On Advice of FBI, Bend-La Pine Schools Removes Memorial at Silver Rail

Bend-La Pine Schools on Thursday packaged up a makeshift memorial to victims in last week’s Silver Rail Elementary shooting, after federal agents said leaving it any longer could make it harder to possibly reclaim the school as a place for instruction.

In the days following the Oct. 15 tragedy, which left three students and a teacher dead inside a special needs classroom, people piled stuffed animals, pictures flowers, cards, posters, books, toys, candles and more next to a brick Silver Rail Elementary sign at the school’s parking lot entrance. Between 6 am and 8 am Thursday morning, district facilities staff sorted the items into boxes — enough to fill two UHaul trucks — and trucked them to a district storage facility.

Bend-La Pine Schools on Thursday removed piles of stuffed animals, toys and other tokens that made a memorial to the Oct. 15 shooting victims at Silver Rail Elementary. The items were moved to storage for future use, the district said. Credit: Clayton Franke

The district will store the memorial items until the Silver Rail community comes up with another use for them, Chief Operations Officer Paul Dean told the Source.

As the school remained a crime scene for several days, the memorial had a constant stream of visitors. They looked on solemnly, hugged, cried and played music.

It became a sacred space, Dean said.

“That sacred space united our community and allowed people to show Silver Rail students, staff and parents that they weren’t alone and there were a lot of people that cared for them,” Dean said.

But agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation — specifically those focused on supporting tragedy victims — told the district that taking down the memorial within one week would be an important step to eventually reopening the school.

“If there’s a desire to reoccupy that building, we also need to reclaim that space as a school,” Dean said.

District officials haven’t yet talked about what’s next for the future of Silver Rail Elementary. Police turned over the crime scene on Monday, but the district didn’t gain access to the building until Wednesday, after the federal Occupational Health and Safety Administration, or OSHA, went through the building, said Steve Cook, superintendent with Bend-La Pine Schools. A disaster restoration company was on site Thursday morning, and a black fence was erected around the door where the shooter entered the building.

After schools reopened Wednesday, there is a “really bright light shining on what’s next for Silver Rail and that community,” Cook said. “Those conversations have been interesting. I don’t want to get ahead of ourselves, but we have said, some communities have taken the school completely out of the equation and razed it to the ground, and some communities have said, no, we want to take that school back. Somewhere in between those two extremes lies the answer for our community. We want to go into that with a collective voice, not just a few people making those decisions.”

Dean said the district planned to release more information about the building Thursday afternoon.

Any items left at the Silver Rail memorial from Thursday on will be moved to storage.