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One High School, Five Students Fatally Shot
The killings came in rapid succession.
On a cold night in late January, a high school football player was found unconscious and bleeding from a single gunshot wound. Two weeks later, a 16-year-old student was killed by what the authorities said may have been a stray bullet. Four days after that, a co-captain of the dance team was shot dead. In early March, a 15-year-old who last attended classes in the fall died from gunshot wounds.
And last week, Anthony J. Thompson Jr., 17, was shot and killed by a police officer in a brief scuffle inside a cramped bathroom on the same campus, becoming the fifth student at Austin-East Magnet High School this year to die of gun violence.
In Knoxville, a Black high school contends with a massive rise in teen shootings
Constance Every and a student of Austin-East Magnet High School protest the police shooting of Anthony J. Thompson Jr.
(Jenny Jarvie / Los Angeles Times)
May 2, 2021 3 AM PT
KNOXVILLE, Tenn.
The Black community that surrounds Austin-East Magnet High School was still mourning its dead four students gunned down this year when the news broke.
Another shooting, this one inside the school.
With Austin-East in lockdown and police with rifles patrolling the halls, it was hours before officials announced that a fifth student had been fatally shot.
For many, this killing was the hardest to take: The shooter was a police officer, and he was Black.