Plenty of confusion in the moments after

MOSES LAKE, Feb. 5, 1996 — Ministers and counselors arrived at Frontier Junior High School about 30 minutes after the shooting. Students were just being let back into the gym. 

The gunman had been apprehended, but no one was sure how bad things were. There were shots, the announcement to lock down the classrooms, and then later to evacuate the school. The police came, then ambulances — nothing was certain.  

Some students on the ground floors were told to go out the windows. They scrambled and walked calmly until they were told to go to the gym.  

The scene there was unremarkable.  

Students gathered in small groups and talked quietly to each other about what had just happened. Many were walking slowly and alone, talking to no one, trying to overhear some news, giving occasional hugs to people they knew. They wore blank expressions, pacing nervously, waiting to be told what to do, wondering about their books, their coats, their parents.  

Teachers milled in among the students, carrying occasional messages to each other.  

“They’re numb,” said Scott Rockwell, the youth pastor at Moses Lake Alliance Church, who was on the scene.  

The ministers, along with Grant County Mental Health counselors, were called by the school district to do what they could.  

The students weren’t ready to talk. No one knew what to say.  

They knew Mrs. Caires had been shot. More people had also been shot.  

Another minister on the scene, Jeff Wiesinger, the assistant youth pastor at Moses Lake Alliance Church, said, “They’re in a little bit of a fog; they're trying to assimilate too much right now. It’s an emotional shutdown, which is normal and natural.” 

While mental health professionals were dealing with students who needed to calm down, school officials were trying to answer phones and get the students home. Teachers offered coats, offered to make phone calls and offered to drive the students home.  

Buses soon showed up to take the students to Chief Moses Junior High. Others stayed behind.  

“I wasn’t expecting them to be taken away so quickly,” Rockwell said.  

Parents who heard the news walked quickly to the school, looking for their children. Some didn’t know if their children were safe. One by one, they were let through police lines to ask about their child. Most learned from teachers, staff and other students the location of their child. Many parents were called by their children from the office and by those using phones at the neighboring barber and beauty shops.  

People drifted away from the scene quietly, trying to piece things together. 

“You feel totally inadequate in times like these,” Wiesinger said. “You want to be there, be supportive and to listen.”  

That would all have to come later.