Indian-American teacher hailed for saving students during Florida shooting
New York: An Indian-American maths teacher is being hailed for saving the lives of her students during the shooting rampage at a Florida, high school that left 17 dead.
When an alarm sounded for the second time on Wednesday afternoon, Shanthi Viswanathan shut the doors to her algebra classroom, made the students crouch on the floor and covered the windows, keeping them out of the reach and sight of the gunman, the Sun-Sentinel reported.
"She was quick on her feet. She used her knowledge. She saved a lot of kids," Dawn Jarboe, the mother of one of Viswanathan's students, told the newspaper.
When an elite police SWAT team came and knocked on the door asking her to open it, "Viswanathan took no chance that it wasn't a trick by the gunman to get in" the newspaper said.
"She said, 'knock it down or open it with a key. I'm not opening the door," Jarboe quoted her as telling the police.
"Some SWAT guy took out the window and cleared our room," Jarboe's son, Brian, texted his mother.
It may be recalled that a former student of the school, Nikolas Cruz, barged into Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland on Valentine's Day and killed 15 students and two staff members with an AR-15 automatic rifle.
However, he was reported to have had a troubled childhood and had threatened in a YouTube post to shoot up schools.
Although it was reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the agency closed the investigation without locating him, according to media reports.
The shooter abandoned his gun and during the ensuing chaos mixed in with the students to escape. He was captured about 40 minutes later in a neighboring town, authorities said.
In the entire Broward County, where Parkland is located, the Indian population is 22,600, according to statisticalatlas.com. But none of those killed are of Indian descent.
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Gang of mobile tower battery thieves busted in Palghar; 9 held
Palghar (PTI): Police on Wednesday claimed to have busted a gang stealing batteries from the server rooms of mobile phone towers with the arrest of nine persons in Maharashtra's Palghar district.
As many as 24 batteries valued at Rs 12,000 were stolen from the mobile tower server room in Bhalivali village on December 5, Virar crime unit-III senior police inspector Pramod Badakh said.
The thieves had broken the lock of the tower cabin and stolen the batteries, he said.
The Mandvi police then registered an FIR under section 303(2) (theft) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS).
Following various complaints of such thefts in the region, the police intensified their probe. They worked on leads, including the CCTV footage of the locations as well as technical and intelligence inputs.
They subsequently arrested nine persons, including two scrap dealers who purchased the stolen materials, the official said.
During the interrogation of the accused, it came to light that they had committed similar thefts in Vasai, Virar, Wada, Boisar and other areas in the district, he said.
So far, six such cases registered with the Mandvi, Virar, Pelhar, Naigaon and Boisar police have been detected, the official said.
