EDITOR’S NOTE: Like 25 News in Waco, WFAA in Dallas is an ABC affiliate.
From WFAA
Bowie High School in Arlington is on lockdown as police respond to a shooting on campus outside the school building, officials say.
Arlington police say one person was taken to the hospital. Bowie High School posted on social media that all students inside the school are safe and dismissal is delayed. Mansfield police have also responded to the scene.
Arlington police say a reunification area is set up at 1001 E. Division Street at the Arlington ISD Athletics and Aquatics Center. They’re still asking people to avoid the school.
Arlington ISD says all students on campus will be bussed to the reunification center and they’ll announce when students will be released. Police say overflow parking for reunification is available at in lot 11 at AT&T Stadium.
A mother of a freshman at the school said she found out about the news via text messages to families and tried to contact her daughter.
“She was scared,” the mother said. “I don’t know if she heard anything…I’m planning on talking to her as soon as they let me have her.”
“I’m so thankful to God that they’re safe, not just my daughter, but all the students,” she added. “Schools are supposed to be sacred ground. We shouldn’t have this kind of stuff going on at the school. They should just be here so they can get their education. So I’m just really glad that she’s safe, and she’s well, and just waiting to get her back.”
One student, just a month away from graduation, said she was hoping this would have never happened to her school
“But now that it has, it does make me a bit scared to have to come back the next day and know that it happened at a school where I used to feel safe at, but now I really don’t,” she said.
A neighbor who lives across the street from the school described what she heard to a WFAA crew.
“I kept hearing sirens going back and forth, and then I got a phone call from a parent that said that there was a shooting at the school. So I went out on my patio and stood up and looked over my fence, and I could see the police started to block off the street,” the neighbor said. “I couldn’t tell where the shooting was, but I know that usually at that time, the kids are getting out of the school, and there was no movement. So I knew that something serious had happened.”
She said she didn’t see any kids running out of the school in a hurry.
“I had two kids come over here. They were crying in my yard, so I was consoling them. But I’m really nervous right now. It’s too close to home,” she added.
A state school safety law went into effect last September requiring armed personnel on every campus in Texas. According to Arlington ISD’s website, Bowie High School has one school resource officer.
This bill also compelled school districts to create active shooter plans, health training for certain school faculty and put restrictions on those who carry a gun in school.
Despite instituting these new school safety requirements, Texas lawmakers allocated only $10 per student for security measures—a 28-cent increase over 2022. Lawmakers also set aside $15,000 in grants to provide each campus, but that’s just a fraction of an armed guard’s salary.
Less than two weeks ago, there was a shooting at Wilmer-Hutchins High School in southeast Dallas. One student was injured in that shooting and a 17-year-old suspect, also a student at that school, was arrested.
This shooting comes less than three years after another high school shooting in Arlington at Mansfield ISD’s Timberview High School, less than four miles down the road from Bowie High School. Four people were injured in a shooting that happened after a fight in October 2021.
This is a developing story. WFAA will update this story as additional information becomes available.