Public Radio for the Piedmont and High Country
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Parkland student hit by shrapnel after gun in backpack misfires

A juvenile has been charged with having a firearm on school grounds after a student was injured by shrapnel Tuesday at Parkland High School in Winston-Salem.

The Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office says the gun was misfired from the juvenile’s backpack. 

In an email to Parkland students and parents, principal Noel Keener said that the investigation began when the victim reported that she had been struck in the leg by an object during lunch. She didn’t know what had wounded her.

It was later determined the object was shrapnel from a bullet. 

The incident is the latest crime to hit Parkland this spring. In April, the district warned that the school had received a bomb threat. And a student who was recorded allegedly assaulting a teacher will be tried as an adult, court officials announced last week.

At a press conference on Wednesday, Superintendent Tricia McManus spoke about the impact the string of incidents is having on students and staff at Parkland. 

“What I've seen, when I'm actually there is there is so much great happening even this morning, I think for the kids and for the staff, they feel like these, these individual incidents shed a negative light on the school, and on what's happening in the school on a daily basis,” McManus said.

The Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office says the juvenile has been charged with a felony. Officials say additional charges may be filed.

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.
Amy Diaz began covering education in North Carolina’s Piedmont region and High Country for WFDD in partnership with Report For America in 2022. Before entering the world of public radio, she worked as a local government reporter in Flint, Mich. where she was named the 2021 Rookie Writer of the Year by the Michigan Press Association. Diaz is originally from Florida, where she interned at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune and freelanced for the Tampa Bay Times. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of South Florida, but truly got her start in the field in elementary school writing scripts for the morning news. You can follow her on Twitter at @amydiaze.

Support quality journalism, like the story above,
with your gift right now.

Donate