Articles:
Father Grieves After Son Kills Himself At School, Shooting Sends Schools Into Lockdown (click here)
Grades impel "sweet kid" to a violent death (click here)
D.A.: Maybe teen tried to hurt school, parents (click here)

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D.A.: Maybe teen tried to hurt school, parents

December 14, 2006
By TOM SCHMIDT & REGINA MEDINA
schmidt@phillynews.com 215-854-5952

SHANE JOSEPH HALLIGAN had planned it out. When he shot himself to death Tuesday in Springfield High School in Montgomery County, he brought to an end an idea that is believed to have come to mind the day before.

When he arrived at the school about 8:45 a.m., he was carrying a duffel bag that contained a powerful AK-47-type rifle and 20 rounds of ammunition.

The night before, he had sawed the stock off the weapon so it would fit in the bag. He also was carrying a suicide note in his pants.

To get to the rifle, he took a key to his father's gun cabinet and unlocked it. On Tuesday he went to school.

Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor said he thought the teen had gone to school "to make a big show without shooting anyone."

"He fired five shots high into the walls and a final shot into his chin," he said. "The last shot exited the top of the boy's head."

At 9:20 a.m., police got a call about Halligan from a female student whose father was a policeman. The cop was dispatched to the school and got there in 50 seconds, Castor said.

"He was there before the last round was fired," Castor said. "Shane might have kept firing, but police got there so fast."

An autopsy concluded that Halligan had died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The wound was a contact wound, meaning the end of the barrel had touched and burned the chin. The bullet's casing was found near the body.

The weapon is called an AK-47-type rifle because it had been modified from the original AK-47, which is illegal to own in the U.S. The AK-47-type weapon is a semiautomatic and carries 15 rounds. The original is fully automatic and carries 30 rounds.

An empty box that had contained 20 rounds of AK-47-type ammunition was found. One round remained in the chamber, 11 were in the magazine and two were in his pants pocket.

The school was searched and no other shell casings were found anywhere, Castor said.

Castor said he had spoken with a psychiatrist who thought it might be that Halligan wanted to punish his parents and the school. In his mind, it was the school that had given him the low report-card grades that in turn led his parents to take away some of his extracurricular activities, Castor said.

Yesterday, the Springfield Township School District was taking steps to return to normal.

About 100 students and parents visited the high-school gymnasium for counseling. Then they paused outside at the spot where a candlelight vigil for the teen had been held on Tuesday night.

Springfield High School principal Joseph Roy offered condolences to the Halligan family, Shane's father, John, and mother, Donna.

"We'll miss Shane," Roy said. "He gave a lot to the community." He called Tuesday a "frightening day."

All student bags left in the building on Tuesday were screened yesterday.

Roy said the high school will open at 9:35 a.m. today, and there will be four periods, each lasting 20 minutes. He said that the focus won't be on studies as much as students sharing what they saw and talking about what they're feeling.

Teachers felt strongly that the day should be "about restoring relationships, rebuilding a sense of safety and re-establishing routines, even if it's a difficult routine."

After today, he said, school officials will make a determination about what the next few days will be like.

Regarding today, Roy said, "I expect students will not want to be here." He said he hoped the short day might entice them to attend.

One family who showed up for counseling was John Ferran and his three children.

He said his 6-year-old son "kept talking about the lockdown. At 6, I don't know how to explain it to him."

He said one of the counselors explained it - that when you're in a lockdown, "it's a way to be safe." He said his son understood it as "only people in badges can come in, but your parents and pets can't come in."

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Grades impel "sweet kid" to a violent death

December 14, 206
By Susan Snyder, Kathy Boccella and Christine Schiavo

Sixteen-year-old Shane Halligan tried to keep his report card from his parents. But they found it in his backpack on Monday, and did what parents do. They said he'd have to cut back on the volunteer firefighting he loved so much and forgo a National Guard boot camp this summer.

So, while his parents slept, Halligan - a junior at Springfield Township High School in Montgomery County, an Eagle Scout, an experienced target-shooter - set into motion a plan to end his life, authorities said yesterday.

He stole a key to the family's gun safe and took his father's AK-47 semiautomatic rifle. In the basement, he sawed off the gun's wooden stock. That made it small enough to fit in a camouflage bag, small enough to get into school.

Yesterday morning, a suicide note tucked into his jeans, he brought out the gun in a hallway full of his peers and fired high at the cinder-block walls of the science wing - apparently to get other students out of the way, to keep them safe.

Then he turned the gun on himself.

"He was despondent over his grades and his parents' taking appropriate action," Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor said at a news conference where he described the events leading to the tragedy. "He felt that things he saw as important in his life were being taken away from him."

By outward measures, Shane Joseph Halligan lived the life of a well-adjusted teenager, with dreams of becoming a pilot and a future that looked as if it would soar.

He was an Eagle Scout with more merit badges than anyone else in his troop's 90-year history. A volunteer firefighter. Active in the drama club. A member of the high school chorus.

