APS chief Erroll Davis visits Price Middle School - New York News | NYC Breaking News

Atlanta school superintendent Erroll Davis spent several hours at Price Middle School on Friday. His visit comes a day after 14-year-old student Telvis Douglas was shot at the school.

Davis said attendance was down 25 to 50 percent on Friday, one day after the shooting.

"The attendance is down today. But it's also Friday," said Davis.

Davis visited with counselors, students and staff to get a firsthand look at the situation. The superintendent now says because of the open layout of the campus the gun may have never gone through the two metal detectors here.

"It's accessible. Kids have to walk from one building to another and so this gun could have been hidden outside and picked up on the way from one building to another and the metal detectors would have had no impact on them," Davis said.

Police say Douglas was shot in the back of the neck, and his family tells FOX 5 he is recovering at home on Friday.

"His mother's being strong for him.  The family is being strong for her.  All around the situation, its terrible that things like this are happening in the schools and maybe this will be a wakeup call for some people to do something better about their kids," said the victim's aunt, Keonia Clark.

There was mass confusion Thursday after the shooting. The school was on lockdown for two hours as parents waited anxiously for their children. A 15-year-old student was arrested for the shooting by a school resource officer.  
    
Another student described all the commotion.

Student Ramona Pitts said she was going under her desk when the teacher said to stay under the desk since it "would keep us safe."

Davis says he was pushing for tighter security measures before the shooting. His hope now is that the school board will support some of those recommendations.

Police initially said the two boys had been an argument previously, but an attorney hired by the 14-year-old victim's family says tell this was not involved in the dispute.

"The shooter may have been involved in at least a verbal altercation with some other student earlier in the day and at the time of the shooting, brandished the weapon at the time when Telvis and other students began to run and made multiple shots. He was not the intended target," Green said.

Green says the shooting happened inside the school rather than outside as police indicate.

"My understanding is that he, in this instance, was simply headed from the lunchroom to class along with a number of other students that were making the transition at this point and was the unfortunate victim of what appears to be a random shooting," Green said.

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed visited with Douglas on Friday.