By Dana Rieck
Source St. Louis Post-Dispatch
ST. LOUIS— Two videos released by police Wednesday show, first, a 19-year-old gunman in 2022 meandering the hallways of aSt. Louishigh school with an AR-15-style rifle, firing shots into the ceiling and sending guards fleeing. Then, a second video depicts the chaotic mass of police officers storming a third-floor computer lab and killing the teen.
The footage tracks former studentOrlando Harrisin the 24 minutes after he arrived atCentral Visual and Performing Arts High Schooland theCollegiate School of Medicine and Bioscience. And then it shows police officers as they arrive, rush up the school stairs, and find Harris cornered in the lab.
Both clips reveal key markers of theOct. 24, 2022shooting that killed two people.
The hallways at the two-school campus were nearly empty. Harris walked them slowly at times, almost casually. Security guards and one adult appeared to get away unharmed. Then police arrived in force, and, within minutes, found Harris and killed him.
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CVPA security camera footage from deadly St. Louis school shooting in 2022
Security camera footage edited by the St. Louis Police Department shows gunman Orlando Harris moving through the Central Visual and Performing Arts High School and the Collegiate School of Medicine and Bioscience in St. Louis on Oct. 24, 2022, where he shot and killed a student and a teacher, and injured others. Viewer discretion is advised. Video provided by St. Louis Police Department and unedited by the Post-Dispatch.
Harris shot at least six people that day, including studentAlexzandria Belland teacherJean Kuczka, who both died. But none of his victims were shown in the footage released Wednesday.
City leaders this week said they were reluctant to release the videos for fear of re-traumatizing people, but they did so to comply with state law in response to multiple open records requests.
The videos come almost two years after Harris burst into the school’s campus and shot Kuczka, a teacher who shielded her students, and Alexzandria, a 15-year-old dance student, before police killed him.
Several media requests for records about the shooting — including body camera footage, investigative reports and other materials — have been denied by police officials. They have said, until now, that the case was still an active investigation.
The first video released Wednesday is about eight minutes long, without sound, and consists of grainy surveillance footage outside of the building and throughout the school. Police spliced footage together, overlaid photos from the scene, added time stamps, and paused it at times to describe what is happening.
The video shows Harris’ blue Dodge Avenger park at9:01 a.m.on the north side of the school onArsenal Streetnear Kingshighway. He stays in the car for about three minutes then gets out, grabs something from the passenger side of the car and walks toward the school.
At9:07 a.m., Harris can be seen breaking the glass of the school’s front door, while a security guard reacts in the hallway just past the front area. Then Harris walks toward the guard, holding a long black rifle.
That guard,Germaine Yancy, told thePost-Dispatchin 2022 that he was on the phone when he heard what sounded like a car hitting the side of the building; he stood up and looked at the door down the hallway. At first, he said he noticed the shattered glass.
In the video, Yancy turns and runs, but then pauses near a door and appears to say something to Harris. He told thePost-Dispatchhe yelled, “Hey! Hey! Hey!” to Harris. The shooter, dressed all in black, fired at Yancy and then went through an interior side door. The guard ran in the other direction, pressed up against the hallway’s wall.
“When confronted by an armed suspect, these unarmed security officers relocated for their safety,”St. Louispolice Maj.Janice Bockstrucksaid at a press conference on Monday ahead of the video release. “What you do not see in the video is that they never left the building. They remained inside. They tracked the movements of the armed suspect. They radioed this information in, all the while alerting students and staff of the intruder’s presence.”
Several shots across multiple floors
The footage at one point changes camera view, moving into a hallway with several couches. There, a blurred figure dressed in purple comes out of the gym. Harris appears to be a few feet from her when he fires his gun, apparently hitting the ceiling near where the person is walking. Harris goes into the gym as the person walks in the opposite direction.
By9:08 a.m., Harris had shot multiple rounds in the gym and moved to the second floor, police say in the video.
Another surveillance clip shows a security guard running down a staircase, then immediately turning and running back up as Harris, seen behind him, throws a magazine on the floor and reloads his weapon as he walks up the stairs.
CVPA surveillance hallway walking
A frame grab taken from surveillance camera video shows gunmanOrlando Harriscarrying a long rifle as he roamed the hallways ofCentral Visual and Performing Arts High SchoolandCollegiate School of Medicine and BioscienceinSt. Louis, shooting multiple people and killing two onOct. 24, 2022.
At9:10 a.m., Harris walks by the cafeteria on the second floor. He then goes in and out of a doorway, and a person who appears to be a security guard runs away a few seconds later.
Harris reaches the third floor at about9:14 a.m.and then walks off the screen. Twenty seconds later, he runs back down the same stairs, tripping, falling and turning back around to the third-floor hallway where he’d been.
At9:18 a.m., he reaches a third-floor classroom, the video says. He loads his gun in front of some orange lockers, throws a black magazine on the ground and then walks off-screen.
The fire alarm begins flashing at this time and Harris comes back to the hallway. He’s seen pacing outside the school’s computer lab for almost a minute — giving the middle finger to the security camera at one point — and then he steps through a doorway into the computer lab.
The video fast-forwards about 90 seconds when a swarm of police officers arrives in front of the classroom. About a dozen cops with their guns drawn rush to the room’s door. They fan out, checking out another entrance, then group up again at the door. An officer fires what appears to be a shotgun into the room. Several more officers arrive and the hall appears to fill with smoke.
The second clip is about three minutes of one police officer’s body camera footage. This footage, in stark contrast to the first video, has sound and depicts the chaos of the dozen officers first to arrive on the scene.
