I was just enrolled in the school year about 2 weeks into the school year. I knew no one there or in the area but everyone seemed friendly.

I began hanging out with a group of kids, most my age or one year younger. It was my senior year and they were seniors and juniors, so we’re all around 16-18 years old.

2 of the seniors in our group decide to go to the donut shop across the street and have some smokes while on break. One was 17 and the other was 18.

Dumb idea since the vice principal and principal were both fat. Of course they’d go to the donut shop, which is what they did during that time. Vice principal drives through the drive-thru and sees them and makes them come back to the school to his office.

He expels both of them on the spot. Their senior year; they’ve been attending this school since as early as junior high, if not longer than that.

This was a small private school so this is why things went down as they did and might seem a bit strange to other people who attended public school. They were super strict here, not even letting seniors, like me, who drove to leave the premises during school hours, even if it was lunch.

One of the kids went to a local public school and the other finished school through a charter school.

They were allowed to come back for graduation, but they didn’t walk with us, just there to watch their friends walk and socialize.

While at this same school, many months after this, we suddenly go on lockdown. No one is allowed in or out of the school.

Rumors started spreading around the school about what happened.

What happened was that a man had approached another man in front of a local fast food restaurant, just behind the school, and shot him in broad daylight and then walked off like it was nothing.

The local police and our school faculty thought it’d be a good idea to be on the safe side and put the school on lockdown in case it was more than just a hit on one person.

It was kind of weird because even though I was living in an infamous gang city at the time, this was supposed to be a rich white neighborhood with rich Asians peppered in. I was not prepared for this kind of thing but the other kids said it was likely drug related and didn’t seem too fazed by it.