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A2 UP FRONT
Friday 8 November 2019
Secret Service study: School attackers showed warning signs
Continued from Front at 41 school attacks from
2008 through 2017, and
The study by the Secret researchers had unprec-
Service's National Threat edented access to a trove
Assessment Center is the of sensitive data from law
most comprehensive re- enforcement including po-
view of school attacks lice reports, investigative
since the Columbine shoot- files and nonpublic records.
ings in 1999. The information gleaned
The report looked in-depth through the research will
U.S. sanctions 3
Nicaraguan officials
for alleged abuses
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration on
Thursday imposed sanctions on three Nicaraguan
officials accused of human rights abuses, election
fraud and corruption.
The U.S. Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign
Assets Control announced the sanctions, which block
the officials from doing business with U.S. entities.
The officials are Ramon Antonio Avellan Medal, dep-
uty director of the Nicaraguan National Police; Lum-
berto Ignacio Campbell Hooker, acting president of
the Nicaraguan Supreme Electoral Council; and Ro-
berto Jose Lopez Gomez, director of the Nicaraguan
Social Security Institute.
Hundreds of Nicaraguans have been killed, jailed or
forced into exile since protests against President Dan- ning an attack and how The Secret Service is best bathroom or classroom.
iel Ortega erupted in April 2018.
Ortega officials have called opposition protesters
“terrorists” and consider the demonstrations tanta- "These are not sudden, threat assessment center searchers said 63% of the
mount to an attempted coup.q
Susan Payne, founder and executive director of Safe2Tell wipes tears, as Peter Langman, left,
Max Schachter, who lost his son Alex during the Parkland school mass shooting, center, and Ryan
Petty, right, who lost his daughter Alaina during the Parkland school mass shooting, appear at
the the release of the Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center’s Protecting America’s
Schools report, in Washington, Thursday, Nov. 7, 2019.
Associated Press
help train school officials Alathari and her team over. Attacks generally
and law enforcement on trained about 7,500 people started during school hours
how to better identify stu- during 2018. The training is and occurred in one loca-
dents who may be plan- free. tion, such as a cafeteria,
to stop them before they known for its mission to Most attackers were male;
strike. protect the president. The seven were female. Re-
impulsive acts where a was developed to study attackers were white, 15%
student suddenly gets dis- how other kinds of attacks were black, 5% Hispanic,
gruntled," Lina Alathari, the could be prevented. Of- 2% were American Indian
center's head, said in an ficials use that knowledge or Alaska Native, 10% were
Associated Press interview. and apply it in other situa- of two or more races, and
"The majority of these inci- tions, such as school shoot- 5% were undetermined.
dents are preventable." ings or mass attacks. The weapons used were
The fathers of three stu- Since the Columbine at- mostly guns, but knives
dents killed in 2018 at Mar- tack, there have been were used, as well. One at-
jory Stoneman Douglas scores of school shootings. tacker used a World War
High School in Parkland, Some, like Sandy Hook in II-era bayonet. Most of the
Florida, attended a media 2012, were committed by weapons came from the
conference Thursday in nonstudents. There were attackers' homes, the in-
support of the study. others in which no one was vestigators reported.
Tony Montalto, whose injured. Those were not in- Alathari said investigators
daughter, Gina Rose Mon- cluded in the study. "We were able to examine de-
talto, died, said the re- focus on the target so that tailed information about
search was invaluable and we can prevent it in the fu- attackers, including their
could have helped their ture," Alathari said. home lives, suspension
school prevent the attack. Nineteen people were records and past behav-
"My lovely daughter might killed and 79 were injured iors. There's no clear profile
still be here today," he said. in the attacks they studied; of a school attacker, but
"Our entire community victims included students, some details stand out:
would be whole instead of staff and law enforcement. Many were absent from
forever shaken." The Secret Service put out school before the attack,
Montalto urged other a best practices guide last often through a school sus-
schools to pay attention to July based on some of the pension; they were treated
the research. research to 40,000 schools poorly by their peers in per-
"Please, learn from our ex- nationwide, but the new son, not just online; they felt
perience," he said. "It hap- report is a comprehensive mistreated; some sought
pened to us, and it could look at the attacks. fame, while others were
happen to your commu- The shootings happened suicidal. They fixated on
nity, too." quickly and were usually violence and watched it
Nearly 40 training sessions over within a minute or less. online, played games fea-
for groups of up to 2,000 Law enforcement rarely ar- turing it or read about it in
people are scheduled. rived before an attack was books.q