Millard South shooting: Suspension ignited fury
Robert Butler Jr. was pulled from his first-period class Wednesday at Millard South High School, summoned to the school office to face the music.
A school security camera had caught the 17-year-old senior — who transferred to the school this past fall — driving across a school football field. Assistant Principal Vicki Kaspar informed him of his penalty: a 19-day suspension.
Butler was escorted out of the school. Sometime afterward, he posted an item on Facebook about the “evil'' that the school had driven him to.As the lunch period wound down in the suburban Omaha school's buzzing halls, the meaning of those words became clear.
Butler returned to Kaspar's office, this time brandishing a handgun. He shot the 58-year-old administrator, mortally wounding her, then fired on Principal Curtis Case.
Butler, the son of an Omaha police officer, then fled by car. Omaha police found him about 35 minutes later in a parking lot, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot Kaspar, described by colleagues as a consummate professional devoted to kids, was rushed from the school by helicopter but died hours later. Case, 44, was in serious condition and expected to survive the shooting that rocked the school, the district and the city.
It is believed to be the worst school shooting incident in Nebraska history. After Wednesday, Millard South joins the long, sobering list of schools around the globe that have been devastated by disaffected students with guns.
For many in Omaha, it also was a haunting reminder of the Von Maur shooting spree, which on a similar wintry weekday in December 2007 left eight victims dead.
“We had tragedy descend on our city,'' Omaha Mayor Jim Suttle said Wednesday.
None of the other students in the high school at 149th and Q Streets was hurt, but they endured an ordeal of terror.
After the gunfire rang out, students were ordered to huddle in the back of darkened, locked-down classrooms.
“Someone was shot. I'm not dead,'' one student texted her mother.
Another texted this message: “If I don't make it out, I love you.”
Panic-stricken parents rushed to the school based on such contacts and breaking news reports, fearing for their children's lives. Hundreds gathered in a church parking lot set up as a staging area, looking east to Millard South and nervously checking cell phones and messages.
Parents were quickly assured that their kids were safe, but it took hours before all the students were finally released.
All other Millard schools also had been ordered into lockdown. Even kindergartners went through the sadly common school drill — one that this time was for real.
Butler's father is Robert Butler Sr., an Omaha police detective. Omaha police officials released no details on the handgun that the young Butler used, though The World-Herald has been told it was his father's Glock .40, a common police service weapon.
Police and school officials also released few details on what transpired inside the school.
But interviews with students who knew Butler and two people familiar with the case provided an account of a good but unhappy student who struggled with the move to a new school.
Butler had transferred to Millard South in October from Lincoln Southwest High School. The midyear move to a new city and school had been difficult for Butler, his friends said. A source said Butler was upset about the transfer.
Butler appeared to reference his negative feelings in his Wednesday posting on Facebook, the social networking website. Omaha had changed him, he said, and his new school was “even worse.''
For Millard students, Wednesday was the first day back from Christmas break. Two sources who spoke on condition of anonymity said Butler and another student were seen Wednesday morning driving a car across an athletic field at the school, damaging it.
Butler, who reportedly had not had previous disciplinary problems at the school, was pulled from his first class by a school security officer and brought to Kaspar's office between 8 and 8:30 a.m. She imposed the suspension after the damage to school property. Kaspar also called Butler's father in his presence.
Butler was escorted out of the school building. His father did not pick him up, so it was unclear how he left the school or where he went.
It also was unclear what time Butler made his Facebook posting. The indefinite time stamp for the status update, made via a cell phone, makes it appear that it could have been either just before or just after the shootings. Either way, the words he wrote are chilling.
“ur gomna here about the evil s--- I did but that f---- school drove me to this,'' he wrote. “I greatly affected the lives of families ruined but I'm sorry. goodbye.''
Butler reappeared on the school campus about 12:45 p.m. He walked past an unarmed security guard and into the main attendance office, where Assistant Principal Kaspar worked. He opened a latch to get behind a counter where four secretaries are stationed and walked into Kaspar's office, just feet away.
Without saying a word, Butler shot Kaspar with a handgun as she sat behind her desk, hitting her three or four times in the upper torso.
Responding to the commotion, Principal Case bolted out of his office across the hall. Butler exited Kaspar's office and shot Case two or three times from about five feet away, hitting the principal in the back and hip.
As Butler left the school office, he fired wildly twice down the hall, one shot lodging in a wall about 15 feet from Case.
Through a window, the school security officer saw Butler leaving the office and crouched down behind his desk to protect himself. Butler saw the officer and pointed the gun at him, but did not fire.
Butler then left the school, and the officer ran into the office to check on the victims.
The whole incident lasted less than two minutes.
Kaspar was found down behind her desk, bleeding profusely. “Help me,” she pleaded.
Over the intercom, students said, another assistant principal announced a “code red,'' the signal for a lockdown. It requires students to stay in their rooms and take cover.
“It's not a drill,'' he said in a shaky voice.
The first call to 911 came at 12:50 p.m. A school resource officer at Millard South put out a “Help an Officer” call, and several Omaha officers rushed to the scene, the first arriving in seconds.
Responding officers learned that the suspect had fled in a red Honda Accord. Butler's name and description were quickly broadcast. Since it was not yet known how many suspects there were, officers, including some in tactical gear, entered the school to conduct a sweep.
Police found the red Accord about 1:25 p.m. in a parking lot near 148th and D Streets, about a mile from the school.
Officers approached the car and found Butler dead behind the wheel from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Police announced about 9 p.m. Wednesday that Kaspar, too, had died of her wounds.
Millard South remained a crime scene into Wednesday evening, the school roped off, the cars of students and staff remaining in the parking lot.
Classes at Millard South were canceled for Thursday. The school district was making counselors available to talk to students and staff.
The shooting incident is only the second in a Nebraska school in the state's modern history. In 1995, a seventh-grader in Chadron shot and wounded a teacher.
But as with the Von Maur shootings three years earlier, Omaha received a grim reminder that such senseless violence can happen anywhere, anytime.
Said parent Milton Lopez: “I'd never expected this to happen in a little town like Omaha.''
Contact the writer:
402-444-1130, henry.cordes@owh.com
