The Day That Shaped Our Mission

On June 20, 2007 published Tales Out of School, an in depth article of the East Greenbush High School shooting that left Michael Bennett injured. Below are excerpts from the article written by William Patrick.

“On that gray February day, [the shooter] smuggled a loaded 12-gauge shotgun into Columbia High. There, he hid for 20 minutes in a bathroom stall on the second floor of the building’s South Tower, and sent a text message to several friends: I’M IN SCHOOL WITH SHOTGUN. GET OUT. When a student came into the restroom, [the shooter] stepped out and pointed the shotgun at him. “Don’t do this, man,” the student begged, backing out and running into an empty classroom next door.

[The shooter] emerged from the bathroom. Two students were in the otherwise empty hallway; one, Jeff Kinary, made eye contact with [the shooter], who raised the gun to waist level and pulled the trigger. Kinary saw a flash of fire erupt from the barrel and threw himself forward. The shot slammed into the wall behind him. Kinary’s ears were ringing and he could hear [the shooter] racking another round into the chamber. He frantically crawled past the social studies office and fled toward the stairwell. The other student was just ahead of him, and another shot exploded into the wall beside him. “A kid has a gun,” the boy screamed as he leapt down some nearby stairs, with Kinary shouting, “He shot at us!” They ran, afraid to look back, but [the shooter] wasn’t following them. He was moving toward a classroom.

Sawchuk, Columbia’s assistant principal at the time, was observing a math class that morning in a classroom on the same floor, around a corner from the attack. When he heard the first gunshot, he was afraid something might have blown up in the metal shop downstairs. Bennett, then a special education teacher, was meeting with students two doors down from Sawchuck. He wondered if some metal beams had fallen off a construction truck. They stepped out of their classrooms at the same instant and heard the second shot, unmistakable this time, much closer. “Keep this door locked!” Sawchuk yelled to the math teacher, and ran toward the sound.

When Sawchuk rounded the corner at the end of the hall, he saw a tall, dark figure leaning into an English classroom, pointing a gun inside. The figure looked around as the principal approached him, and Sawchuk realized he knew him. [The shooter] had been in his office for disciplinary problems, and Sawchuk knew he had some serious emotional issues. “Give me the gun,” Sawchuk commanded. He reached around [the shooter] to grab the barrel before the teen could fully turn on him.

[The shooter] didn’t say a word, but Sawchuk could see that his finger was on the trigger. Sawchuk is six feet tall and built like a weightlifter, but [the shooter] was taller and surprisingly strong. Sawchuk was behind him, and knew he didn’t have much leverage on the shotgun. [The shooter] stopped struggling for a moment, and Sawchuk tried to push the gun away. The barrel was pointed at the ground, and he thought, If this thing goes off now, it’s going to blind me or something.

“Mike, help!” Sawchuk yelled, and he saw Bennett running down the hall. [The shooter] lifted his head and saw Bennett too, and tried to jack up the shotgun to fire. Sawchuk knew that if he let [the shooter] pull the gun up, Bennett was probably dead. He strained to hold it down, but the gun suddenly went off.

The recoil and force of the struggle pushed Sawchuk and [the shooter] a few yards back, but both kept their grip on the weapon. Sawchuk saw Bennett dive into a classroom and figured the shot must have missed him. But now [the shooter] had less to lose. Don’t let go! Don’t let go! Sawchuk kept telling himself, but he knew he only had a tenuous hold on the gun, and less on the rangy kid trying to haul it out of his hands. [The shooter] was yanking him back and forth, slamming him into the wall next to the social studies office, with the barrel of the shotgun inching toward him. Sawchuk was thinking Bennett would come out any time now to help, and he yelled again: “Come on, help. Somebody, help me. Mike. Mike, help!”

“I can’t. I’m hit,” Bennett answered, and Sawchuk thought, This is not going to end well. He began talking to [the shooter], “Come on, Jon, give it up. It’s over with,” and the kid suddenly surprised him and said, “Okay.” As [the shooter] stopped struggling, Sawchuk grabbed the shotgun away, and tripped [the shooter’s] legs out from under him so he fell to the floor. Then Sawchuk dragged him over to the social studies office and convinced the teachers inside it was safe enough to open the door.

The actual crisis took 10 minutes or less, but it set a firestorm of activity and drama into motion: An East Greenbush police team stormed the building; New York State Police blocked the roads; EMTs and paramedics arrived; SWAT teams conducted a thorough search of the building; and terrified parents tried to reach the school, where frightened staff and students, sequestered during a three-hour lockdown, were trying to understand what was happening around them.

The emotional devastation an incident like this leaves in its wake is enormous, and the toughest moments for survivors like Sawchuk and Bennett are typically after the shootings. As Terry Brewer, superintendent of the East Greenbush Central School District, once put it, “Ten minutes of crisis results in 10 months to a year of recovery.” For Sawchuk and Bennett, the healing period has stretched out to more than three years, and they’re still counting.

Bennett had bird shot deep in his leg, but he didn’t want to have surgery to remove it. He opted to live with it and, though he limped for several weeks, his physical wounds healed pretty quickly. His psychological state was a different story. In an interview with me a year after the incident, Bennett recalled his return to teaching on February 16, a week after the shooting. He made it through three days before he fell apart. “It was before the start of a class, and I was just walking down a hallway, and at that point I felt myself really getting ready to lose it—just the anxiety of everything—and I was able to get outside the building and get to my car. Then I lost it. I had a breakdown.”

Superintendent Brewer convinced Bennett to see a counselor, and that seemed to help.

He thought he was strong enough to start teaching again on June 2, but a nightmare about dying of cancer and then a bout of dry heaves the morning of his return didn’t sit well. “As I approached Columbia High that morning,” Mike recalled, “I began to feel worse and worse. I went to the nurse and said, ‘Sheila, I know I’m not having a heart attack, but I’m having a hard time catching my breath here. I’m just not feeling right.’” The nurse took his blood pressure and told him they needed to call his doctor. It turned out to be an acute anxiety attack. Bennett began to see a psychiatrist, who prescribed anti-anxiety medication for him. He didn’t return to teaching until September of that year, and transferred to Goff Middle School to avoid the difficult atmosphere and memories at the high school. He returned to Columbia this year when he was appointed vice-principal.”

The above accounts are excerpts from the article written by William Patrick.