TORONTO -- Newly surfaced video from May shows a high school football coach embracing a student moments after disarming him of a shotgun he intended to use to take his own life.
The newly surfaced surveillance video from inside Parkrose High School in Portland, Ore. showed coach Keanon Lowe enter a classroom. A student wearing a trench coat can be seen following him into the room.
Other students can be seen frantically rushing out of another classroom door. Out of frame, the coach manages to disarm the student and toss the gun clip into the hallway.
Lowe, embracing the student, slowly steps out into the hallway with the shotgun and hands it off to another staff member. It’s not clear what the coach is saying to the student, but Lowe appears to be consoling him.
A Parkrose High School student later told television station KATU that Lowe “put his life (in) danger for us.” Lowe, who is also the school’s track and field coach, told the outlet he had lunged for the gun when the student entered the classroom.
In a recent interview with Good Morning America, Lowe recalled “just trying to make sure that the end of the gun isn’t pointed towards where the students are running.”
“For me, there was no time for fear or even to think,” Lowe said. “Everything happened so fast and it was the longest fraction of a second in my life.”
Lowe, a former University of Oregon wide receiver, said he felt compassion for the teen who was identified as 18-year-old Angel Granados-Diaz.
Police said the student’s gun had just one round in it. CBS Sports reported that witnesses said the student hadn’t pointed the gun at anyone.
His lawyer told ABC News that Granados-Diaz didn’t intend on hurting anyone but himself that day.
Granados-Diaz, now 19, pleaded guilty last week to two charges including having a loaded firearm in a public building.
As part of a plea deal, he was sentenced to three years of probation and received immediate mental health and substance abuse treatment.
