It’s been more than two months since gunfire ripped through a graduation crowd in Fairfield, California, killing 18-year-old Jamario Baker and wounding three other people. Baker had just walked across the stage at his Sem Yeto High School graduation, held on the Fairfield High School campus, when shots broke out in the parking lot. Witnesses say he was trying to shield an 11-year-old girl when he was hit. He didn’t survive. The other three victims, ages 11, 20, and 25, did.

For over a month after the shooting, there was no suspect, no arrest, nothing but a grieving community and a lot of unanswered questions. That changed in July, when a 17-year-old was tracked down in a home outside the Dallas-Fort Worth area and extradited back to California.

His name has been reported as Khare Clark. He’s facing a murder charge, three counts of attempted murder, and a couple of firearm-related enhancements on top of that. Earlier this month he pleaded not guilty to all of it in Solano County Juvenile Court.

Prosecutors aren’t content to leave this in juvenile court, either. The Solano County DA’s office has filed a petition to try Clark as an adult, which under California law means a judge now has to decide whether he’s “amenable to rehabilitation” within the juvenile system before that can happen. There’s a hearing scheduled for September 21 just to set the date for that fight. So this thing is going to drag on for a while.

What we still don’t have, more than two months in, is a motive. Nobody’s said whether Clark knew Baker or any of the other victims. Nobody’s said why a 17-year-old opened fire into a crowd of families taking graduation photos. Maybe that comes out at the transfer hearing; maybe it doesn’t.

To make matters worse, because apparently the universe felt like pressing the point, campus security at Sem Yeto found another loaded gun last week. This one had nothing to do with Clark or Baker’s shooting. A student was reported to possibly be carrying a firearm. When officers responded, they found a loaded handgun with an extended magazine on a kid in a classroom.

Police are calling it an isolated incident with no ongoing threat, which I’m sure is very reassuring to every parent who just sent their kid back to that campus for the new school year. How can an incident be isolated when there are hundreds or thousands of potential victims within the school?

(Sources)

• Teen charged in Sem Yeto graduation shooting
• Loaded gun found at Fairfield school months after deadly shooting at school’s graduation