TACOMA, Wash. — Five Tacoma Public Schools employees were honored for defending students and rendering medical aid during a stabbing at Foss High School.
They were recognized at Thursday’s school board meeting and given some of TPD’s highest honors.
They told KIRO 7 they were just doing their jobs.
“When the scuffle was broken up, and everyone was separated, that’s when we realized we had wounded students,” Bonhoeffer Muao, a school security guard, said.
The stabbings happened fast. Video obtained by KIRO 7 shows a group of students fighting in the hallway of Foss High School on April 30. One of the students was reportedly armed with a knife.
The incident sent six people to the hospital: the suspect, four other students, and Muao.
“In the heat of things, I didn’t even realize I was hurt,” he said.
Muao and David McEachern, a special education support professional, stepped in to stop the violence.
“It was just a natural reaction to me,” McEachern said. “To break something up, make sure everyone is safe.”
Both denied being heroes, but the school board and Tacoma police chief felt otherwise.
“While the circumstances were tragic, the response reminded us all of what community can look like,” Chief Patti Jackson of the Tacoma Police Department said.
Muao and McEachern were given medals of courage, the Tacoma Police Department’s highest civilian honor. Security guard Sharrese LuRee Johnson and athletic director Shiante Reed also received that award. School nurse Ada Gutierrez was given a certificate of merit for providing medical aid to a student with a collapsed lung.
“All of them are just humble heroes,” Mike Rupert, director of safety and security at TPS, said. “They all say they were just doing their job.”
In an exclusive interview with KIRO 7, Rupert said the employees handled the situation perfectly. He stressed that the district has made efforts to improve school safety, but described this incident as unavoidable.
“We’ve taken those steps, and it still happened,” he said. “We continue to train, we continue to learn.”
Rupert said the staff’s training and the district’s strong relationship with emergency responders made a difference that day.
He said the district is not considering metal detectors.
“We don’t want it to look like a prison going into our schools,” Rupert said.
The suspect in the stabbing pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree assault. He is due back in court in June.