Montrell Besley runs a small business renting out a video game trailer. On May 3, he was renting it to a school in Red Bank when he got a notification on his phone. The message said there was a lockdown at Brainerd High School. Then he got another. It said there was an active shooter.
It was the Uvalde, Texas, school massacre in May which took the lives of 19 children and two adults at Robb Elementary School that prompted Hamilton County Schools, and school districts around the nation, to heighten security measures.
Opting to commit the remaining funding set aside for the group in late 2021, Hamilton County commissioners decided Wednesday to distribute $200,000 of federal pandemic relief funds to a local youth mentorship organization called the Lighthouse Collective.