His violent suicide left those closest to him - as well as his community - reeling.

"I was shocked," said Scott Moreland, 17, who described himself as Halligan's best friend. "I didn't really believe it. I still don't."

He said he saw Halligan for the last time after school Monday as Halligan got into his black Ford Explorer.

"This is totally unexpected. I had no idea that this was going to happen at all," said Moreland, his voice cracking.

The two were in the same Boy Scout troop, where Halligan was the first in his age group to become an Eagle. They were volunteer firefighters - Halligan in Oreland, Moreland in Flourtown - and planned to join the military together after high school.

Both loved target shooting, which they learned at Boy Scout camp. They sometimes went clay shooting with friends at Hawk Mountain in Berks County.

Mike Weiss, scoutmaster for Oreland Troop 1, said Halligan had been proud of his gun collection and frequently brought gun magazines to troop meetings. "He knew a lot about the different names of weapons," he said.

Halligan could take guns apart and reassemble them. The AK-47 is believed to have been bought by his father at a gun show, authorities said.

Weiss described Halligan as "an exceptional young man." He was only 13 when Weiss selected him to be a senior patrol leader, putting him in charge of 25 boys, including three other patrol leaders.

"He had leadership, caring, and good scout spirit," Weiss said.

Halligan loved the troop's monthly camping trips. On a trip to Hawk Mountain last month, he built a rope bridge over a creek, earning his pioneering merit badge, Weiss said.

"He loved making things, woodcrafting, lashing," Weiss said. The last time he saw Halligan was at Weiss' house, he said, where they taught other boys rope-making.

Not tall and a little chunky, Halligan sometimes was teased by other children. But he was well liked, Weiss said.

"He would make light of" the teasing, Weiss said. "He wouldn't hesitate during a campfire skit to take his shirt off and ham it up."

Weiss said he could not have imagined Halligan's doing what he did.

"He always seemed to care about the safety of other kids and in not wanting other kids to get teased or harassed, probably because he saw a lot of that," he said.

Why he was picked on, Weiss couldn't say.

"He's a sweet kid, maybe too sweet of a kid. He was probably harassed by his peer group," said Roy Eisenhandler, an assistant scoutmaster. "There are plenty of bullies."

Halligan was a friend of Eisenhandler's son. They went miniature golfing and ate lunch together, he said.

"He wouldn't hurt any other individual," Eisenhandler said.

Halligan loved being a volunteer firefighter and was at the firehouse with friends Monday night, Eisenhandler said.

The teen also played baseball, and his father, John, had been commissioner of the Oreland-Wyndmoor Little League and an assistant scoutmaster, Eisenhandler said.

Halligan was working on his private pilot's license and talked of joining the National Guard, said his father, a chemist with Rohm & Haas Co. and a landscaper. The teen's mother, Donna, had had a serious illness, said a Springfield High parent who knows the family. She at one time worked at Halligan's Pub in Flourtown, which John Halligan's brother owns.

The teen has an older brother, Christopher, who made Eagle Scout with him in 2004 and is a student at Temple University, and a sister, Cara, who is out of college, neighbors and scout officials said. Halligan's parents were supportive of their son and active in the community, Weiss said.

"They're into everything - so much community service, you wouldn't believe it," he said.

Fran Busillo, an assistant scoutmaster, said he had seen Shane Halligan and his parents at their house Sunday.

"They had the football game on the TV, and Shane seemed fine, laughing and kidding," Busillo said. "I'm dumbfounded here. This is nuts."

Dylan Lawler, 18, a senior, was in the concert choir with Halligan.

As Lawler left the middle school yesterday with his mother and friends, he described his classmate as "different."

"This was the last thing I would expect him to do, but he was different," Lawler said. "He was really into the military, and he was a fireman. He was into doing different things than everyone else did."

With the nickname of Hypnotoad on his MySpace site, Halligan described himself as a Catholic, an Aquarius, and 5-foot-3: "More to Love!" The site features what appears to be Halligan in jeans, sneakers, and a pink shirt with black sunglasses and a multicolor hat.

A hint of how important firefighting was to him also appears on the site: One page showed Oreland fire truck 703 and said: "First truck I responded on, and no one cares."

Yesterday morning, his father said, Halligan ate breakfast as usual and left the house carrying his knapsack. He apparently had put the camouflage bag containing the gun in the car earlier. He arrived at his Algebra III/Trigonometry class an hour late - the only thing that seemed amiss to those around him.

After class, Halligan talked to a girl in the hallway, Castor said. It was one of the last things Halligan did before assembling the gun and shooting. In front of the library, he put the gun under his chin and pulled the trigger.

What he had told a friend in an e-mail the night before became true: He was "going to go away for a long time."

His parents were left to wonder.

