Richmond, VA Graduation Shooting Report Released
Lack of planning, 'siloed' information, and staff not following mandatory threat reporting procedures are cited as failures leading up to the fatal shooting
A previously confidential report of the Richmond, VA graduation shooting was released yesterday—seven months after a fatal mass shooting—despite efforts by school officials to keep the document private.
When Richmond school board members first read this report in November 2023:
“I don't fully have words to describe how damning a report this is," Richmond School Board member Jonathan Young said about 3rd party review of events leading up to the graduation mass shooting. "My jaw hit the floor. I knew it was going to be bad, but I didn't know how bad."
A father and son were killed, and 5 others were wounded, during a shooting outside the Huguenot High School graduation in June 2023. The shooter was a student at the school who was on a virtual learning only safety plan that banned him from campus due to prior threats.
School events and graduations are often overlooked in school security planning. The ceremony was held at the Altria Theater, a historic downtown venue near the Virginia Commonwealth University campus. As a result of the shooting, all Richmond schools were closed the next day and a graduation ceremony for another high school at the Altria Theater was cancelled.
The shooting in Richmond was the third fatal shooting at a high school graduation in spring of 2023. In 2022, 14 people were shot at six different high school graduations in Indiana, Louisiana (2), Michigan, Tennessee, and Arkansas.
Key findings from Richmond graduation shooting:
The 29-page report is pretty dry so I’ll summarize the key findings:
School resource officers and threat assessment team were not involved in planning for the off-campus graduation ceremony attended by +3,000 people.
Security plan for graduation only involved the inside of the auditorium, there was no planning for security outside the venue.
Third-party security contractor refused to answer questions for the report.
Six documented conversations/assessments of the shooter by threat assessment team members and school staff during a two-year period prior to the shooting.
"Mandatory reporters" did not follow procedures to document threats.
School guidance counselor planned to allow shooter to participate in graduation ceremony despite safety plan banning him from campus and school activities.
Safety information was "siloed" resulting in threat assessment team, SROs, school staff, offsite contract security, event planning team, and guidance counselor were all missing pieces of information about the shooter.
Public reports on school shootings
In November 2023, a third party report investigating the Oxford High shooting was finally published. More than a year later, there is no official report on the school shooting at CVPA High School where a former student had an AR-15 and 600 rounds of ammo.
22 months later, there is no official report detailing the plan or motive of the man with 6 rifles and 1,000 rounds of ammo who fired 240 shots at the Edmund Burke School in Washington, DC.
Without a judge forcing the release of the Richmond shooting report, we would not know any of this critically important information. How can we prevent future school shootings when the details of these attacks are hidden, and recommendations/corrective actions aren't shared with other schools and police departments across the country?
Lessons learned from Richmond
Based on the findings of this report, here are some actions that school officials need to take:
Security and emergency planning needs to include off-campus events.
Known threats on-campus need to be communicated to off-campus event staff and third-party security contractors.
Staff must follow mandatory reporting procedures to document and investigate threats.
When a threat assessment team identifies a student as a serious threat, these findings need to be shared with all staff members.
David Riedman is the creator of the K-12 School Shooting Database and a national expert on school shootings. Listen to my recent interviews on Freakonomics Radio, New England Journal of Medicine, and Iowa Public Radio the day after the Perry High shooting.