At Butler County school, a day of fear

MADISON TWP. — It started out like any other Monday.

Zayd Ahmed, a junior at Madison High School, was printing out a resume in the library. Jordan Eslick, a sophomore, was listening to music in gym class.

Then, chaos.

“He just pulled out the gun and started firing,” a 911 caller told police around 11:15 a.m. The fear in the caller’s voice came through in heavy breaths.

Ahmed walked out of the library when he heard the first shot. Then, nothing. Then, “bang bang bang bang.”

He ran back to the library and huddled with other students in a storage closet. His legs wouldn’t stop shaking.

Elsewhere, teachers ushered Eslick into a locker room. He didn’t hear the shots and didn’t know what was happening. He was scared. He called his father.

Noah Sheely, a freshman, grabbed a hammer from his engineering classroom and ran into what he described as a walk-in closet with the rest of his class.

Second school gun incident in Butler County

Outside, Chuck Veidt, a 58-year-old man whose property abuts the school, was tending to his 102-year-old neighbor. He saw sheriff’s deputies with rifles running through his backyard.

It would be an hour before school officials announced the situation was under control. In reality, it only lasted seconds, but those seconds will be seared into the minds of Madison students.

James Austin Hancock, 14, is accused of bringing a .380-caliber handgun to school. Officials don’t know where he got it, but he had it with him in school all morning, according to Butler County Sheriff Richard K. Jones.

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Around 11:15 a.m., the suspect started shooting in the lunch room, authorities said. The school resource officer had left the cafeteria only minutes earlier. He came running back as he heard the shots. After shooting two boys, the suspect ran out of the school. He tossed the gun away at some point before deputies arrested him, the sheriff said.

Cameron Smith, 15, and Cooper Caffery, 14, were struck by bullets, authorities said.

Brant Murray, 14, and Katherine Doucette, 14, were not struck but were injured in the chaos. Jones said they were likely hit by shrapnel from the gun or were hurt trying to run away.

Hancock faces multiple felony counts including attempted murder, authorities said.

None of the injuries are considered life-threatening. Dr. Peter Ekeh at Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton said he believes both students who were shot will make a full recovery. They should be released in a few days.

"You see these things all over the country," Jones said. "You think it can't happen to you, but it does."

A sleepy town and sudden violence

To understand fully what happened on Monday, you must understand Madison Township.

This is a town of less 9,000 people. The elementary school, middle school and high school are all located in the same small complex. In the township administration building, a deer head is mounted on Administrator Todd Farler’s office wall. Residents described the township as both sleepy and country.

In short, this a town where everyone knows everyone. That made Monday’s shooting all the more puzzling.

It wasn’t immediately clear why the suspect brought a gun to school and fired it at other students. Sheriff Jones told reporters deputies had an idea about the motive but declined to release it.

Jones also said officials did not know how the student got the gun.

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Students Sheely and Eslick both knew Hancock from wrestling. Neither could think of anything that would have provoked this.

Eslick described Hancock as a “laid-back kid” and said he thought he got along with everyone.

When reached by The Enquirer, Hancock’s wrestling coach declined to comment. Stan Oligee said the incident was “too raw” to talk about.

Rynn Grewe, 15, a freshman at Madison said she took the same school bus as Hancock.

"I never would have pictured him doing that," Grewe said. "Every time I saw him on the bus or in the hall, I never would have pictured him doing anything like that."

Relatives converge on school seeking loved ones

Hancock is charged with two counts of attempted murder, two counts of felonious assault, one count of inducing panic and making terrorist threats, all felonies. He is being held at the Butler County Juvenile Detention Center.

Lockdown at the school district was lifted shortly after 12:45 p.m. Roads to the school backed up with parents and relatives trying to get to the school to pick up students.

Bob Hollister, of Trenton, has two grandchildren in the district. He parked on the side of the road in his daughter’s van and watched the traffic pile up. His daughter was at the school trying to get her children.

Hollister described the scene the only way he could: chaotic. He said his daughter wasn’t able to immediately reach his grandson at the high school. She cried as news reports rolled in. She called him about 100 times, Hollister said.

“It was terrible,” he said.

Bree Martin, a third-grade student at Madison Elementary School, hugged a relative and started crying after she was picked up. Martin said she heard the gunshots.

Madison Local Schools is a district of about 1,500 students. The junior/senior high school has about 750 students, according to the school’s webpage. When school buses left the building Monday afternoon, only one or two students still needed rides.

Officials have cancelled class on Tuesday, although staff will still report to begin compiling a plan to help students deal with the aftermath of the violence.

Ohio passed a law in 2007 requiring schools to file safety plans with the state. It’s the what-if blueprint for any kind of emergency – a tornado, an oil spill, a nearby train wreck or, as in Monday’s case, a shooting.

Those plans are online and accessible to law enforcement, so when officers are responding to a scene, they have a better idea what to expect.

Timeline: Deadly school shootings since Columbine

Ohio school shootings

The advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety says there have been at least 170 shootings at schools in the U.S. since 2013. Madison now is the most recent. In Ohio, the group also counts:

• A 2013 incident at La Salle High School in Cincinnati, in which a 17-year-old student attempted suicide in a classroom, using a gun he brought from home. The student survived.
• A 2014 incident in Kent, in which a 24-year-old shot himself in the hand during an argument with two women on campus.
• A 2014 incident in Lyndhurst, in which two 17-year-old boys were arrested for shooting at each other in a school parking lot. Neither was injured.
• A 2015 incident at Ohio State University, in which a 63-year-old former college security officer shot and killed himself at a college-run art gallery.
• A 2015 drive-by shooting at a Cleveland elementary school. A 22-year-old man was killed and a 26-year-old man injured in that incident, according to Everytown.

Enquirer journalists Hannah Sparling, Cameron Knight, Patrick Brennan, Cara Owsley and Carrie Cochran contributed.