Caring Teacher, Joyful Student Killed In St. Louis School Shooting

ST. LOUIS, MO — A school shooter took the lives Monday of a 61-year-old teacher and a 15-year-old girl in St. Louis, according to police.

St. Louis Public Schools on Tuesday morning identified the victims in the shooting at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School as physical education teacher Jean Kuczka and student Alexandria Bell.

Kuczka shielded her students from the gunman when he entered her classroom, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

“I cannot imagine myself in any other career but teaching,” Kuczka said on her faculty page on the school district website.

Kuczka attended Southwest Missouri State University on a field hockey scholarship and was a member of the 1979 National Championship team, which was later inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame. She had taught at CVPA since 2008.

“Jean Kuczka was an amazing educator,” tweeted district social studies curriculum specialist Glenn Barnes. “She loved her students and helped them make a difference in the school and community. This is a huge loss.”

A Dittmer resident, Kuczka had five children and seven grandchildren. She was an avid bicyclist who participated annually in a charity ride to raise money to fight juvenile diabetes.

Bell, a sophomore and member of the junior varsity dance team, was fatally shot in her classroom a month before her 16th birthday, her adopted father, Andre Bell, who lives in Los Angeles, told KSDK.

“My daughter was planning on coming out here to California and celebrate her birthday with me on Nov. 18, but now we have to plan her funeral,” he said to the station.

Alexandria Bell was described by those who knew her as a talented dancer who loved art and “was always smiling,” according to the Post-Dispatch.

The Post-Dispatch spoke with her mother, Keisha Acres, Monday morning in the aftermath of the shooting.

“She’s not answering her phone,” Acres told the Post-Dispatch, noting she had pinged Alexandria Bell’s phone and it was still in the school. “It’s going straight to voicemail. Everybody’s leaving, and my baby is not found.”

Community members gathered for a vigil Monday night at Tower Grove Park in memory of the victims, Fox2Now reported.

The shooting occurred shortly after 9 a.m., according to police, who said that in addition to the two killed, seven teens aged 15 and 16 were injured. The gunman, identified as 19-year-old CVPA graduate Orlando Harris, entered the locked school with nearly a dozen high-capacity magazines, but died after exchanging gunfire with officers, police said.