After the tragic gun death of a 16-year-old boy in Highland Park earlier this month, local parents are pushing for Township High School District 113 to implement stricter security measures at both of its high schools.
District leaders installed a weapons detection system at one entrance each of Deerfield High School and Highland Park High School, which Parents SOS, a group led by Highland Park High School parents, said was “ineffective.” Now, the group is asking the school district to install weapons detection systems at every entrance at both schools for every hour of every day.
“The fact that both the shooter and the victim knew each other, and that both 16-year-olds were students at Highland Park High School, lends further urgency to the need for D113 to act immediately to fully protect our kids,” Parents SOS said in a statement Tuesday. “We may never know how close these two students were to bringing their armed conflict into the school itself.”
Students have guns, said Suzanne Wahl, a co-leader of Parents SOS, and nothing currently stops them from bringing weapons to school.
On Aug. 13, Omar Diaz of Highwood was found with a gunshot wound about 11:30 a.m. in the 2300 block of Green Bay Road. He later died at Highland Park Hospital, according to Highland Park police and the Lake County coroner’s office.
Estiven Sarminento, an acquaintance of Diaz, was arrested the following morning and charged in adult court with two felony counts of first-degree murder, officials said, adding that the two boys appeared to have been in “an ongoing dispute.”
In April, a juvenile was charged with bringing a gun to Highland Park High School, prompting a lockdown. Five individuals were questioned but only one was charged.
The community is still in mourning from the July 4, 2022, mass shooting at the Highland Park Fourth of July parade that left seven people dead and 48 others wounded.
“In our district, our community has [been] profoundly impacted by the horror of gun violence and subsequent events have understandably raised the level of anxiety in the community,” the school district said.
The parents group said it was thankful to Supt. Bruce Law and the district board for upping security at one entrance at each school but added it was concerned by how easily students were able to avoid entrances where the weapons detection systems were located.
The single device installed at each school was circumvented by students who texted each other as to which entrances were not secured, the group said.
But “it’s not simply a matter of ordering units and pulling them out of a box after delivery and turning them on,” according to the district.
“Today, for example, there were nine people required to process students through the one entrance,” said Karen Warner, a spokeswoman for the district Tuesday.
School leaders approved a limited rollout to purchase units in an amount not to exceed $80,000, Warner added, however the expense is not in the units themselves but in the staffing required to operate them properly.
If the school purchased more units, the move would be subject to public procurement laws, which would need more time, she said.
Parents SOS attended a district committee meeting Tuesday evening to voice their concerns to the board.
There are less costly options, which were presented to the board, Wahl said.
“The board did not act quickly enough after the April 4 incident, and now we are behind.”
