The basketball game was a nail-biter. But in the stands, parents worried about guns.
It was an intense basketball game, a high school battle to advance toward a state championship.
On Saturday Millbrook High in Raleigh hosted the Durham-based Jordan High team in the third round playoff for the championship.
Jordan was ahead. Then they were tied. Then Millbrook was ahead. And they tied again. Jordan won 85-80 in overtime.
For the moment, many were caught up in the game, chanting “defense, defense,” but the issue of guns on school campuses was in the back of their minds.
“I don’t think it necessarily ever leaves anyone’s mind, especially when it is so close,” said Jay Smith, whose son attends Jordan. “It has happened in a number of places, in Durham and Raleigh. You can push it to the back, but it is still pressing.”
On Friday afternoon the Durham Sheriff’s Office, following up on a tip, found a 14-year-old with a gun at Jordan. The day before, a teen brought an AR-15 to a Millbrook basketball game.
Those were just the latest incidents involving young people bringing guns onto school campuses.
To address safety concerns, school officials only allowed clear bags into the game and jackets and coats had to be open when entering Millbrook’s gym.
Walking into the game, people passed multiple security guards standing in the rain, as well as six Wake Sheriff’s Office cars lined up near the only entrance. Inside, deputies stood at the four corners of the gym. No weapons were found at Saturday’s game, a school official said.
A gun at a game
Tracy Ford-Whidbee, mother of a Millbrook student, was at the basketball game Thursday night when the teen was found with the AR-15 rifle.
“My heart was pumping,” she said. A deputy escorted two young men out. It appeared one had a gun in his pant leg, she said. She immediately looked for her son and thought about how fast she could get to him.
“It was just crazy,” she said.
It was just another moment of worry, she said. Worry has become routine on school days, as she anticipates reports of a gun found at school or a lockdown. It makes it hard to concentrate at work, she said.
“I have three more years of worry,” she said, pointing out her son is a freshman.
On the ride to the game Saturday, Ford-Whidbee told her son, 15, to watch his surroundings. Stay away from people who could hurt him or make him guilty by association, she said.
Metal detectors?
Shawn Pullen’s daughter is a junior at Millbrook and his son graduated in 2020. Pullen graduated from the school in 1995.
Pullen said it’s hard to talk with kids about guns and shootings, but it has to happen.
“We have to be vigilant about it,” he said. “But at the end of the day all you can do is what you can do and hope these kids got some foundation, know right from wrong and try to do their best to make good decisions.”
Pullen has been to games where schools used metal detectors, he said, and thinks Millbrook should consider it.
“It would maybe provide a different level of peace of mind,” he said. “It sucks that you have to do that in something as innocent as high school athletics, but that is just the world we live in right now.”
Millbrook does a good job of keeping the kids safe, Pullen said, but it’s a lot of young people to manage and sporting events broaden the audience and increase the risk.
“Maybe at sporting events, we could take it up a notch since it is more open,” Pullen said.
Ford-Whidbee agreed.
“I’d rather have more metal detectors than more funerals for youth,” she said.
Tosha Gray, whose 15-year-old son attends Millbrook, said kids coming to school feeling unsafe isn’t natural.
Guns are being found so often at schools she said, the students are getting less and less surprised.
“They are just used to it now,” she said. When it occurs, “they are like, ‘Oh, it is just another day.’”
Virginia Bridges covers criminal justice in the Triangle and across North Carolina. Her work is produced with financial support from the nonprofit The Just Trust. The News & Observer maintains full editorial control of its journalism.
This story was originally published February 25, 2023 at 6:13 PM.
