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A US TEACHER who was shot while tackling and disarming a student inside his classroom said today that his swift decisions “were the only acceptable actions” to save his students.
Jason Seaman, speaking publicly for the first time since the shooting on Friday, thanked the Noblesville community for its support and stressed that he wanted the focus to be on the only other person shot during the incident: a 13-year-old student who was seriously wounded.
“Her courage and strength at such a young age is nothing short of remarkable,” Seaman said during a news conference at the school district’s administrative building.
We all should continue to keep her in our minds as she continues to recover.
Seaman is credited with stopping the armed student who entered his Noblesville West Middle School on Friday morning. Witnesses said the 29-year-old former college football player ran toward bullets as he tackled the student shooter.
He was shot three times, according to his brother.
“I want to make it clear that my actions on that day, in my mind, were the only acceptable actions I could have done given the circumstances,” Seaman said. “I deeply care for my students and their well-being. That is why I did what I did that day.”
He wore a white T-shirt emblazoned with the message: “#NOBStrong. You are the reason I teach.”
His shirt also showed the initials EW, honoring injured student Ella Whistler. Her family has said she was hospitalised in critical but stable condition, and school officials said on Saturday that she was improving.
Seaman didn’t appear to show any pain or other sign of his injuries during the news conference. He spoke for just a few minutes and declined to answer questions from reporters.
‘Hero’
Noblesville police Lieutenant Bruce Barnes confirmed on Saturday that Jason Seaman was discharged from Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis.
Republican congresswoman Susan Brooks posted a video on Twitter saying she met Seaman during a visit to Noblesville West Middle School around midday on Saturday.
“He is that hero teacher who stopped the shooter from hurting more young people,” Brooks said.
President Donald Trump sent a tweet on Saturday thanking Seaman “for his heroic act in saving so many precious young lives. His quick and automatic action is being talked about all over the world!”
Vice President Mike Pence, the former governor of Indiana, also credited the teacher’s “courageous action” for saving lives during the shooting at the suburban Indianapolis school.
“We’re all proud of you Jason and are praying for you and those impacted and recovering from injuries,” Pence said in his own tweet.
Janna Lynas of Noblesville, whose son was coached by Seaman in football, said the teacher is a hero “and everyone here feels it”
“I believe it was probably very instinctual with him. There was potential for a lot of lives being lost,” Lynas sai.
She said she wasn’t surprised to hear that Seaman intervened to save students. Lynas said Seaman emphasised character last year when he coached her son.
“He made it very clear: Yes, we are going to be playing football but if your grades aren’t good, you’re not going to be playing football,” Lynas said.
‘If it weren’t for him’
Ethan Stonebraker, a student witness, said the shooter was acting suspiciously when he walked into the classroom while the class was taking a test Friday. He told ABC News that Seaman threw a basketball at the shooter and ran toward the bullets as screaming students sought cover behind a table.
“If it weren’t for him, more of us would have been injured for sure,” the seventh grader said.
Investigators said the shooter had asked to be dismissed from the class before returning with two guns. He was arrested “extremely quickly” following the shooting around 9 amon Friday, local police Chief Kevin Jowitt said.
Authorities didn’t release the student’s name or say whether he had been in trouble before but indicated he likely acted alone. Police said the student didn’t appear to be injured.
Stonebraker said he knew the suspected gunman. He described him as “a nice kid most of the times” and said he often joked with the classmates.
“It’s just a shock he would do something like that,” Stonebraker said.
Hours after the shooting, law enforcement agents sealed off part of an upscale neighborhood in Noblesville but weren’t commenting on whether the suspect lived there. Sandy McWilliams, a member of a landscaping crew working nearby, said six officers toting assault rifles entered a home.
Students were bused to the Noblesville High School gym, where hundreds of parents and other family members arrived to retrieve them.
Authorities referred to a prompt and heroic response at the school but didn’t confirm accounts of Seaman tackling the student or describe the role of the resource officer who was stationed at the school.
