LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Friday night football turns violent. A parent of a Desert Oasis High School student is demanding answers from school administrators and police after a shooting happened at the end of the game.
“This isn’t just teenagers. This is true violence. The next time, your kid will get killed," said Christopher Wagner. He learned about the shooting after speaking with his child who is a freshman at the school.
“Listen, you can’t go to any more games. Because at the first game there were also fights. I wrote those off just thinking 'teenage fights.' After this experience, I realized it was much more,” he said.
RELATED: Las Vegas police investigate shooting at Desert Oasis High School football game
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police says, at the end of a football game Friday night a fight broke out and someone pulled out a gun and fired shots in the air. No one was hurt and the shooter left the area.
Wagner posted on social media and became frustrated by the response of some parents who believed it wasn’t a big deal.
“It’s that attitude. That’s just how it is, that we’re absolutely numb to this that we can allow for our kids, and it’s totally okay for shots fired in the air. Just another day in business,” he said.
Wagner wants to see better security at schools.
“Not everybody was wanded. Everybody got through. Walmart has better security than the football game,” he said.
He also wants more transparency from school and district officials saying they never addressed why school police couldn’t get a handle on the fights and prevent a shooting from happening.
“If we can’t get to the truth and the facts about the safety of our kids, how can we make decisions. How can you trust them leading that school?”
In a letter to parents, the principal of the high school says it takes student safety seriously and encourages any student to not hesitate to come forward about any safety issue.
“My immediate concern is for the safety of our students because that is scary.”
Reuben D’Silva, a teacher at Rancho High School, has also served on Clark County School District’s public safety committee. He says it’s a relief no one was hurt in the shooting and only shots were fired in the air.
“If that person was in a different frame of mind, they could have been shooting into a crowd and this could have been a very tragic event,” he said.
CCSDPD says five students have been arrested for guns on campus so far this year with 28 total weapons confiscated. D’Silva says whatever beef students may have with each other is now fueled by seeking attention on social media.
“Now it’s about performing for people. It’s going to go down and it’s going to end and we’re going to do it in front of not just dozens of students, but hundreds of people,” he said.
However, he says at some schools, including his own, the number of fights on campus has dropped. But some of the fights are happening off-campus making them difficult to stop.
“There’s really no way of stopping those fights when they break out. They tend to become really brutal,” he said.
D’Silva says the plan to tackle this is having zero tolerance towards weapons on campus and restorative justice for kids who are caught up in trouble.
“Not being too punitive to a point where we’re involving students down a path or setting a course involving the criminal justice system.”
