‘Mom, I’m so scared.’ Parents wait to see children after Mansfield ISD school shooting

Hundreds of parents stood in a winding line outside the Mansfield school district’s Center for Performing Arts on Wednesday morning, waiting to be reunited with their children after a shooting at Timberview High School.

Students were being bused to the center, and a line of cars blocked traffic on the roads outside the building. In the parking lots, parents and younger children rushed to the front of the building. Police officers and other officials pointed the crowd to the line and told them to have their IDs ready to be checked as they picked up their children.

As of noon, several buses with students had pulled up to the back of the building. Students and parents were still being reunited by late afternoon.

Parents shared texts from their children and showed videos from social media of the fight that appeared to precede the shooting. Police arrested a student, Timothy Simpkins, 18, who they identified as the suspected shooter. Simpkins turned himself in Wednesday afternoon, police said.

Four people were injured, police said, and three of them were taken to a local hospital. One student who was shot was in critical condition. An adult who was shot was in good condition, and another student was in good condition after being grazed by a bullet. Another adult had minor injuries from a fall but declined treatment, authorities said.

Trinity Valesquez, 20, said her sister, a senior at the high school, texted her about the shooting.

Valesquez said at about 11:30 am that her sister told her the WiFi was being shut off at the school, so she wouldn’t be able to provide further updates.

Kandy Schiele waited by her car in the parking lot, dressed in her nursing uniform. She said her son texted her Wednesday morning after the shooting and said, “Mom, I’m so scared, I’m so scared right now.” He begged not to go to school the next day.

Her son is a freshman.

“This is not how you want to start the school year,” Schiele said with tears in her eyes.

Parent felt panic at news of school shooting

Another parent said her daughter called her from the school Wednesday morning and told her there had been a shooting. The parent described how she felt when she got the call: “Panic. Get up there, get them.”

She and other workers at General Motors dropped from the production line to pick up their children from the arts center.

She said the extended family was dealing with a relative in the hospital dying from COVID Tuesday night. “We were up there late saying goodbye,” she said. “These kids gotta understand life is too short.”

Chris Puempel, a physician, waited outside the building not for a student, but for his wife, who is a teacher at the school. His daughter texted him about what was happening. He pulled up his wife’s cell phone location on his phone.

“That’s when I saw the location was at home, and she had left her phone at home this morning,” he said. “That was pretty crappy.”

Luckily, his wife was able to text him from other phones and let him know that she was OK.

They have talked about this scenario many times, he said, and discussed what she would do in the event of a school shooting.

“When it’s this close, when it hits home, it’s a different emotion,” he said.

Memories of Columbine shooting

Marcus Lomax didn’t hear from his daughter, who is a sophomore, until 12:15 pm. He heard about the shooting Wednesday morning and texted her at 9:41 a.m. while picking up breakfast.

Lomax is from Colorado and was in high school when the Columbine shooting happened.

“I was just praying that she wasn’t on of the ones who got shot,” he said. “I’m just thankful it wasn’t our — I was just hoping she was safe and out of harm’s way.”

The family moved to the area two years ago.

“Never in a million years did I think someone in her school would be shooting,” he said.

Church volunteers provide help

Whitney Barth, executive pastor of Living Church, said her church contacted police after the shooting to see how it could help.

They “asked us to mobilize our people to help reconnect parents and students. We mobilized 50 of our people and reached out to five other local churches to come and help with the situation at hand.”

They brought water and snacks, helped manage the line of parents and worked with other volunteers.

Barth said her church is celebrating its 11th birthday. “It’s always been our heart to serve our community anyway we can,” she said. “In good times and in hard moments, we will always jump right in.”

Some students were still waiting in classrooms at the high school at noon, parents said. Other buses filled with children were stuck on the highway in traffic.

This story was originally published October 6, 2021 at 12:52 PM.