St. Louispolice body camera footage from deadly CVPA school shooting in 2022
Video from a bodycamera worn by one of the firstSt. Louispolice officers to respond to a shooting onOct. 24, 2022atCentral Visual and Performing Arts High Schooland theCollegiate School of Medicine and BioscienceinSt. Louis, whereOrlando Harrisshot and killed a student and teacher, and injured others. Viewer discretion is advised. Video provided bySt. Louis Police Departmentand unedited by thePost-Dispatch
Maj. Bockstruck, who headed the SWAT team the day of the shooting and oversaw some of the subsequent investigation, said officials chose to release that officer’s body camera footage because it had “the best vantage point.”
The video begins as officers arrive at the school.
‘Stay back! Stay back!’
“Sounds like it’s on the third floor,” the officer, who’s out of breath, yells as they run toward a green exterior door.
Inside, the video shows more cops, and shouts of “Move! Move!” They begin to run up the stairs.
“Third floor of the rear school building,” the same officer says. “That’s what a witness said outside. We heard the shots fired.”
He then points out an emptyAR-type magazineon the ground.
“Slow down,” the officer says to others. “Let the long gun go first.”
“Is this the third floor?” another officer asks.
The officers pause, and one with an assault rifle moves ahead.
On the third floor, the swarm of cops gather outside the computer lab. Others surround a second door to the lab.
CVPA bodycam door converge
A still taken from surveillance camera video showsSt. Louispolice officers converging on a computer room where a gunman was hiding after shooting multiple people, killing two, atCentral Visual and Performing Arts High SchoolandCollegiate School of Medicine and Bioscience, onOct. 24, 2022inSt. Louis.
CVPA bodycam image
An image taken from police body camera video showsSt. Louispolice officers converging on a third floor computer room where a gunman was hiding after shooting multiple people, killing two, at CVPA andCSMBhigh schools onOct. 24, 2022inSt. Louis.
“You got him? Is he alive still?” the officer asks cops at the door. “Stay back! Stay back!”
Another says Harris has a long rifle.
Then it appears officers begin to try to get into the locked computer lab. “Hit it!” one shouts repeatedly, each time followed by a loud blast. “Hit it! Hit it!”
Two different officers then fire a volley of shots into the computer lab through windows in the doors, the barrels of their long guns resting on the doors where the glass has broken.
The officer tells one of the cops firing shots into the lab to clear the way for an officer with a long gun, and then pulls the first officer back away from the computer lab by the waist of his pants.
They continue firing shots as the fire alarm begins to go off, adding to the chaos.
“We have a lot of backup,” the officer says. “Keep everyone out.”
They then open the main door to the lab and the officer with the long gun fires into the room. Another round of shots can be heard, and officers quickly pull back into the hallway. “He’s right here! He’s right on the wall!” the officer yells.
“Shots fired!” he says.
The video then shows three officers storming the room. They fire round after round at Harris.
It is now clear in the video that Harris is alone in the lab, and the room is at least partially devoid of furniture.
Harris falls to the ground. The officer with the long gun runs to the body. “Suspect down! Suspect down!” the officer shouts.
Then the video abruptly ends.
In total, more than 70 shots can be heard in the 3-minute clip.
Bockstruck said no additional evidence would be made public, except for a 700-page investigative report that is being redacted and will be released in a few weeks.
St. Louispolice ChiefRobert Tracy, who took over the department a few months after the shooting, said his department’s reluctance to release the footage stems from concern for the victims.
“It will force many victims and their families to relive this awful tragedy,” Tracy said on Monday. “St. LouisMetropolitan Police Departmentis responsible for upholding the law, and we must follow it, which is why we’re releasing these two videos. But it’s not something we take any joy in doing.”
CVPA students visit lawmakers to call for red flag gun laws
Central Visual and Performing Arts High Schoolstudents, from left,Shayla McClendon, Ja’Niya Corbin, Jaiyana Stallworth, andIzzy Ford, stand onTuesday, Feb. 28, 2023, in theMissouristateCapitolthird-floor rotunda outside the House chamber as they and dozens of their classmates rallied legislators. As survivors of a school shooting, they asked lawmakers for red flag laws on gun purchases in the state. Stallworth holds a sign bearing the photos of teacherJean Kuczkaand studentAlexzandria Bell, who both died in the shooting attack by a former student in 2022.
The department worked with the school district to give staff, students and the victims’ families an opportunity to view the videos before they were released. About 40 people took them up on that offer, school officials said, including the shooter’s family — who Bockstruck said was “re-traumatized and supportive of the community” after seeing the videos.
Matt Davis, theSt. LouisBoard of Education’s vice president, said the district is investing $35 million in the schools’ campus, including $15 million for safety initiatives.
“We also want to just reiterate that we’re three weeks away from school, and the safety of our students in our schools is our absolute top priority,” he said. “We describe it as our moral imperative.”
Teacher killed in St. Louis school shooting mourned, remembered as ‘selfless’
The five adult children ofJean Kuczkastood side by side at the front of the Cathedral Basilica on Monday and mourned their mom, gunned down a week ago in a school shooting.
‘She was bold, she was bright’: Teen killed inSt. Louisschool shooting remembered
Alexzandria Bell, 15, was fatally shot, along with teacherJean Kuczka, last month at Central and Collegiate high schools in southSt. Louis.
St. Louisschool gunman left note describing lonely life, ‘perfect storm’ for mass shooting
The gunman who killed a student and teacher at a southSt. Louisschool Monday had about 600 rounds of ammunition and left behind handwritten notes about being a loner with no social life.
Teacher:St. Louisschool shooter wasn’t always a monster. He slipped through many cracks.
Orlando Harriswas once a “super sweet boy,” his sixth-grade teacher recalls. Several factors led to his transformation.
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