Authorities: Teacher, pastor calmed and disarmed student, 14, who held class at gunpoint

PHILIPPI, W.Va. – A West Virginia preacher, a teacher and police helped persuade a 14-year-old boy to free 27 fellow students he held at gunpoint in a high school classroom Tuesday, a standoff that ended without a single shot fired, authorities and the pastor said.

No one was hurt in the hostage-taking drama that rocked Philip Barbour High School on the ninth day of the school year in the small Appalachian town of Philippi, home to about 3,000 people some 115 miles south of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Ultimately, the boy’s pastor convinced the boy to drop the gun and walk away. The pastor said his daughter is a senior at the school, and she had recently stepped in when she saw the boy being bullied.

“He’s a child who’s been bullied to the point where he just snapped,” said Pastor Howard Swick with Haven of Hope Ministry in Philippi. “And I’m watching this 14-year-old child with a gun, crying. He looked completely hopeless and didn’t know what to do, and realized he had taken this farther than he had ever wanted to go. He didn’t know how to retreat.”

After 1 p.m. Tuesday, the boy pointed his pistol at a history teacher and her students during a tense 45 minutes holed up in the classroom.

The teacher kept the boy and the other students calm until other school officials alerted the police, said Barbour County schools Superintendent Jeffrey Woofter. She convinced the boy not to let another class come in the room, since it was time to change classes.

“The teacher did a miraculous job, calming the student, maintaining order in the class,” Woofter said.

Police negotiators then convinced the boy to let his hostages go. The rest of the negotiations lasted at least another hour and a half, as the boy talked about killing himself while in the room alone, said State Police spokesman Lt. Michael Baylous.

Swick said he instinctively headed to the school even before police contacted him. He and authorities reasoned with the boy through the glass window pane of the closed classroom door.

“My exact words were, ‘You’re not going to end your life on my watch,'” said Swick, whose ministry has included the boy for about a year. “‘Not today. You’re going to lay the gun down, and we’re going to walk out, arm in arm.'”

The boy was taken to the hospital for an evaluation and later was charged with making terrorist threats, wanton endangerment and possession of a gun on school premises. The gun was from his home, Baylous said.

The boy is now in a juvenile detention centre in Romney to await further court proceedings. Because the case involves a juvenile, the court process would be closed. Police haven’t identified the student.

He previously didn’t show violent tendencies, Swick said. He regularly attended Sunday worship and had a girlfriend within the ministry. His complaints were run-of-the-mill for a high schooler.

“Just normal teenage stuff,” Swick said. “He bickers like all kids do, but nothing abnormal. He’s a quiet kid, a good kid.”

Meanwhile, the rest of the 724-student body was safely evacuated to the bleachers of the football stadium Tuesday, where they awaited rides home.

Kayla Smith, a 17-year-old senior, said initially no one in her classroom in the same building took the “code red” warning seriously.

“Then we all held hands and said a prayer,” she said.

Every Philip Barbour High teacher went to work Wednesday, Woofter said. Grief counsellors were on hand and police guarded each school entrance during school’s two-hour-delayed start.