Wounded assistant principal describes school shooting
“I know if someone didn’t do something, we were all doomed,” Assistant Principal Jim Pierce, 56, told WBIR-TV during an interview at his home Tuesday.
“I just jumped to grab him, and I think that’s when he shot me.”
Kenneth Bartley, a freshman, is being held in the Nov. 8 shooting at Campbell County Comprehensive High School in which Pierce and Principal Gary Seale, 55, were wounded, and Assistant Principal Ken Bruce, 48, was killed.
Pierce, shot in the chest, has only recently come home from the hospital to continue his recovery. A bullet remains lodged near his heart. Doctors say it is too risky to remove. Though weak, he took a moment to recall the shooting.
Bartley had been called to the office for questioning after administrators were tipped by a student that he brought a handgun to school, authorities have said.
Pierce, Bruce and Seale were waiting.
“After a little discussion, bang, bang, bang,” Pierce said. “It was quick.”
Pierce, a veteran educator and cross country coach, said he tackled Bartley after a few shots were fired. They fell on the floor together; Pierce on top. He began bleeding but hung on until help arrived.
A bullet grazed Pierce’s hand, passed through his arm and into his side, collapsing both lungs before stopping behind his aorta. “I’ve never experienced that kind of pain before,” he said.
Buoyed by well-wishers, Pierce now hopes to return to school in January.
He will miss his friend and colleague Ken Bruce. “It’s unreal to know when I get back, he’s not going to be there,” Pierce said.
But Pierce had no hard feelings for the suspect, whose father was a boyhood friend. He does think the boy needs help.
Bartley spent about 18 months in a private alternative school in Grainger County and his family removed him last spring before completing the program, according to Darrell Helton, director of the Kingswood School.
Campbell County Schools Director Judy Blevins said Monday she would seek federal funding for a new public alternative school, but learned Tuesday that U.S. Department of Education’s “safe schools” grants are for programs, not buildings. So she plans to seek money for more counselors.
Bartley, who is being held in a juvenile detention center in Knoxville, “is not a child that would necessarily have been placed in the alternative school, anyway,” Blevins said, noting Bartley had a “clean” disciplinary record.
The boy will undergo a mental evaluation before a Jan. 31 hearing to decide if he can be tried as an adult for first-degree murder.