Former classmates of Bend shooter say he was violent. How do schools respond to student threats?

Several classmates of the 20-year-old who fatally shot two men and wounded others in the Bend Safeway earlier this week described him as frequently violent at school.

The shooter, Ethan Miller, who graduated from Mountain View in 2020, was a seemingly perfect subject for a threat assessment program that schools across the nation are hoping can reduce school shootings and violent behaviors.

“He was always trying to fight and cause issues and start shit,” said Isaac Thomas, who was a freshman at Mountain View High School in Bend with Miller during the 2016-17 school year.

The Bend-La Pine Schools had a threat assessment program in place when Miller was a student at Mountain View. Such programs are intended to intervene with a student before they harm anyone. Officials in Bend declined to say whether Miller was ever the subject of an assessment.

But if Miller was part of the program, what went wrong? And if he wasn’t, why wasn’t he?

Another classmate, Laurel Ibbs, said, “When we found out who it was that did it (the shooting), we were all like ‘Yeah, that fits.’ It wasn’t really a shocker.”

Not long before the shooting, in an online essay purportedly written by Miller himself full of violent thoughts, he described himself as the “quiet kid with anger issues” throughout school. Miller also expressed an intention to attack his alma mater, something school officials said they weren’t previously aware of.