DENVER — Soon after the crime tape went up at East High School on March 22, 2023, parents started asking questions — there were so many of them after a student named Austin Lyle shot two deans inside the school.
Nearly a year later, an 87-page report obtained by 9NEWS fills in some big holes in the story.
Before the shooting at East High, the Cherry Creek School District in Aurora expelled Lyle from Overland High School for “trying to sell a gun and ammunition," according to the summary report by the Denver Police Department (DPD).
During that investigation, Lyle’s mom found a gun, ammunition and a medical kit in his room, according to the report.
Lyle then briefly went to a school in Florida before coming back to Colorado and enrolling at East High School in Denver.
Before he could attend East High in January 2023, Denver Public Schools determined Lyle had to complete a daily “verbal check-in” — it was only verbal, so there were no weapons checks.
Instead of a pat-down by district staff, the report said Lyle’s father agreed to “search his son every day for weapons”.
Lyle’s safety plan didn’t change until early March, when a student saw Lyle "remove a gun from his backpack and placed it in his pocket while in class,” the report said.
Denver Police tried to follow up with Lyle at his home but officers were not allowed inside.
DPD said the department didn’t have information that a crime occurred and no search warrant was ever requested to enter the home.
“The information received was that the student was possibly in possession of a firearm but it was never verified,” said a spokesperson for the department.
On March 6, East High changed Lyle’s safety plan and began searching him for weapons daily. Yet in the 12 days prior to the shooting, the report said “no searches were conducted” twice.
Harvey Bograd, the father of a freshman at East High, feels the district should have enforced the pat-down policy from the very beginning.
"The earlier you can intervene, the earlier you put in a plan to address potential problems, the better the outcome will be," he said.
A spokesperson for Denver Public Schools said they couldn’t discuss a student’s specific case due to privacy laws. The district said a child’s safety plan is based on the student’s history as well as their current situation and can be changed.
“Our procedure for a student's re-entry to a DPS school from an expulsion, either from a DPS school or another district, is to complete an assessment with the school, Central Office staff, the Department of Climate and Safety, as well as the student and their family to determine the safest plan for the student to re-enter that school,” said Scott Pribble, spokesperson for DPS.
After the shooting, investigators found a 3D printer, drawings of guns and boxes of ammunition in a bedroom at the Lyle residence.
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