Little Egg Harbor Intermediate School Bombing
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The Little Egg Harbor Intermediate School Bombing was an incident in Little Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey, in which a military aircraft on a training mission over New Jersey fired dozens of machine gun rounds while well outside the training range, several of which struck the unoccupied Little Egg Harbor Intermediate School, which is part of the Little Egg Harbor Township School District.
On November 4, 2004, at around 9pm, an F-16 Fighting Falcon jet from the 113th Wing of the District of Columbia Air National Guard, based at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland on a training mission at the Fort Dix United States Army installation in Warren Grove was climbing upward at 8,000 feet. The test was going pretty well, until a heavy gun from the left wing fired 25 rounds of 20mm ammunition up in the air, and then falling to the ground, with eight striking the school's roof, and the rest hitting the parking lot, and the side of the building. Only one janitor was in the school, and heard what sounded like someone running on the school's roof. The cops were called to survey the scene. "I saw some holes in the ceiling, and a cut in the carpet and I thought it was vandals so I called my boss and we called the police." Said Sue Stadler, a janitor at the school.
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[edit] Reaction
Meanwhile, in Little Egg Harbor, students of the school were staying up late to start off the long weekend for the New Jersey Teachers' Convention. "The fact that it hit a school is terrifying", said Becky Myers, who was holding her 8-month-old daughter Emily as she spoke. "The school is not out in the middle of nowhere. It could've hit across the street into someone's living room while their little kid was sleeping." "It is very, very scary", Added Kevin O'Rourke, who's son attends the school.
The news spread across the country quickly. The school was repaired over the break, and there was an investigation that took over 30 days, sometimes during class times. The day the students returned to the school, there was live coverage from all the news networks. That whole week, the town was crowded with news vans, causing major congestion along Route 9, the town's main thoroughfare.
The Little Egg Harbor Intermediate School has over 1,100 students in grades 3 - 6.
[edit] Aftermath
On November 1, 2006, the district and the United States Air Force announced that a settlement had been reached, whereby the district would be paid $519,070.70 to cover damage to the roof of the school caused in the incident. This is less than the $900,000 that the superintendent had indicated would be needed to cover the costs of replacing the roof damaged in the incident and in the process of evaluating the roof's condition after the incident.[1]
