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School Dealing with Shooting Incident

May 7, 2009 — Students at E. Benjamin Oliver Elementary School will be dismissed at 1:30 p.m. Friday so that administrators and staff can meet to discuss a shooting incident that put one student in the hospital Wednesday with a gunshot wound to the shoulder.
School buses will run early, and parents can pick up their children by 2 p.m., according to a release from the Education Department. Parents and community members also can attend a meeting on school safety that will be held at 10 a.m. Saturday in the school's cafeteria.
The victim of Wednesday's shooting, a fifth-grader at Oliver, was hit by a stray bullet after the bus he was on got caught in the gunfire that erupted between two vehicles near the school's campus. Schneider Regional Medical Center spokesman Sam Topp confirmed Thursday an initial Source report that the student had been transferred to a pediatric hospital in Puerto Rico for further treatment. (See "Elementary School Student Recovering After Being Hit By Stray Bullet.")
The student was airlifted to Puerto Rico around 11:30 p.m. Wednesday, after Schneider Regional physicians determined that the bullet was lodged close to the student's spinal cord and would be better removed by a neurosurgeon. The medical center currently does not have a neurosurgeon on staff, Topp explained.
The student is still in stable condition, he added.
While police continue to investigate the shooting, local counselors and school psychologists have been meeting with E. Benjamin Oliver students and staff, according to the Education Department's news release.

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