Denver East High, the two school administrators who were shot by the student were told to search him without any formal security training. This was an example of “The Matrix Problem” when staff at a metal detector or security checkpoint don’t actually think they will find a weapon.

When they do encounter an armed person, they are neither prepared, trained, nor equipped to deal with the situation. I named this “the Matrix problem” because the most famous scene in the movie depicts this situation almost 3 decades ago.

Like many other reactionary school security purchases, a "secure vestibule" at the front door would not prevent the shooting at East High because the student would still be brought inside the school to be searched. If administrators did their search inside the glass vestibule, students waiting to get in would witness him shooting the administrators and then he would run through the line of students waiting outside to flee the campus.

"I think this is another example of throwing money at a problem that cannot be fixed with money, but rather through a policy," said Lynne Ly, an East High School parent.

Read more:

• “Cold Dead Hands”: Teen shooter believed he had gun rights at school

• The ‘Matrix Problem’ for School Security

Every Shooting in March 2025

March 28, 2025 – Pete and Gracie Hosp Elementary School (Frisco, TX)

• Location: Classroom

• Time Period: Morning Classes

• Summary: Gunshot fired through the window of occupied classroom