Principal's Gun Saves Lives
By NEAL KNOX
WASHINGTON, D.C. (Oct. 29) -- The nation was horrified when
16-year-old Luke Woodham walked into his Pearl, Mississippi, High
School with a .30-30 hunting rifle, shot to death his ex-
girlfriend and her close friend, then shot and wounded seven
other students.
Then the nation learned Woodham had stabbed his mother to
death earlier that morning.
Then the nation learned that the local prosecutor had
charged six more students with having conspired in the killings
as part of a Satanic plot.
What most of the nation never learned was that Assistant
Principal Joel Myrick, using his own gun, stopped the killer as
he tried to flee the school.
The news media virtually ignored the fact that an armed
citizen had possibly prevented more bloodshed -- using a gun
possessed in violation of the Federal Gun-Free School Act, which
prohibits firearms within 1,000 feet of a school.
To find out what happened I talked to the school's
principal, Roy Balantine.
Mr. Balantine said when he heard the shots he ran into the
hall and "saw a kid with a gun," then immediately called 911.
Mr. Myrick, he said, was in his office on the opposite side of a
"commons" that the school surrounds.
Myrick also had run into the hall and seen a student with a
rifle; he shoved several students into his office and locked the
door, then ran toward the shooting.
He saw Woodham shoot and wound one of the students -- and
Woodham saw him, so Myrick jumped back out of the line of sight.
That's when, Mr. [Balantine] told me, "Mr. Myrick remembered
that he had been out to visit his parents over the weekend, and
that he remembered that he had forgotten to take his gun out of
his pickup.
"So Mr. Myrick ran across the commons and out the back door
and got the gun, and loaded it, then came around the side of the
building."
At that point, Mr. Balantine said, he saw the student pull
out of the school parking lot and pull up behind a car that was
stopped at a stop sign. As Myrick ran toward the car, Woodham
pulled around the stopped car, but spun out and off the road.
Before he could get the car going again, Myrick was there
with the .45 pointed in Woodham's face, demanding "Why did you do
that?"
That's when Woodham "instantly became a coward," Myrick had
told one local reporter.
Woodham must have feared that Myrick would shoot him for he
stammered, so Mr. Balantine told me, "Oh, Mr. Myrick; I'm the one
who gave you the discount on the pizza last week."
Myrick got Woodham out of the car, made him lie on the
ground, pulled his coat over his head and kept one foot on his
back until police arrived.
Woodham's rifle was in the car, and he still had 30 rounds.
"With all that ammunition, we don't know what he might have
done," Mr. Balantine told me. "We don't know if he would've gone
to the junior high or the pizza parlor where he worked, or what.
There's reason to believe he might not've been through killing."
"I'm just thankful that Mr. Myrick had the presence of mind
to remember his gun and bring it all to a stop."
Amen, Mr. Balantine. Police and local reporters are
convinced that Woodham was a member of a satanic cult that had
been ritually sacrificing animals and planning killings before
fleeing to Mexico.
But predictably, there's a bit of a flap in Mississippi
about the "terrible fact" that this vice principal had a gun at
school, and that he was violating the gun-free school law (which
the Supreme Court struck down but Congress reinstated last year).
Under Mississippi law he could legally have a gun in his
car.
I'm thankful he had it, and asked Mr. Balantine to thank him
for me and those of us who admire his courage -- and for setting
a clear example of a gun being used to save lives.
Further, I told him, if the U.S. Attorney or anyone else
wants to give Mr. Myrick any legal troubles, to give me a call
and I'd be delighted to start a defense fund. |
