Teachers, students, and police milled quietly around Central High School and Providence Career and Technical Academy Thursday morning, the day after a shooting claimed the life of a student outside the two schools.
Providence Police identified the victim Thursday as 15-year-old William Parsons, a sophomore at Central High School. A make-shift memorial with candles was set up on the high school sign near the place where Parsons was shot. On social media, Parsons’ Facebook page now lists many comments with variations of “rest in peace.” On Wednesday afternoon, a young woman, who said she was a student referred to Parsons as a “good” kid.
At a press conference Thursday morning city Police Chief Hugh Clements explained what police believe happened in the moments before the shooting Wednesday afternoon, shortly before 2pm. He described an argument that broke out between young men.
“Two young men are walking together, one of them pulls out a firearm, introduces the firearm into this disturbance,” Clements said. “Fires once, strikes a 15 year-old student from Central and flees the scene.”
Clements said Parsons, who died of his injuries, is believed to have been an innocent bystander calling the incident, “tragic in every sense of the term, a truly innocent young man has his life taken from him.”
The scene of the shooting is located just blocks away from the city’s public safety complex. Clements says about 50 officers were on the scene within minutes.
A short time later, roughly a mile away from the schools, another Providence student was injured by gunfire. Police said they believe the wound was a self-inflicted gunshot, after a firearm went off accidentally. The 16-year-old student, who was shot in the leg, is now a suspect in the earlier shooting. Authorities said they plan to bring charges as soon as he is released from the hospital.
They emphasized that the suspect, whose name has not been released, is a Providence student but did not attend Central High School, or the Providence Career and Technical Academy. The suspect was not a student at a third school less than a block away, Classical High School.
Gerry Coyne the Deputy Attorney General said his office plans to charge the teenager with murder.
“I would expect there will be other charges based upon the investigation,” said Coyne.
The suspect will be charged as a juvenile, but Coyne said it was “almost a certainty” the Attorney General’s office will petition for a waiver to charge him as an adult.
