An Interview with Someone Who Was Almost a School Shooter
Recently, several experts at Guard911 participated in a private one-on-one interview with Aaron Stark about his experience as a teenager. Aaron tells the story of his own life as a troubled youth who planned a mass shooting at his own high school in 1996. At the last minute, Aaron’s plans were thwarted when a friend simply invited him over for dinner.
Aaron stressed repeatedly that he decided not to commit violent acts simply because of human connection. A friend took the time to offer him a warm home and a meal. This simple act of kindness made all the difference. Stark offered powerful words about the importance of human connection for youth and adults struggling with broken homes, mental health issues, homelessness, and food insecurity.
In future featured articles, Guard911 will share more about Aaron’s powerful words for parents, friends, and teachers.
Could an Alert System Deter an Active Shooter?
Guard911’s Tim Guy has extensive experience with school safety as a 30+ year law enforcement officer. Today he works with Guard911 to reduce notification time to get law enforcement officers on the scene of life-threatening emergencies as quickly as possible.
Tim: “Do you think that if you knew that the school had some type of alarm system, or even had SchoolGuard in place so that they can notify police right away, would that have made a difference in your thought process?”
Aaron: “Somewhat. Maybe it would have changed the actual target.”
Aaron: “Most of the time when people talk about securing schools, they’re talking about physical deterrents… altering the amount of egress and ingress from the school and changing the windows, barring up the doors, those types of things, I’m very against that because that doesn’t do anything but change a plan. It doesn’t alter the attack. It alters where the attack might happen. If you only limit entrance to one exit, you’re telling the person: just shoot at one door.”
Aaron: “It doesn’t alter anything about the actual person screaming in pain who wants to cause the attack.”
“I really like your product. Love that you have instant notification. I think that’s very needed.”
Reduced Notification Time Matters in a Violent Incident
Aaron tells us that notification time matters. Something we constantly preach at Guard911. It’s important that schools and public places have the ability to reduce notification time, which in turn minimizes response time. Narrowing the window in which a violent act could occur could change the plans of a shooter.
Aaron: “I really like Guard911 because having an immediate response is the one thing that has shifted in the world from when I almost committed the attack [in 1996] to today… speed of response is definitely timed in and brought into the plans of shooters.”
Aaron: “[Shooters] know it’s gonna take [law enforcement] ninety seconds to get here. That is such a drastic element that I think could really, really dramatically help.”
Aaron reminds us that since 1996 when he was almost a school shooter, our collective response to these kinds of tragedies has changed. We have learned that notification time and response time matter.
Today, as a father of four children of his own, Aaron Stark says speedy response could make a big difference.
Guard911 and SchoolGuard are designed to alert law enforcement directly and immediately and get help to school and workplace emergencies as quickly as possible.
