‘I thought it was just another drill’: Inside the Zamboanga school shooting

MANILA – Students at Ateneo de Zamboanga University Junior High School in the southern Philippines thought the first gunshot they heard on the morning of Aug 18 was part of another drill.

The school had undergone one only a month ago, after a shooting at a public high school in Tacloban City in central Philippines in June left three students dead.

“When we heard the first gunshot, we all went silent. I was thinking it was just another drill,” said a Grade 7 student at the campus, where a schoolmate opened fire that morning, killing a student before turning the gun on himself.

“Then we heard more. Our teacher asked us to lock the door, and we placed tables and chairs against the door. We hid and waited,” added the student, whose mother agreed to The Straits Times interview on condition of anonymity.

Ateneo de Zamboanga was among the first schools in the country to hold active shooting drills after the Tacloban attack. But when the real threat came, several students took it for another exercise.

“A lot of them thought it was just a drill, because they recently held a school shooting drill in Ateneo,” the mother of another student told ST, relating what her son told her. She also requested anonymity.

The Zamboanga attack began shortly before 8.30am, as classes were about to start. Police said the gunman, a Grade 9 student, carried a pistol and a high-powered firearm to the campus and opened fire inside a classroom without apparent provocation.

His body was found in a fifth-floor hallway. Another body, of a Grade 10 boy he allegedly killed, was found a floor below. At least two others were wounded. While their ages have not been disclosed, students in Grade 9-10 are usually 13 to 16 years old.

The second mother said her child’s classroom was on the third floor. Her child said that when they heard a single shot, the teacher locked the door, and they hid under tables. Only when the firing stopped did they run.

“My child said so many students were running to look for safety on the campus,” she said. In contrast, the Grade 7 student said their class waited several minutes before their teacher moved them to the gymnasium, where they were told to sit on the floor, then line up and wait for their parents.

Investigators are piecing the attack together from footage posted online by witnesses and by the gunman himself, who wore a body camera and livestreamed parts of it on Facebook.

Zamboanga City Mayor Khymer Adan Olaso said the video shows the boy firing first at a teacher seated at a desk, apparently missing the target, before moving on. The teacher’s condition was not immediately known.

Questions have arisen over how he obtained the gun.

By midday, the gunman’s father had been relieved from his post as district commander of the Port of Zamboanga Enforcement and Security Services, pending an investigation into whether he had been negligent in handling his service firearm.

Bureau of Customs Commissioner Ariel Nepomuceno, however, denied that the officer had anything to do with his son’s alleged actions and said the relief order was meant to allow an impartial inquiry.

Jaqueline Lim, the chairwoman of Tumaga village, where the school is located, said the school had strict security and urged parents to be more vigilant instead.

“We advise the parents to really check on their children. Check their things when they go to school. Look what they are bringing to school so we can prevent these incidents from happening,” she said. “And for parents who have firearms at home, make sure they are secured and out of reach of our children.”

School shootings are rare, even if gun violence is not uncommon, in the Philippines, which has one of the highest gun ownership rates in South-east Asia.

Lawmakers said the second fatal school shooting in two months showed that the measures ordered after Tacloban were not working. The Department of Education had earlier ordered the use of handheld metal detectors, bag inspections and stricter visitor screening in public schools.

Ateneo de Zamboanga is a private institution and had gone further than most in holding an active shooting drill.

“It’s concerning that these violent incidents are being normalised,” said Akbayan Representative Percival Cendana, who added that schools should be a space for learning and not where children fear for their lives.

He called for the passage of a Bill that would require licensed gun owners living with children to keep their firearms unloaded in tamper-resistant safes, with ammunition stored separately, or face civil liability and the loss of their licence. Several legislators had authored this Bill in July in response to the Tacloban attack. Other Bills had sought to ban minors from using social media.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr said he grieved with the families over a tragedy that “should never have happened”, and ordered an investigation.

The Department of Education is arranging psychological first aid for affected students and staff. Classes have been suspended until Aug 19.

The Tacloban attack on June 22 was treated at the time as a one-off incident. Two students aged 14 and 15 opened fire at San Jose National High School, killing three students and wounding at least 20 others. One of the guns belonged to an aunt who is a police officer.

At a Senate hearing on July 9, education officials said they had logged 15 cases of school violence in the weeks after Tacloban, including bomb threats, a stabbing and firearms recovered on campuses. They described the pattern as a copycat phenomenon, though they did not release comparable figures from before the attack.

A nationwide audit of 48,000 public schools found only about 36 per cent had CCTV cameras and security guards.

A separate Senate inquiry has been examining whether the Tacloban suspects were groomed online. Senator Risa Hontiveros said in July there were indications the teenage shooters may have been influenced by 764, a nihilistic violent extremist network accused of targeting vulnerable children through gaming platforms and chat groups.