Students Display T-Shirt Memorial To Honor Teens Killed By Guns

POTOMAC, MD — Students at Winston Churchill High School set up a memorial Monday morning honoring the hundreds of teens who have died from gun violence in 2018. The memorial comes days after ten students and teachers were killed in a school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas.

The students displayed over 200 white t-shirts bearing the names of victims on a fence along the school's football field. Eight orange shirts display the names of the students killed in Friday's shooting.

Students say 258 teens have been killed by guns in 2018.

The t-shirt memorial was first displayed at Chevy Chase High School in Bethesda on April 20, which was the "National Day of Action Against Gun Violence in Schools."

"The fact that the number of lives lost climbed from 199 on April 20 to 258 today is a reminder to keep fighting for common sense gun legislation," Emily Schrader, who organized the art installation in Bethesda in April, Tweeted Monday.

"We're all working for common-sense gun legislation, but we didn't want to forget the everyday violence that is prevalent throughout communities and our schools," Schrader told WTOP.

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Montgomery County students have been particularly active in the fight for gun control.

Students formed a group called Montgomery County Students For Gun Control, and have since marched out of class, staged protests at the Capitol, set up memorials and even met with Parkland victims.

“I was not one bit surprised that it happened,” Montgomery County Student for Gun Control member Daniel Gelillo told The Washington Post following Friday's shooting. “I feel as if we lived in a country where this wasn’t the norm, time would stop. We would all be just in like a state of absolute and utter confusion and despair. But life goes on. That’s just how it is here.”

Sam Heidler, a Richard Montgomery senior and member of the group, told The Post that every time she walks into school, she thinks of the best route to escape if there was a shooter.

Friday's shooting was the worst mass shooting since the massacre at a high school in Parkland, Florida on Valentine's Day.

Among those killed: a teacher's aide in a high school art class, an exchange student from Pakistan and a center on the high school football team. Kids, ages 15 to 17, only a few weeks away from the end of the school year and their summer break. Many of the students were sitting in a first period high school art class when the gunman entered and started shooting.

The accused shooter, who authorities identified as Dimitrios Pagourtzis, 17, is being held at the Galveston County Jail. He is charged with capital murder of multiple persons and aggravated assault against a public servant.

Photo of memorial taken by Dani Miller of Churchill HS.