St. Louis security officers honored for school shooting response
St Louis MO October 11 2023
Five security officers were honored Tuesday for going “above and beyond the call of duty” during their response to a school shooting last fall in St. Louis.
The officers accepted the awards at a luncheon Thursday for being the first officers to confront a shooter on Oct. 24, 2022, on the shared campus of Central Visual and Performing Arts High School and Collegiate School of Medicine & Bioscience in south St. Louis.
The shooter, Orlando Harris, was shot and killed by police less than 20 minutes after storming his former high school armed with an AR-15-style rifle and about 600 rounds of ammunition and killing a student and a teacher.
“It feels good to be acknowledged for something that comes natural to us,” Capt. Misty Dobynes told the Post-Dispatch after the ceremony. “We don’t do it for the awards. We do it to make sure all of our scholars are safe.”
Harris killed Alexzandria Bell, 15, and physical education teacher Jean Kuczka, 61, and shot and injured four others, but few additional details of the shooting have been released by authorities a year later.
A records request by the Post-Dispatch for investigative reports on the shooting and Harris’ autopsy were denied late last month. City officials said they could not release the records because the investigation remains open.
St. Louis police Sgt. Charles Wall said investigators are still working to compile a massive amount of evidence and hundreds of interviews into the final report.
The luncheon was organized by the St. Louis Chapter of ASIS International, an organization of security professionals.
Dobynes accepted the award with Sgt. Clifford Abram, Officer Coterri Dameier, Officer Darnice Lawrence and Officer Robert Findley.
Dobynes said the school’s security team has focused on officers’ mental health since the shooting, and they’ve kept up on training so that they remain prepared. She said their relationships with students and faculty were good prior to the attack, but the shooting brought them even closer.
“It will always be in the back of my head,” she said. “I think it will always be in the back of all of our heads. But I am just thankful that we knew what to do.”
In March, 22 police officers were honored at the 2nd District Police Business Association’s annual awards luncheon for their quick response, which was widely praised.
ASIS also honored officers from several other jurisdictions at Tuesday’s luncheon, including St. Charles, St. Charles County, St. Peters, St. Louis County, Ballwin and O’Fallon, Missouri. Six other area security guards also received awards.
