A high school senior angered by his punishment for damaging school property shot and killed an assistant principal at Millard South High School and wounded the principal. Robert Butler Jr., 17, fled the scene and was later found dead in his car of a self-inflicted bullet wound.
Assistant Principal Vicki Kaspar, 58, died hours after being shot several times in the chest as she sat in her office at about 1 p.m. Wednesday. Principal Curtis Case was shot in the back and hip after rushing across a hall to investigate. He was in serious but stable condition Thursday.
Kaspar had suspended Butler for 19 days Wednesday morning for driving a car across a school athletic field and damaging it. The vandalism occurred before classes began Wednesday and was captured on a security camera. Butler apparently had no previous disciplinary problems at the school which he had attended since last October. He had transferred from Lincoln Southwest.
Butler was escorted from the building following his suspension but returned with a handgun at about 1 p.m. The shooting spree took only about two minutes, witnesses said. Butler fired two shots down a hallway as he left Kaspar’s office; no one was injured.
Police found Butler’s body about 35 minutes later in a car owned by his mother, Julie Beekman of Lincoln.
Butler is the son of Omaha police detective Robert Butler Sr. Sources told the Omaha World-Herald that the younger Butler had used his father’s Glock .40 semi-automatic handgun, a weapon commonly used by police, in the shootings. Butler worked for the Lincoln Police Department from 1995 to 2003.
Friends told reporters Butler was upset about transferring to Millard South, a school on Omaha’s west side with a student population of some 2,100. By completing two more classes he could have graduated Southwest last December. Despite his unhappiness, he also was described as gregarious and cheerful.
At about the time of the shootings Butler left a message on his Facebook Page:
“Everybody that used to know me I’m sry but Omaha changed me and (expletive) me up and the school I know attend is even worse ur gomna here about the evil (expletive) I did but that (expletive) school drove me to this I wont u guys to remember me for who I was b4 this ik I greatly affected the lies of the I families ruined but I’m sorry. goodbye.”
Immediately after the shootings another assistant principal used the public address system to tell students that a “code red” lockdown situation existed. They moved to assigned places in the building, based on previous emergency drills.
One student was reported to have texted her mom “Someone was shot. I’m not dead.”
Students used cell phones to contact parents and one another during and after the mayhem
