Policy

Taft School Shooter Targeted Teens He Felt Were Bullying Him

Teacher and counselor talked him down after injuring one student

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A California teacher's brave conversation with a 16-year-old gunman who had opened fire on his classmates allowed 28 other students to quickly escape what could have been a massacre.

Science teacher Ryan Heber calmly confronted the teenager after he shot and critically wounded a classmate, whom he claimed to authorities had bullied him for more than year at Taft Union High School.

"I don't want to shoot you," the teen gunman told Heber, who convinced the teen gunman to drop his weapon, a high power shotgun.

Responding to calls of shots fired, campus supervisor Kim Lee Fields arrived at the classroom and helped Heber talk the boy into giving up the weapon.