Editor's note: The following story contains details of the Oct. 24, 2022, school shooting in south St. Louis. The hyperlinked videos include security and body camera footage that have been edited for privacy and to not show the shooter's death.
Updated at 4:30 p.m. July 31 with comments from the teachers union and security experts
Two videos from a 2022 shooting at a St. Louis high school are providing more details about what happened during the 20 minutes the suspect was inside the building.
The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department on Wednesday released about nine minutes of footage from school security cameras and about three minutes of body-worn camera footage of one of the first officers into Central Visual and Performing Arts High School. A teacher and student were killed, and seven others were injured in the shooting.
The first video is a compilation of footage from several security cameras located around the high school at 3125 S. Kingshighway in the Southwest Garden neighborhood. The campus also houses the Collegiate School of Medicine and Bioscience.
In the video, the shooter, a 19-year-old graduate of CVPA, pulls up to the campus at 9:02 a.m. and parks his car on the sidewalk on Arsenal Street, to the north of the school. About two minutes later, he gets out of the car, removes something, then walks out of the frame.
About three minutes later, at 9:07 a.m., glass explodes on an exterior door of the building, catching the attention of a security guard stationed inside. Police said the day of the shooting that the doors were locked but had not said how the shooter was able to gain access.
Since the shooting, St Louis Public Schools has spent millions to make safety upgrades at the district’s buildings, said Matt Davis, vice president of the Board of Education. All told, the district will spend about $35 million on the CVPA/CSMB complex alone, he said, with $15 million on new safety equipment.
“The rest of that money is going to be dedicated to transforming those spaces to make sure that the culture and climate of the building is improved,” Davis said.
Byron Clemens, spokesperson for AFT St. Louis Local 420, the union representing teachers and staff at SLPS, said the idea that school districts have to harden their buildings is difficult for him to wrap his head around.
“But we are doing it because we have to,” Clemens said, adding that he was thankful voters supported Proposition S, funding the initiative by a wide margin.
“But one thing that really seems important to us is looking at red flag laws in Missouri,” Clemens said.
Those laws allow police officers to temporarily take firearms from people who may pose a danger to themselves or others.
The police department said the shooter’s family had asked police to remove the weapon later used in the shooting from the house. He had been blocked from purchasing a weapon from a licensed dealer but was able to get a gun through a private sale.
About a minute after the first shots are fired, footage shows the suspect is able to enter the building, likely by reaching through the blown-out glass and opening the door with the handle. He is wearing all black clothing and carrying an assault-style weapon.
The guard, one of seven in the building on that day, heads down one hallway, opens a door and appears to talk to someone inside the room. The shooter appears to ignore the guard and turns down a different hallway.
The guards were unarmed, said Maj. Janice Bockstruck, commander of the Force Investigative Unit, which wrote the report on the shooting that will be released at a later date.
While the guards relocated for their safety, she said, they never left the building.
“They remained inside, they tracked the movements of the armed suspect, they radioed this information in, all the while alerting students and staff of the intruder’s presence,” she said. “They are really heroes, and they saved lives.”
The district has a contingent of guards called the mobile reserve unit who are armed, said board Vice President Davis. He said the district considered giving all security guards weapons but decided against it.
“The recommendation was that on a day-to-day basis that we strike a balance that is necessary really to make sure that the school environment is the most productive for learning and safety,” he said.
After entering the school, the shooter walked down a first-floor hallway and goes into the gym, ignoring a person who leaves the room. Text added to the video says the shooter fired multiple rounds in the gym, and dispatch audio from the SLMPD references an “active shooter in the gym.”
Of the seven people who were injured, four were shot, but it is not clear where they were in the building when they were hurt. The videos also do not show where 15-year-old Alexzandria Bell and Jean Kuczka, 61, were when they were killed.
The shooter then made his way to the second floor. He encounters one security guard on the stairs who immediately retreats. Another security guard appears to surprise him, and while he appears to briefly pursue her, he does not shoot. This footage also shows him occasionally turning into either rooms or hallways while pointing the gun.
Around 9:11 a.m., the first St. Louis police officers are dispatched. Other off-duty officers attending a funeral about a mile away also responded.
According to the timeline provided on the video, the shooter spent approximately three minutes on the second floor before walking up to the third floor. He turns down a hallway, out of view of one camera, for about 25 seconds, then reappears, runs down the stairs, slips, then turns around and goes back up.
Around 9:17 a.m., in the hallway near the school’s computer lab, the shooter appears to discard a used magazine. Police said the day of the shooting that he had hundreds of rounds of ammunition on him. At 9:18, the footage shows lights flashing as the fire alarm goes off. It is not clear whether the suspect pulled the alarm or if it was part of the school’s active shooter protocol.
The shooter lingers in the hallway for about 50 seconds, at one point giving the finger toward the security camera, before opening the door to the computer lab behind him and walking inside. The video shows the suspect is wearing earplugs.
He is in the room for about 90 seconds before two police officers enter the frame. One is carrying a shotgun. Two other officers arrive immediately after, and more than a dozen more arrive within 40 seconds. At one point, footage shows the officer with the shotgun ejecting a casing, indicating he has fired the weapon.
Eventually, an officer carrying an assault-style rifle moves to the front of the pack of officers. The door to the room opens around 9:23 a.m., and the hallway immediately fills with smoke. Police report that the suspect is down around 9:26 a.m.
Body camera footage from one of the first officers into the building fills in what happens in those moments. It shows the officer and others entering from a door in the building’s courtyard. One officer yells, “It sounds like it's on the third floor,” indicating the suspect may have been firing his weapon as they enter.
The group of officers moves up the stairs, with one telling others that a witness outside told them the shooter is on the third floor. At one point, an officer tells the group to “slow down and let the long gun go.”
The officer with the rifle is already there when the officer with the body camera arrives. Eventually, officers realize the suspect has locked the door to the room, and a command is given to “hit it” — likely meaning fire at the door. Multiple officers then fire at the suspect through the door, engaging in a chaotic shootout.
Eventually, officers shoot out the lock and open the door to the room, allowing the officer with the rifle to step inside and fire multiple shots. Others enter and do the same. The suspect is killed.
“The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department is responsible for upholding the law, and we must follow it, which is why we are releasing these two videos,” Chief Robert Tracy said Monday at a news conference announcing the plan to make some of the footage public under open records law. “But it’s not something we take any joy in doing to retraumatize people.”
Lt. Col. Michael Sack, then the interim chief of police, had high praise for the officers who went in.
“There was no sidewalk conference, there was no discussion, they just went right in,” he said on the day of the shooting. “We had commanders go in, we had sergeants go in. Some were off duty.”
Expert reaction
The videos show a “very fast-moving, volatile, unpredictable situation,” said Kenneth Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services, a consulting firm based in Cleveland.
It is difficult from the short snippets of video provided to know whether the school and police followed their training exactly, Trump said. But he said they did follow best practices learned after Columbine High School shooting in Colorado and went immediately into the school to stop the shooter.
“The video does not show hesitation by law enforcement,” he said.
Trump added that the movements of the shooter, like ignoring the security guards or a student who walked out of the gym in front of him, seemed to indicate he had specific targets in mind.
“It was quite surprising that the school safety person was not hurt or killed based on how quickly this unfolded in that person's visibility and exposure out in the hallway as the shooter entered the building,” Trump said.
It was also good that the shooting did not happen during a class change, Trump said. That could have made hundreds of people easier targets.
People who are experiencing thoughts of suicide or a mental health crisis can call or text 988. The Missouri Department of Mental Health and the National Alliance on Mental Illness have resources for less immediate needs.
