The 16-year-old Maryland high school student accused of shooting a classmate ran home afterward and tried to hide an untraceable “ghost gun” in the backyard, a prosecutor said in court Wednesday.
The teen, charged as an adult with attempted second-degree murder, was ordered held without bond, as more details were revealed about the Monday shooting at Thomas S. Wootton High School in Montgomery County. The victim, who is also 16, suffered “very serious injuries” and “is still undergoing surgery,” said Assistant State’s Attorney Kimberly Cissel.
“We are all extremely lucky that the defendant doesn’t stand here charged with the most serious of crimes, given his actions on that day,” Cissel said.
The prosecutor also spoke to the terror felt inside Wootton High after at least one gunshot rang out and the school was placed on lockdown.
“Students, teachers, employees [were] unaware if this was an active shooter situation or not,” Cissel said. “That trauma is also something that his actions caused.”
Police were called to the school, which sits a little more than a mile west of downtown Rockville, around 2:15 p.m. Monday. Patrol officers rushed into the school and found the victim in a hallway and began treating him. A SWAT team arrived to make a methodical search of the school for shooters, finding none.
Authorities have described the suspect and victim as acquaintances but have not said what led to the shooting. Earlier in the day, they said, the suspect pointed his gun at another student, a 15-year-old girl. She was not physically injured.
“He basically told her it’s fake and tried to minimize it,” Cissel said.
The Washington Post generally does not identify juveniles charged as adults unless it becomes clear that the case won’t be transferred to juvenile court and the juvenile will be tried as an adult.
Assistant Public Defender Brett Lonker, who represented the teen in court Wednesday, said his office already has started the process of trying to transfer the case to juvenile court, where proceedings are designed to be confidential.
Lonker said the teen is presumed innocent and many details in the case are not known. He also said the teen might not have been “the initial aggressor in this.”
“This does boil down to a contained situation between two people,” he said.
Lonker said his client does not appear to have a juvenile record and asked that he be transferred to a locked juvenile facility.
District Judge Michael Glynn declined the request, and said the allegations outlined against the teen indicated he made conscious decisions to bring a loaded gun school and use it.
Cissel said that just before the shooting, the suspect sent a text asking another student to bring his bag, which contained the gun. After the shooting, Cissel said, the teen tried to hide the weapon behind his home. It was later found by police.
The term “ghost gun” is used to describe weapons assembled from parts that don’t have serial numbers and cannot be traced. Rockville Police Chief Jason West said the gun is important in the case.
“We know that those types of firearms — they’re very difficult to trace, if we can do that at all,” West said. “Part of our investigation will include: Where did that firearm come from? How did that student come into possession of that firearm, and how did it get into the school?”
The teen faces a slate of other charges, including two first-degree assault counts and seven weapons charges, according to Wednesday’s hearing.
West praised the actions of the first officers to arrive at Wootton, who came from the Rockville and Montgomery County police departments and the county sheriff’s office.
“They acted without hesitation,” he said. “They used their training based on the active shooter protocol. They did not wait in the parking lot. They did not wait for backup. They made entry to save and preserve lives.”
Thomas Taylor, superintendent of Montgomery County Public Schools, said Monday that the district recently announced a pilot program to study AI-powered weapons detection systems at three high schools. “There’s still a lot for us to learn about weapons detection and how it can best serve our community,” he said, adding that “there’s an urgency to at least explore every option.”
Wootton was not one of the initial schools in the pilot.
In a messageto families Tuesday, Taylor and Montgomery school board president Grace Rivera-Oven said the district was providing aid to students, staff and families after the shooting.
“The safety and well-being of every student and staff member is our highest priority,” they wrote. “We continue to work closely with law enforcement, mental health professionals, and community partners to protect our students and ensure our schools remain places where students can learn, grow and thrive.”
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