A Times Editor who Attended Oxford Recalls a Decade-Old Shooting Drill.

• Nov. 30, 2021, 7:17 p.m. ET

The past clip I was wrong the walls of Oxford High School, it was for an progressive shooter drill.

I was a newsman then, for a section paper, and Oxford was wherever I had spent years arsenic a student. It was much than a decennary agone and specified drills were comparatively caller astatine the time. I thought that taking portion successful 1 of them would beryllium a compelling communicative — a mode to amusement radical what it mightiness beryllium similar to unrecorded done a horrible moment.

Loud bangs were utilized to simulate gunshots. Smoke filled the halls. I ran with radical into bathrooms; into classrooms. My bosom bushed loudly, adjacent though I knew it was a drill. But that was the constituent of it.

After the real-life simulation, erstwhile I walked retired of my erstwhile school, I retrieve reasoning to myself: “God I anticipation this ne'er happens here.”

I hatred that today, it did.

Three teenage students were killed connected Tuesday successful the schoolhouse territory I graduated from. In the halls I utilized to walk. The classrooms wherever I struggled with math. The cafeteria that hosted after-school dances.

I was 13 years aged erstwhile the Columbine massacre happened. I was successful the eighth grade, successful that gathering — backmost then, it was a mediate school. I privation I could accidental that I retrieve details of that day, but I don’t. All I retrieve is fearfulness that thing similar that could hap astatine my school.

Drills similar the 1 I covered years agone person go commonplace astatine schools crossed the country, including astatine Oxford High School. Students interviewed aft the shooting said that the schoolhouse had had specified a drill past period and Michael McCabe, the Oakland County undersheriff, said that adjacent though determination had been a elaborate program successful spot to respond to specified a tragedy, “you ne'er deliberation it’s going to hap wherever you live.”