"We lost John because he was doing what his life was about." "The sad part of this whole thing is I don't have any answers," Therese Walter, superintendent of the General McLane School District, said in a statement outside the school today. He was also a former high school football coach. Gillette was a teacher and student council adviser, said his neighbor, high school principal Donald Ickes. He never had his eyes all the way open," Sarren said. He said he often wore the same pants for several days in a row. Sarren, who said he knew Wurst, described him as a loner who never smiled and dressed sloppily with untucked T-shirts and untied shoes. "I want to talk to him and see what he was thinking before I decide I hate him," Mills said. They said he had recently argued with his parents over his poor grades. Lucas and Mills said Wurst had a troubled home life and combative parents. School officials did not know what motivated the shooting. Wurst, of nearby McKean, was charged as an adult with criminal homicide and three counts each of aggravated assault and reckless endangerment, as well as drug and gun charges. 25-caliber handgun registered to his father and a small amount of marijuana, was caught in a field behind the hall just after the shooting by Nick's Place owner James Strand, who carried a shotgun. A female teacher was grazed by a bullet and did not need medical treatment. Both were treated at a hospital and released. Two 14-year-old boys were wounded by gunfire one was grazed across the abdomen and the other shot in the foot. Gillette, a teacher for 27 years who had organized the dance, was shot in the head. Wurst never said he planned to kill at the dance, nor had he identified any targets, the boys said. You couldn't really take him serious," Lucas said.īoth boys, who attended counseling sessions at the school today, said Wurst did not know Gillette, 48. ![]() Triston Lucas, 14, and Ben Mills, 13, said they did not take him seriously. "We were all scared and crying and praying."Ī month ago, Wurst joked about killing people and then committing suicide, according to two boys who described themselves as friends of Wurst. Some hid in a closet.Īdam Sarren, 15, said the shots sounded like a cap gun. Sobbing girls in satin dresses and terrified boys in neckties huddled outside the hall. Teenagers were dancing to the last song - "My Heart Will Go On," from the movie "Titanic" - when the first of several booms rang out Friday night at Nick's Place, near Edinboro about 100 miles north of Pittsburgh. A 14-year-old boy was charged today with opening fire at an eighth-grade graduation dance with the theme "I Had the Time of My Life." A science teacher was killed, one pupil was shot in the foot and another pupil and a teacher were grazed.Īndrew Wurst, a pupil at Parker Middle School, shot teacher John Gillette on a patio outside a banquet hall, walked inside and fired several more shots, left the building through a rear exit and was arrested shortly thereafter, police spokesman Mark Zaleski said.
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