In an interview with police, the school’s assistant principal said Denver Public Schools knew about the student’s history with guns and still took him in.
DENVER — Body camera video obtained Friday shows the massive response to a shooting at East High School last year in which two deans were injured by a student.
The video shows the chaotic morning at East High School in March 2023. The deans who were shot survived. Investigators found the student later that day in a remote part of Jefferson County. He had taken his own life.
Ten minutes before 10 a.m. on March 22, 2023, the call came in to police about a shooting inside the high school. The response was quick as officers entered the school from the west. By the time they arrived, the suspect, Austin Lyle, was gone.
Within a minute, the call went out in the city for a BOLO – be on the look out. Lyle was a student who enrolled in the school just two and a half months earlier.
> Content Warning: This video shows the response to a school shooting and could be difficult for some people to watch.
A photo shows the gun police say he used to shoot two East High School deans. It’s what’s known as a ghost gun: untraceable because it is homemade and has no serial number. Police reports said the firearm Lyle used in the shooting is consistent with a gun made using a 3D printer.
AR-15-style rifle in his bedroom
This story begins a year and a half earlier, when Overland High School in the Cherry Creek School District expelled Lyle for building another gun.
An arrest affidavit said that in 2021, a Safe2Tell tip reported that Lyle had posted pictures on Snapchat of him holding a gun and showing how much ammunition he had.
“Austin refused to let school security search him or his backpack for weapons,” the court document said.
At some point, Lyle’s mom searched his room for weapons and found what police called an AR-15-style rifle under her son’s dresser. The boy’s mom called police. Officers discovered this gun in 2021 was also a ghost gun, the affidavit said.
Lyle moved to Florida for a short time and then tried to enroll at East High School in Denver in January 2023.
In a police interview after the shooting inside East High School, assistant principal Shawne Anderson said he called Overland High School to get Lyle’s disciplinary history. Anderson learned about the reason for the expulsion and found out about the AR-15-style rifle.
Photos of evidence from March 2023 East High School shooting
DPS let him enroll
Anderson said he reached out to Denver Public Schools to learn about the policy for students who want to attend DPS but have this type of history with guns. Despite Lyle’s previous case in 2021, the district said they had to take him in.
Anderson said he was told, “Since he lived in our attendance area, he was ours to take.”
“So downtown, the director of safety said, he’s good to come to the school?” the officer asked.
When Lyle started school at East High in January 2023, the boy was required to do only a verbal check in – no weapons check, Anderson said.
Instead of a weapons check by district staff, a case summary report said Lyle’s father agreed to “search his son every day for weapons.”
Report of a gun in class
The plan for Lyle changed when a student in early March 2023 reported seeing Lyle “remove a gun from his backpack and placed it in his pocket while in class,” the case summary report said.
Lyle was removed from his math class into Room 129 – the same room he shot two deans weeks later.
Anderson said campus security officers did most of the talking.
“He emptied his pockets. I asked him if he could put the stuff on the table, and he put it back in his pockets, and he said ‘I really don’t wanna do that,'” said Anderson in his interview with police.
The search didn’t work out so well because at some point, Anderson said, Lyle “walked briskly out the back hallway.”
That same day, police visited the apartment of Lyle’s dad to check the residence for weapons. It was a voluntary search. Lyle’s father denied entry and told the officers his son doesn’t have weapons.
“I’ve been all over him because I am on probation myself,” he told the officers.
Searches didn’t include a pat-down
After no one could find a gun, Anderson agreed to change the verbal check-in to a search for weapons and check Lyle himself when he came to school.
In the interview with the officer, Anderson said the searches consisted of emptying a backpack and pockets. It was not a pat-down for weapons.
“Any touching of the waistband, back waist?” the officer asked.
Anderson suggested there was no formal training to staff on how to perform these searches.
“Does DPS at any point or CSO come in and train anybody on how to do that?” the officer asked. “I am – maybe – when I first started at DPS as a dean.”
On the day of the shooting inside East High School, Lyle asked school staff for Anderson. He wasn’t available because of a school assembly that morning.
Another administrator, Eric Sinclair, searched Lyle and saw the outline of a gun in his pocket. Sinclair tried to wrestle him down. Lyle shot Sinclair, and then shot Wayne Mason when he entered Room 129.
DPS policy on enrollment
DPS provided a statement on Friday that said Colorado law states that school expulsions are for one year and after that time, with limited exceptions, a student has the right to enroll in school.
“If a student is enrolling in a different school than the one they were expelled from, as in this case, the new school’s team reaches out to the previous school to learn about the student’s time there,” the statement says. “If there have been discipline or safety issues, the new school follows the appropriate protocols to address the concerns.”
Those protocols include meeting with the student and family, and establishing a plan to ensure student support and safety, the statement says.
“In this case, East High School and the district followed all applicable laws governing discipline, safety, and enrollment,” DPS says in the statement.
DPS also said that under current search policy, a campus safety officer or DPS patrol officer must conduct any search that involves a weapon.
If you know about this case and want to reach out to the reporters with any information, please email 9NewsInvestigates@9news.com.
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