Opinion: Account of PMHS Students Being Shot at 47 yrs Ago

The talk of the country is about gun violence and safety at school. No one has the answers. Everyone agrees something must be done to stop this craziness. Forty-seven years ago I was involved in a high school shooting situation at Pelham Memorial High School in Pelham, New York. No one died although Mark Mather received a bullet that is still lodged between his heart and lung. Amazingly the other 20 rounds or so bounced off the school and broke windows as dozens of students dove for cover. Here is the story.

In February of 1971, the Pelham Fire Department created a temporary skating rink off the then called "New Wing" of PMHS, although the wing was already 6 years old. The photo above shows the actual temporary rink and was taken by me the next day. After school we were having an informal Pelham Hockey Team skate and I was putting on all my goaltending gear so I was last on the ice. Since there was no organized anything kids were all over the ice most with their shoes on. So we had to get the kids off. Suddenly we started hearing sounds like a firecrackers off in the distance behind the Hutchinson River Parkway that runs perpendicular to the New Wing. At about the same time we also heard a window of the school breaking, my first thought was someone was throwing a rock at a school window, but then there was another two pops and bullets were ricocheting off the school.

Johnny Smith , the streetwise co-captain of the team (I was the other) yelled out, "Everyone off the ice someone is shooting at us." Everyone was scrambling, some wearing hockey skates. I noticed a 7th 0r 8th grader from the Jr. High (schools were combined) laying on the ice and he wasn't moving. I said get up off the ice, but he just laid there. In my hockey goalie pads I went to pick him up. As I did this both his jacket and shirt went exposing his back. It was then that I saw the blood and the gunshot wound. I freaked out. I dragged him off the ice and behind some sort of cover and then ran across Franklin Place (a street in front of the New Wing) and went to where the superintendent of schools had an office in those days still wearing my ice skates without skate guards and screamed, "Call the police,someone has been shot on the ice." Amazingly a woman in the office immediately called the then North Pelham Police and 3 or so police cars where at the school in seconds with one pulling up in front of me. I lead them to young Mark Mather. What was amazing was that the policeman from the police car closest to the Hutch parkway cavalierly exited his vehicle and then three gunshots landed by his feet and he dove for cover behind the car. Then the shooting stopped. The police radio said the Mt Vernon Police had apprehended the two shooters up on a hill in Mt. Vernon on the western side of the parkway.

Needless to say I had to give the police an eye witness account as they loaded Mark Mather into an ambulance. Ambulances were more primitive 47 years ago, but everyone seemed very concerned and with great speed they left with the siren blasting. What I remember most about that day was not realizing I was being shot at and clearing the ice as bullets were flying. Secondly I still remember the sounds of them bouncing off the school and thinking/calculating how far away they were as I moved. I remember Johnny Smith saying, "Clemente get off the ice, you are going to get killed," yet I think it was he who helped me get Mark Mather off the ice and stayed with him when I went across the street to call for help. Remember back then there were no cell phones, no cell phone camera's or internet. Totally amazingly this did not make the papers or radio news anywhere. Such were things in those days.

Epilogue: Two Mt Vernon High School boys whose father was a Mt. Vernon Policeman confessed to hunting squirrels with their dad's hunting rifles and the shots inadvertently traveled much further then they could imagine. No charges were filed. (Not to sure that would happen today!) As for Mark Mather, he was lucky the bullet which is still in him to this day, somehow missed his lung, heart and some major artery all by less than an inch. Last I heard Mark had a long career working for the Town of Pelham Recreation.