THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
MONDAY, APRIL 20, 2009
MONDAY, APRIL 20, 2009
NEWS 7A
NATIONAL
Teen to take the stand in Supreme Court Fourth Amendment case
BY ARTHUR H. ROTSTEIN
Associated Press
TUCSON, Ariz. — Savana Redding was 13 years old when she was told to remove her clothes for a strip search by school officials looking for the equivalent of two Adwils. And while the humiliation hasn't diminished in the past five and a half years, she hopes the U.S. Supreme Court can do something about the emotional scar.
The nation's highest court will hear the 19-year-old's case Tuesday against Safford Middle School officials who searched her for prescription-strength ibuprofen pills that a fellow student accused her of having.
"I'm never going to be able to forget about this," says Redding, a college freshman living in her hometown of Safford in rural eastern Arizona. "I'll think about it constantly, but I don't think it'll be as big a burden."
The Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether school officials violated the Fourth
Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches. Among the questions to be resolved are whether they had reasonable grounds to believe Redding was hiding pills and whether the pills posed a public health threat serious enough to justify a strip search.
If the court finds the search was unconstitutional, it will have to decide whether school officials can be held financially liable by determining whether it should have been clear to them in October 2003 that the search was illegal.
"Strip searches of children produce trauma similar in kind and degree to sexual abuse," said Adam Wolf, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney representing Redding. "For Savana, she thinks about this event every day, has trust issues with her peers and adults ... The search has radically altered her life."
A federal magistrate had dismissed the lawsuit Redding and her mother brought, and a federal appeals panel agreed that the search didn't violate her rights. But last July, a full panel of the 9th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals found the search was "an invasion of constitutional rights."
The court also said vice principal Kerry Wilson could be found personally liable. The Safford Unified School District appealed to the Supreme Court.
The district bans prescription and over-the-counter drugs. A schoolmate had accused Redding, then an eighth-grade honor student, of giving her pills, and Wilson took Redding to his office to search her backpack.
Redding said Wilson ordered her to go with a secretary to the nurse's office where "they asked me to take off my shirt and pants." She said they then told her to move her bra to the side and to stretch her underwear waistband, exposing her breasts and pelvic area.
Redding said she didn't refuse because "I'm one of those kids who does what they're told."
"I was panicky, but I didn't want them to know," Redding said. "I just wanted to get out of there."
No pills were found.
Savanna Redding talks to media in Safford, Ariz., in this March photo provided by the ACU. The 19-year-old hopes a Supreme Court hearing on Tuesday will ease the pain she feels from an event in eight grade that so clouded much of her life and set strict guidelines for school administrators. The court will hear arguments on whether Safford Middle School officials violated the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
NATIONAL
Columbine survivors recall shooting 10 years later
BY SANDY SHORE Associated Press
LITTLETON, Colo. — The "boy in the window" — who fell bloody and paralyzed into the arms of rescuers during the horrifying Columbine High shooting rampage — is doing just fine.
Like Ireland, many survivors of the April 20,1999, massacre have moved on to careers in education, medicine, ministry and retail.
Now 27, Patrick Ireland has regained mobility with few lingering effects from gunshot wounds to his head and leg a decade ago. He is married and works in the financial services industry. His mantra: "I choose to be a victor rather than a victim."
But emotional scars still can trig
ger anxiety, nightmares and deeply etched recollections of gunfire, blood and bodies.
Some have travel books; a few travel the world to share their experiences to help victims of violence.
"People have been able to have 10 years to reconcile what happened and see what fits in their life and who they are," said Kristi Mohlbacher of Littleton, who fled Columbine as the gunfire erupted. "It's kind of a part of who I am today. I think my priorities might be a little bit different if I hadn't had that experience."
Just after 11 a.m. on that day, Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, stormed the suburban school, killing 12 classmates and a teacher and about two dozen.
Sean Graves saw the pair loading weapons in a parking lot and thought they were preparing a senior prank with paintball guns.
Graves, Lance Kirklin and Daniel Rohrbough were walking toward them for a better look when the gunmen opened fire, killing Rachel Scott and Rohrbough and critically wounding Graves and others.
In the second-floor library, Ireland was about to finish some homework when he heard pipe bombs exploding in the hallway. Debris fell from the ceiling and a teacher told students to take cover.
Klebold and Harris strode in, shouted for students to stand up, laughing and ridiculing classmates as they sprayed bullets.
Ireland was under a table with Dan Steepleton and Makai Hall when they were shot in the knees.
Ireland was shot twice in the head and once in a leg, and lost consciousness.
The killers shot out a library window. Graves, lying partially paralyzed on a sidewalk below, worried that they would return. He smeared blood from his neck wound on his face and the ground to make it appear he was dead.
Harris and Klebold killed 10 students in the library before they left to reload, which gave some a chance to flee. Steepleton and Hall tried to pull Ireland but couldn't move him far before they fled for safety.
Shortly before noon, the gunmen returned to the library and committed suicide.
Ireland awoke some time later his vision blurred. With fire alarms sounding and strobe lights flashing,
the partially paralyzed teen began to push himself toward the bullet-shattered window.
"I thought how much easier it would be just to give up, stay there and let somebody come get you or whatever would happen to you," Ireland said.
Over the next three hours, he pulled his body along, lost and regained consciousness, then moved again through tables and chairs and past classmates bodies. He figures he traveled about 50 feet to the window.
"But every time those thoughts came in my mind, I thought about all the people that I would be giving up on. ... It was really the friends and family I would be letting down that kept me going."
Ireland pushed himself up to
the window and got the attention of SWAT teams below. He doesn't recall flopping over the sill and dropping into the arms of rescuers, the image that grabbed the attention of TV viewers nationwide.
Graves, now 25, moved into a suburb near the mountains, where he recently purchased a home with his fiancee, Kara DeHart, 22. He walks with a limp and still feels pain but keeps a positive attitude. He plans to return to college to pursue a career in forensics science, a path that began to interest him after Columbine.
Ireland recognizes he'll be remembered as the face of Columbine because of his dramatic rescue. He accepts it as a way to emphasize that Columbine should stand for "hope and courage."