The organizers called it a “silent march” to end gun violence, but the day after 17-year-old Amarr Murphy-Paine was shot and killed in the parking lot of Seattle’s Garfield High School, a crowd gathered outside the school couldn’t hold back their tears or frustrations.
Alyssa Marsh, a Central District parent whose son is assigned to attend Garfield next year, reached behind her sunglasses to wipe tears from her eyes as she spoke Friday morning. She carried a handwritten black and white sign under her arm that read, “Don’t let my child be next!”
“I came out here purely from emotion and heart,” she said. “I’m tired of gun violence in my community.”
She was also listening and looking for solutions to prevent violence like this from happening again, as it has so many times before.
“You can’t deny the frequency this is happening, and Garfield is at the heart of it,” Marsh said.
Students and staff at Garfield have endured a steady beat of nearby gun violence for years. A student was shot in March while waiting for her bus outside the school. There was also a shooting outside the school in October. And last June, almost exactly a year ago, the school closed after a string of nearby shootings.
On Friday, students and parents echoed the demands they’ve made consistently, calling upon local and national leaders to increase gun control and youth mental health support. Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell and Seattle Public Schools Superintendent Brent Jones both pledged increased safety measures. Classes at Garfield were canceled for Friday and Monday.
“This hurts,” Jones said in an interview Friday. “I stand with the families around how we do what we need to do to come together as a community. My empathy is with the community. When we lose one of our beloved students, it shakes us as leaders to the core, and we are willing to do whatever we can to provide support during this time of grieving.”
Since 1990, there have been at least 24 incidents of shots being fired in the immediate vicinity of Seattle Public Schools or on school grounds, according to an analysis of news reports. Ten of those incidents happened at or near Garfield, one of the city’s flagship schools. Because the data was drawn from news reports, it is likely an undercount.
A total of six people were killed and 13 were injured in the shootings over the decades, including Murphy-Paine, who was trying to break up a fight when he was shot.
Jones says everything is on the table to be evaluated for safety improvement at Garfield, such as adding fencing, not allowing students to leave campus for lunch and reviewing security plans.
The school is an open campus with a lot of traffic, which is a challenge for keeping students safe, Jones said.
City and school leaders have struggled to wrap their arms around the problem for years. Most shootings happen outside of school buildings, beyond the reach of most school security protocols. Like any kind of crime, school violence often involves complex social factors — poverty, lack of social connection, inability to resolve personal conflicts.
“It’s really a challenge and stressful for the school admin, and they can’t follow every kid home,” said Ken Trump, a school security expert who once oversaw youth gang violence prevention in Cleveland public schools.
In the short term, students will find additional Seattle Police Department presence around the school’s perimeter when they return Tuesday. The district is also exploring the addition of outside security around campus and plans to boost security at the high school’s prom, scheduled for Saturday night, and graduation June 17.
In the group that gathered outside the school Friday, some debated the efficacy of the city’s immediate plan to increase police patrols in the school’s vicinity.
Victoria Beach, Central District public safety liaison to SPD, said students from there to Rainier Beach have told her they want a police presence in schools to feel safe.
“They need resource officers they can trust,” she said.
Various people in the crowd audibly questioned the need for police in schools. Others suggested that students may feel more comfortable if they had more women resource officers and officers of color to help them.
On Friday, executive board members of the Seattle Student Union issued a statement saying that they “denounce any call to reintroduce police to our schools after Black students and allies worked tirelessly in 2020 to successfully demand their removal.”
Gun violence is what public policy experts would define as a “wicked problem” — an issue on which there is complex and chronic disagreement on how to define the problem and how to solve it, said Trump.
But there are still tangible steps that cities and school districts can take to prevent another tragedy and help students recover from trauma, experts say.
In Chicago, for example, community members created a safe transit route for students, staffing the corners where students are often dropped off the bus, said Odis Johnson Jr., executive director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Safe and Healthy Schools. Other districts have printed QR codes that allow students to submit anonymous safety tips to school administrators, said Trump.
Whether or not gun violence happens on school grounds, communities still reel in the aftermath when a student is hurt or killed. Healing and recovering from losing a classmate can look different for every child, said Elizabeth Brown, a member of the national Principal Recovery Network.
It’s important for schools to have 24/7 counseling and support in the immediate aftermath, Brown said. Some schools have installed trauma therapists in a section of their building where students can make appointments. And most important, schools should prioritize what students say is the best path forward.
Among Garfield students, there is a mixture of outrage and numbness.
One graduate said the frequent threats at “Garfield taught me how to survive.” A current student described how she once locked herself in a bathroom stall to stay safe.
Karima Souleyman, a 2023 Garfield graduate and the older sister of a current Garfield student, said she’s even heard students joking about the frequency of shootings around the school.
That kind of reaction worries Mark Rivers, the deputy director of outreach, community safety and gun violence prevention programs at Community Passageways. It’s a neighborhood-based nonprofit focused on youth diversion from incarceration and crisis intervention.
“We need our youth to be reminded that this is not normal. That this is not OK. That you shouldn’t have to go through this,” Rivers said.
It’s been a hard week for Community Passageways staff. They’re not contracted with the school, but typically, members are milling about the neighborhood at lunch time, when students are outside, to connect with them and keep an eye out for any activity that seems out of place. At the time of Thursday’s shooting, ironically, many staff were at Lumen Field attending a two-day “Together We End Gun Violence Conference,” to learn new violence-prevention tactics.
“It’s hard,” Rivers said. “It’s like, the one day you’re not there, something happens. You feel responsible.”
When students and staff come back Tuesday, additional district counselors will be on campus for them to talk to. Jones plans to be on campus Tuesday as well.
A top priority for Jones is the district’s Continuing Assignment for Reengaging Students, or CARE, program, which reaches out to students who have dropped out to re-engage them.
The program aims to help students feel a sense of belonging at school.
“If students are dysregulated, feeling intimidated or bullied, we want to make sure we have enough of our CARE teams supporting our students in advance before it has the potential to escalate,” Jones said.
Editor’s note: An initial version of this article was updated to include Amarr Murphy-Paine’s full name.