One day after a student shot the High School Principal in the arm, Harrisburg High School students head to class. The decision was made late Wednesday afternoon.

Immediately after the incident, during which a student pulled a gun during a confrontation with Principal Kevin Lein, Superintendent Jim Holbeck got a call from Lein at the hospital. “He’s in very good spirits. His first question was ‘How am I doing?’ So that tells you a little bit about him. He had a tough thing happen to him today.” Holbeck also said Lein wasn’t the only one affected. “We’ve got some people shook up from it as you can imagine.”

Lein was treated and released from the hospital later in the afternoon. Holbeck is also proud of the school counselors who were proactive in monitoring the mental state of the students. “We have had all of our counselors present where they ended up watching the students and if they saw any students that had looked like they were upset, we pulled them aside.”

After a traumatic incident Holbeck feels that it’s more than education that’s needed at the school going forward. “Utmost on our mind is that we have all of our staff and our students taken care of both physically and mentally. That’s the most important thing to us.”

Charges against the student will be released Thursday morning during the Sioux Falls Police briefing. The suspect is a juvenile so the name will not be released unless the teen is charged as an adult.

 

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