Teacher wrestles gun from hands of school shooter and is honored for saving lives
Many Americans don’t realize that plenty of school shootings fail to make the national news. Take, for example, the one that happened on September 20, 2017 at Mattoon High School in Illinois.
On that day, 15-year-old Josiah Lyons, a young man whose classmates later said “had problems,” drew a gun in the cafeteria and pointed it at a fellow student.
Math teacher Angela McQueen – who was on cafeteria duty at the time – saw what was happening and jumped into action.
“In that moment you don’t really think, you just react,” McQueen said.
McQueen lunged towards Lyons to wrestle the gun from his hands. In the process, one shot was fired into a student and went through his left hand and into his chest. Seven more shots were fired into the ceiling during the struggle.
“I sprang into action because I looked over and I saw a student pulling a gun out and he was aiming it at students to his right,” McQueen said during the interview. “I thought, ‘Oh crap, he is going to start shooting,’ so I immediately lunged at the gun and got the gun up in the air as quickly as I could, as fast as I could because I didn’t want him to hit the students.”
Mattoon police school resource officer Kasey Alexander arrived in the cafeteria afterward and took Lyons into custody. The victim’s wounds were not life-threatening.
The Illinois Education Association (IEA) released an interview with McQueen on its Facebook page in which she called herself a “mama bear”:
“To me it’s almost like the mama bear instinct. I mean I don’t have kids of my own right now, but it’s the instinct of, ‘You’re not going to do this to my kids,’” she said. “These are still my kids — even though I don’t know every single kid in there. You’re not going to do this to my kids. You’re not going to do this at my school.”
State and local police have both honored McQueen for her quick thinking.
David Janssen, chair of the Mattoon High School Alumni Scholarship fund advisory committee, announced in 2018 that the district was working to raise $50,000 to establish the Angela McQueen Citizenship Award.
And in 2019, McQueen was one of 15 Americans and three Canadians to be awarded the Carnegie Medal by the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission. The medal is given “to those who risk their lives to an extraordinary degree while saving or attempting to save the lives of others.”
Meanwhile, Lyons pled guilty and was sentenced to juvenile detention with the possibility of a 25-year term in adult prison if he violates conditions of his juvenile sentence.
In an interview, McQueen said she always kept one of her favorite Bible verses in mind, John 15:13 – “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
“It was always in the back of my mind, ‘Would I do this for just anybody?'” McQueen said of risking her life. “Everybody, I think, would like to think they would do that for just anybody, and now I know I would.”
Be sure to scroll down below to see the interview with McQueen.
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Hero teacher subdues student gunman, saves lives from IEANEA on Vimeo.
Source: CBS Chicago, The Journal Gazette & Times-Courier, (x2)