"We see this on the news and wonder how it could happen. It doesn't happen in our family," John Halligan said during an interview outside the family's two-story Colonial on Integrity Avenue. "... I'm at a loss."

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Father Grieves After Son Kills Himself At School, Shooting Sends Schools Into Lockdown

December 12, 2006

The father of the 16-year-old who killed himself inside his high school Tuesday over a less-than-satisfactory report card urged students at a candlelight vigil to listen to troubled classmates.

“You got to talk to anyone who has a problem and listen to the problem,” Halligan said. “I’m not saying Shane did talk to anyone, but obviously, he had an issue.”

His son, Shane Halligan, died after he put what appeared to be an AK-47 to his chin and pulled the trigger in a hallway at Springfield Township High School in Montgomery County Tuesday morning.

"It's a very, very, very tough time," said John Halligan, the teen's father. "He was an Eagle Scout. He got it when he was 13. He was a volunteer fireman. He was going for his private pilot's license. He's talking National Guard. I don't know what happened today."

Shane Halligan, who would have turned 17 in February, is described as a good student, a volunteer firefighter and an Eagle Scout. Halligan had planned to go into the Army and his parents were going to let him take boot camp this summer before his senior year of high school.

Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor said it could have been the end of those hopes that sparked Tuesday's shooting. Halligan's grades had been dropping, and after his parents found a report card with grades they deemed unsatisfactory, the 16-year-old was told he would not be able to be a firefighter or go to boot camp early unless his grades improved.

His family said he took it well, watched football with them Monday night and nothing seemed unusual at breakfast Tuesday morning.

Then, around 9:15 a.m. between classes in a hall near the school science wing when the teen, wearing a Led Zeppelin T-shirt and blue jeans, pulled the semiautomatic rifle from his bag, warned students nearby to get down and get away and he started shooting into the ceiling, leaving huge craters in the cinder block walls.

"I just heard 'Get down,' and I saw shots fired into the ceiling, and so from that point, I just ran outside," one student told NBC 10.

"Teachers were just trying to get everybody out of the building, just trying to get away from the school. They said, 'Just get in your cars and leave,'" another student said.

None of the many students in the hall were injured.

"I just heard shooting, and we were running," student Jen Lynch said.

"Everyone was running and yelling. Someone was shooting. We ran. People were pushing everyone out of the way," student Mercy Eustace said.

Police said they responded almost immediately and were in the building when the final shot was fired into the boy's head. The coroner will do an autopsy Wednesday but confirmed that the death appears to be a suicide, according to Castor.

A note was found in Halligan's front pocket indicating that he intended to commit suicide.

"Today is the day that Montgomery County lost its innocence as it relates to school safety," Castor said. "We will have to convene the chiefs of police and the senior staff in the DA's office and the school administrators to figure out what we can do to try to make sure this doesn't happen again."

When the shots were fired, 911 was immediately called and the schools were put on lockdown.

The district attorney said it appears the gun came from a gun safe in the family home with multiple other firearms. The teen found some way to get the gun out of the safe, which is secured with two keys kept by his father John Halligan, Castor said.

"We don't know how it became it unlocked and how it got into his possession or when," John Halligan said.

"... We see this on the news and wonder how it happens. It doesn't happen to your family, but it did," the tearful father said.

After a student brought a handgun to school and showed it to classmates in September, school officials considered metal detectors, but felt it was an isolated incident and that detectors might not be the answer.

Police said they don't think the security measures would have made a difference.

"These campuses are not prisons," Police Chief Randall Hummel said. "If he was intent on doing this and there was a metal detector, I have no doubt that there would have been a way for him to get the weapon into the school and use it."

Castor suggests it may be impossible to stop someone intent on causing harm.

"I know how to make sure that we have no violence in schools, but you've got to wonder if the public is willing to pay the price of searches and metal detectors and clothing that is always tucked in, and no long coats, and no duffle bags and all of those sorts of things," Castor said. "America is built on freedom, and what we have to do is create an atmosphere where people don't do this rather than try to stop everything that can possibly happen."

Schools in the School District of Springfield Township will be closed Wednesday, following Tuesday's school shooting. The district will make counselors available to students and their families.

District Superintendent Dr. Roseanne Nyiri said Tuesday night they will explore all possible avenues to prevent guns from coming into the school, and that police will provide them with a lot of guidance.

Halligan's friends could not believe the teen killed himself. They said he was the funny guy in the crowd, the volunteer firefighter who couldn't wait to join the military -- an all around good guy. They wish they could have spoken to him in those final minutes.

"If he had gotten somebody to talk to, somebody he knew, I don't think he would have done anything. If he was confused, then we would have helped him," said friend James Andrews.

At Tuesday night's candlelight vigil outside the school, Oreland firefighters looked on and friends cried as Halligan's dad begged everyone not to let this kind of thing happen again.

“You think you know them, but obviously you don’t know what goes on behind their eyes,” Halligan said. “I’m at a loss, I’m at a complete loss here.”

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