At about 4:50 p.m. on Thursday, student-athletes, coaches and parents rushed inside the high school after a nearby shooting at the CVS on Wisconsin Avenue left one 18-year-old critically injured.
On the high school field, the GDS varsity softball team was warming up for their game against Episcopal High School and the women’s lacrosse team was practicing when Veronica Ampey, assistant director of athletics for sports medicine, came out of the high school and told everyone to quickly get inside. (Ampey declined to comment for this story.)
“We were out here warming up—the game was about to start—and we were just told, ‘Get inside,’ and no one said what was happening,” sophomore Abby Orseck, a softball player, said. “They said, ‘We’ll tell you later—everyone get inside,’ so my immediate thought was, ‘Oh my god; there’s a shooting.’”
Players, who were warming up on the side of the field farthest from the high school entrance, sprinted inside and told their parents to do the same.
“It was very insane,” Orseck said. “Everyone knew that there was something really bad happening.”
After entering the high school, softball head coach Donna Stallworth directed the softball team to hunker down in the admissions office, the lacrosse team to take shelter in the turf room and the Episcopal softball team to hide in an English classroom.
“The kids all knew what to do,” assistant women’s lacrosse coach Mary Beth Cisneros said. “They all came in the doors. They went all up against the wall away from the doors that don’t have windows in them, and [the players] all stayed low and stayed quiet.”
About 15 minutes after the lockdown began, high school director of security Nick Prout and security guard Joseph Adams—both of whom were stationed at the high school front desk—received the all clear from a Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) dispatcher that the scene was secure and that everyone was free to resume normal activities.
According to a police report that NBC4 reporter Joseph Olmo shared with the Bit, MPD officers responded to a report of gunfire at approximately 4:35 p.m. and found one male with a gunshot wound at the back of the CVS parking lot. The victim was transported to a nearby hospital conscious and breathing.
According to WUSA9 reporter Eric Flack, a group of ten to 15 male teenagers ran away from the scene towards the direction of GDS. A lookout is currently underway for those teenagers. Flack said the victim left the scene in a Priority One ambulance, which is designated for life-threatening emergencies.
Prout, who received information about the shooting from the MPD dispatcher, said the shooting was a targeted attack. “They were just jumping somebody,” Prout said of the teenagers who fled the scene.
Duane Foster, a homeless man who sells his digital newspaper, “The Hobo,” outside the CVS on Wisconsin Avenue, said he heard “a bang” at about 4:37 p.m.
“I sat here for a minute—I wasn’t gonna leave—and then I seen two teens running this way, and they was like, ‘You better get out of the way,’” Foster said. Foster took shelter around the corner, and when he came back out, the victim “was unconscious and they was doing chest compressions.”
Deb Oremland ’92 was watching her daughter warm up for the game against Episcopal when the athletics staff told everyone on the field to get inside. “On my way here, I saw the fire trucks and the police cars up on Wisconsin,” Oremland said. “I had an idea that something had happened, so I wasn’t as scared.”
“There were a couple of people that started crying,” freshman Lilja Brynjolfsdottir, who is on the women’s lacrosse team, said. “I think everybody was just a little tense. We were just wondering what was gonna happen and how long we needed to stay for.”
At 6:06 p.m., parents, students and faculty received an email from the school describing the events of the lockdown. The security update said the school’s response to the shooting “was done in accordance with our safety protocols.”
As of the publication of this article, the police are still searching for the teenage suspects.