East Tech High School went into a Code Red lockdown during dismissal after someone fired a single shot in front of the building, sending students and staff into a tense scramble that ended with one person in custody and, remarkably, no one hurt. The incident is the latest flashpoint in a Cleveland neighborhood where violence-prevention workers already spend their afternoons walking kids home.
What Happened Outside East Tech
According to News 5 Cleveland, the lockdown unfolded after a firearm incident involving one current student and one former student outside the school. The student accused of firing the shot was taken into custody, and no students or staff were injured, though several nearby schools activated Code Blue safety measures as a precaution.
The timing is notable. Per the same outlet's earlier reporting, a violence-prevention program known as the Safety Unit expanded into Cleveland's Central neighborhood after Labor Day with plans to work closely with East Tech students. That initiative received a $130,000 grant from the Cleveland Neighborhood Safety Fund, according to the Cleveland Foundation. The Safety Unit's Kareem Smith has described the school itself as mostly safe, even as he says the surrounding neighborhood is not.
Walking Kids Home, One Block at a Time
Smith and his violence-prevention team work outside East Tech before and after school, building rapport with students in hopes of gaining their trust, mentoring them, and staying ahead of brewing conflict before it turns violent. Part of that work is literal: Smith walks side-by-side with students to help them get home safely. He has said that ninth- and 10th-grade students at the school already have friends who were murdered back in middle school — a grim marker of how early exposure to gun violence begins for some Cleveland kids.
That reality fits into a broader pattern documented by News 5 Cleveland, whose investigators partnered with The Trace, an independent organization that tracks gun violence, to examine shootings near the city's schools. The outlet's reporting named three Cleveland teenagers shot and killed near schools within a five-month span: Devonte Johnson near Glenville High School in August 2022, Andre Wells near Rhodes High School the following month, and 18-year-old Pierre McCoy, who was killed at a bus stop outside John Adams in January 2023 — the third student shot and killed near a Cleveland Metropolitan School District school that year, according to cleveland.com.
A Mother's Grief, Four Years in the Making
Few families embody the toll of that violence like Anita Deal's. Deal lost three sons to gun violence over four years, cleveland.com reported, including her youngest, 13-year-old Maurco, who was killed in a drive-by shooting. Deal has said her family was shattered by grief and that she does not know what to say to her grandchildren, or to herself. Some family members have turned to therapy, psychiatrists or medication, she said, and the family has come to accept that they will not return to how they were — only that they can continue living.
Researchers say that kind of repeated loss and fear can reshape how children function day to day. Dr. Lisa Ramirez has said repeated exposure to violence and fear can take a toll on kids, and that worrying about safety in class or on the walk home can affect a student's focus. Nationally, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that witnessing community violence repeatedly has been associated with poor mental health, including PTSD and major depression, according to the CDC, with greater exposure to traumatic events raising the likelihood of those effects. Separate research cited by the National Library of Medicine found that exposure to community violence was inversely related to both academic performance and attendance, with posttraumatic-stress symptoms acting as a mediator of the relationship with academic performance.
Not every child is affected the same way, Ramirez has said. Some kids with repeated exposure to violence can still do well because of protective factors, she said, identifying strong friendships, trusted adults and activities such as sports as buffers. A child who feels safe can stay engaged in the present, she said, which can help interrupt fight-or-flight thinking.
How the District Is Responding
Cleveland Metropolitan School District officials say every school in the district has mental-health support through assigned school-based community mental-health providers, according to the district's own materials. The district's prevention programs also include support for schools affected by a crisis or tragedy once the district's initial crisis response has ended. Officials also point to a nationwide shortage of mental-health providers even as demand for services has grown.
Cleveland community relations street outreach specialist DJ Phillips has said officials have observed an increase in gun violence and gun deaths over the past seven to 10 years.
For now, East Tech's lockdown has been lifted, but the episode is a reminder of why programs like the Safety Unit exist in the first place — and why families like Anita Deal's continue to carry grief that, as she has put it, they can only learn to live alongside.
