On Tuesday afternoon, a seventeen-year-old, Tracey Haynes Jr, snuck inside the Wilmer Hutchins High School through a side door and opened fire “indiscriminately.” Five students were injured during the shooting and were rushed to the hospital with injuries ranging from non-life-threatening to serious.
This is the second shooting at Wilmer Hutchins High School in less than a year. There was a similar incident back in April 2024, where one student was shot in the leg. The parents and the community are horrified after the second shooting, with one parent stating that “this has become all too familiar.”
What Happened At Wilmer Hutchins High School?
According to surveillance video, an unknown student let the shooter, Haynes, into the Wilmer Hutchins High School through an unsecured door around 1 PM. The police affidavit stated that Haynes encountered a group of male students and began shooting.
Haynes later surrendered voluntarily with family assistance through an organization called Urban Specialists. A teacher is credited for preventing more casualties as he redirected the shooter while tending to the victims. He faces four counts of first-degree aggravated assault with bail set at $600,000.
Are We Seeing More School Shootings?
The Wilmer Hutchins High School shooting wasn’t the first shooting incident of 2025. Education Week tracks the number of school shootings that lead to injuries or deaths. We are only four months into 2025, and there have been 6 incidents of deadly school shootings. If we look at the overall numbers in 2025 with non-injury cases, the number of school shootings rises to 55 incidents as of April 7.
The trend is not new, as the US has been witnessing record highs of school shootings since COVID-19. In 2024 alone, there were more than 83 incidents, the highest in a decade. Student exposure to these incidents has also tripled in the last two decades, with the highest rates in Delaware and DC.
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