When asked to elaborate on his praise of the response, Indiana State Police Superintendent Doug Carter said: “Wait ’til one day we can tell you that story. You’ll be proud of them, too.”
Noblesville High School senior Jackson Ramsey started a GoFundMe fundraising effort for Seaman. He said his girlfriend’s sister was in a classroom adjacent to the shooting.
The goal is to “repay a deed that cannot be repaid,” Ramsey said. “He saved the lives of so many students.”
The campaign had raised nearly $73,000 (€62,000) by this evening.
The attack came a week after a shooting at a high school in Santa Fe, Texas, that killed eight students and two teachers, and months after the high school attack that killed 17 people in Parkland, Florida.
The Florida attack inspired students there and across the country to call for more restrictions on access to guns.
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He shouldn’t be put into that situation in the first place
Ok he’s a hero, but that is an unfortunate T-shirt hes wearing. #Nobstrong….?
@Owen Merne: made me chuckle.. along with his surname!! Jokes aside he definitely is a hero
What a hero
Yet Democrats and Irish people who’ve never even set foot in the US and have no cultural appreciation of American society still argue that arming teachers with guns is a bad idea.
Looking forward to watching them arguing their way around this classic example of the importance of guns in the hands of law abiding folk.
Donald Trump has his finger on the pulse of America.
@Jack McGready: lol
@Jack McGready: I look back to my schooldays and shudder at the thought of our poor tormented teachers being armed. . Half of them were alcoholic ffs. They were bad enough with just the strap
@Jack McGready: Cultural appreciation of American society……………….lol
I can Guarantee, seeing as he is only a child himself the shooter stole those guns from a “law abiding citizen” who had a permit and let them be accessible to a minor.
mind boggling the amount of guns readily available in that country,
almost one per head of population.
@Jack McGready:
Isn’t it odd that in the US, Banks, Government buildings and even Walmart has its own armed security and surveillance teams and yet the mention of Schools, teachers and students having the same protection in their place of work causes the Dems to have a meltdown.
@Native: if there were armed security staff at schools and they were to intercept such attempted shooters then the dems wouldn’t be able to take out the 2nd amendment. Very easy to push an unarmed population around!!
@Native:
It is odd..but then again the current crop of Democrats have extremely odd personalities so in that respect it’s not really surprising.
@Jack McGready: another stable genius
@Jack McGready: You realize he wasn’t armed right? This hurts “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun” argument, it doesn’t strengthen it.
@Native: I’m in my mid-30’s, have lived in the Us my entire life, and traveled throughout most of it. I have never seen an armed guard at a Wal-Mart or a bank.
@Jack McGready: unarmed hero, I repeat, unarmed.
Madness
If trained gun holding teachers existed in schools these idiotic cowardly shooters would not only think twice about their SHOOTING FISH IN A BARREL mindset , BUT for those that did persisted, they’re put down quicker then a response from local law enforcement. GO NRA!
@DAVID EIRE: Screaming students running all over the place, bullets flying, why not add a few more into the mix. Sure they’ll hit something, hopefully the bad guy, and if not we’ll get bigger guns, maybe flamethrowers and grenade launchers? Give the bleeding principal a mortar, put him in a fortified position, and allow airstrikes. Ridiculous, the real solution is just too difficult for the corrupt lazy elites.
@TheHeathen: Why do people call the police if a shooting incident is taking place? It’s so people who are trained to use firearms and who have firearms, will come and try to take out the shooter and save people. So you have no problem with trained gun users in that instance, why is it so ludicrous to think that you could also train and arm some teachers or at the very least, have some armed security. The police are not magic, they can’t be there all the time. As for your predictable, hysterical ranting about giving teachers grenades etc.. nobody is suggesting that and that kind of silly talk is decidedly unhelpful.
@I like this cushion: Facetiousness is always lost on the dim. I have a problem with guns and schools are no places for guns. The solution is to remove guns from that society but that’s just too much work for the paid off elites. I’m not even going to start debating this with you as you are terribly slow witted and rather too red around the neck.
@TheHeathen: Wow. How rude are you.
have your say