Near Miss: Former student attempted “shooting like Columbine” in rural Oklahoma
A 20-year-old entered his former high school with two guns taken from his father's closet. When his primary gun jammed as he attempted to shoot a student, the principal was able to tackle him.
On Monday afternoon (4/7/2026), the principal of Pauls Valley High heard gunshots on campus. He ran to the front entryway of the school and tackled a former student who was firing shots at students.
The principal was shot in the leg during the struggle and was still able to restrain the 20-year-old until help arrived. No other students or staff were injured.
Pauls Valley, OK is a community of about 6,000 people 60 miles south of Oklahoma City. After every school shooting, people say “we never thought something like this could happen in our community”. Planned attacks at schools happen most frequently in small, rural communities like the school shootings at Perry Middle/High School (IA), Mount Horeb Middle School (WI), Apalachee High School (GA), McMinn County High (TN), and Tumbler Ridge in British Columbia.
Pauls Valley High has 330 students, 22 teachers, a 25% reading proficiency rate, and scores 28/100 on the college readiness index. At public school in small towns that struggle to provide basic education to students, these schools don’t have the resources for violence prevention programs, mental health services, behavioral assessments, or robust physical security. In the pictures below, this school doesn’t even have enough money to pave the parking lot.
Like many schools across the country, Pauls Valley High is not a “securable” campus because there are multiple detached buildings (see more: There are 9 types of school campuses. Each needs a different security strategy).
When the campus consists of multiple buildings (often schools that have been renovated as the community grows to add more classroom space), students need to walk in/out of each building multiple times per day. This makes a “secure entry” or “single point of entry” design impossible because students use a dozen different doors to move between buildings.
When the buildings were constructed during different time periods, they may each have distinct layouts and features which can be confusing for police to navigate for the first time during an emergency response. When students are spread out across different buildings on the campus, students close to the location of a shooting need to take different actions than students on the opposite end.
The school has at least one security camera near the front door where Hawkins entered the building. From the position of that cameras, it’s unclear what the intended ‘field of view’ is or if someone watching the feed would see an unauthorized person entering the building.
What happened
On April 7, 20-year-old Victor Hawkins took two guns from his father’s closet and drove his father’s truck to Pauls Valley High School. Hawkins graduated from this school in May 2025.
Hawkins entered the school at 2:19 pm, pointed his gun, and yelled for everyone to “get on the ground”. He then pointed a gun at a female student, but the gun didn’t fire when he pulled the trigger. Hawkins then hid behind a vending machine as he tried to fix the malfunction with his gun.
After fixing the malfunctioning weapon, Hawkins pointed the gun at another student and fired a shot that missed. The student then put his hands up and asked Hawkins not to shoot him. Hawkins then lowered his gun and told the student to leave.
At this point, Principal Kirk Moore heard the shots, charged Hawkins, and tackled him to the ground. As Moore was able to grab the gun away from Hawkins, other staff arrived to help hold him down.
Principal Moore was shot in the leg during the struggle and flown to a trauma center in Oklahoma City.
Per the affidavit, Hawkins told investigators that he “did not like Principal Moore,” and “went to the high school to kill Moore”. Hawkins told investigators that he wanted to “conduct his own school shooting like the Columbine shooters”.
Near Miss Reporting
This shooting didn’t make national news because nobody was killed. That means that most school administrators and police officials won’t study this incident to figure out what went right and wrong. There were probably missed opportunities to prevent this attack from happening and it would have been much worse if Hawkins’ firearm didn’t malfunction when he tried to fire the first shot.
A plane full of passengers dying in a crash was the accepted norm every year from the beginning of commercial aviation in 1914 until the 1990s. Everything changed when the federal government and airlines got serious about safety and set a goal for zero commercial airline deaths each year. Commercial aviation is now safer than driving a car. A major factor in reducing deaths was studying accidents that happened, and collecting data on crashes that almost happened…known as near miss reporting.
A near miss in aviation is an incident that could’ve caused physical injury or property loss but didn’t. When a near miss happens in an airplane, a report needs to be filed with the FAA within seven days so that other pilots are aware of what happened. Creating a culture that prioritizes safety above all else means that mistakes are not kept secret, they are documented and openly shared across the aviation industry.
Unlike aviation, the federal government has not made stopping preventable deaths at schools a top priority. When a near miss happens on campus, the government fails to collect, analyze, and share this information. A decade before the attack Pauls Valley High, a student with a handgun and 50 rounds of ammo walked into the principal’s office and fired a shot striking the principal in his arm. As he pulled the trigger a second time, the gun jammed. When the shooter fumbled with the weapon, two quick thinking staff members tackled him. Nobody else was hurt and the principal survived his injuries.
This is not a fictional scenario, it happened at Harrisburg High School in South Dakota in 2015, and it’s the same situation that happened in Oklahoma this week. (My full near miss report about it)
My definition of a near miss includes shootings at schools that had the potential to be much worse. A near miss can be an incident without injuries or deaths. It can also be a shooting with victims killed or injured that had the potential to be much worse.
Near Miss Reports: What schools can learn from the zero fatality goal in aviation
David Riedman, PhD is the creator of the K-12 School Shooting Database, Chief Data Officer at a global risk management firm, and a tenure-track professor. Listen to my podcast—Riedman Report: Risk, AI, Education & Security—or my recent interviews on Freakonomics Radio and the New England Journal of Medicine.
This, like many instances of school violence or shootings has a ripple effect on communities.
With that said, I want to point out a couple of things regarding this article:
1. School Demographics- It absolutely does not matter about where they place in college rankings, reading criteria, etc. What we focus on in school safety is students of concerns, number of persons on a campus, planning, training, mitigation, response, and recovery. The mere thought of bring into the fray how a student learns is really not acceptable in this situation.
How we prevent these incidents is through education. Understanding that when we teach anything, we bring the information in settings that are easily retained and useful.
Does this, along with many other rural community schools need assistance with safety and security? The answer is EVERY school, no matter if it is in the city or rural always needs help. This is upon every school district trustees, state legislatures, and federal government to invest more into school safety. Blame games and blasting a site because they don't have a paved parking lot is quite petty.
2. Federal Government Stats- The FBI and Secret Service have statistical data and public publications easily accessible on their websites for information. They investigate and provide information on school shooters, along with providing in person or online trainings. The depiction that the federal government is not providing or investigating is false.
I also know where this article is going with gun control. Does the government need to do more to screen people? Absolutely. But in this case, like so many, people are taking weapons legally owned by family and utilizing them, or in some cases, obtaining legally purchased weapons with little to no background information. Both parties have had opportunities to address these issues. Both sides are to blame for this.
3. Assailant Poised to Harm a Specific Target- This person was after a specific target and not necessarily after the entire school. As written in the article, a student asked him not to shoot him, and the assailant allowed the student to run away. The assailants targeted violence was toward the Principal, who subsequently detained the student, which should receive a medal for his action.
I am sure there were signs and we all should have seen this on the news. However, the mainstream news outlets are biased and do not project the full story or choose to sensationalize an event.
What we need to do is promote these articles, your information that is collected to every legislature, and testify in front of Congress to obtain funding for best security and safety practices so schools like this can have what they need to be safe.
I would 100% help in anyway possible to get the message across. Everyone needs to come home safely everyday and have a safe learning environment.