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Killer gets chance for parole 25 years later

Then-14-year-old opened fire in his Paducah, Ky., high school in 1997

By Travis Loller, Associated Press
Published: September 17, 2022, 6:49pm
3 Photos
FILE - Michael Carneal, 27, is escorted by a guard from the U.S. District Courthouse in Paducah, Ky., March 18, 2011. Carneal pleaded guilty in 1998 to killing three students and injuring five others in 1997 at Heath High School, when he was 14.
FILE - Michael Carneal, 27, is escorted by a guard from the U.S. District Courthouse in Paducah, Ky., March 18, 2011. Carneal pleaded guilty in 1998 to killing three students and injuring five others in 1997 at Heath High School, when he was 14. (Stephen Lance Dennee/The Paducah Sun via AP, File) Photo Gallery

When 14-year-old Michael Carneal opened fire on his fellow students during a before-school prayer meeting in 1997, school shootings were not yet a part of the national consciousness. The carnage that left three students dead and five more injured at Heath High School near Paducah, Ky., ended when Carneal put down his weapon and the principal walked him to the school office — a scene that seems unimaginable today.

Also stretching today’s imagination: Carneal’s life sentence guaranteed an opportunity for parole after 25 years, the maximum sentence permissible at the time given his age.

A quarter century later, Carneal is 39 with a parole hearing this week that comes at a very different time in American life — after Sandy Hook, after Uvalde. Today, police officers and metal detectors are an accepted presence in many schools, and even kindergartners are drilled to prepare for active shooters.

“Twenty-five years seemed like so long, so far away,” Missy Jenkins Smith recalls thinking at the time of the sentencing. Jenkins Smith was 15 when she was shot by Carneal, someone she considered a friend. The bullet left her paralyzed.

The shooting at Heath High School took place on Dec. 1, 1997, the Monday after Thanksgiving break. Less than four months later, 11-year-old Andrew Golden and 13-year-old Mitchell Johnson shot and killed four classmates and a teacher at Westside Middle School near Jonesboro, Ark. They wounded another nine children and one adult. The pair were tried as juveniles and released on their 21st birthdays.

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