The teen who opened fire inside Wilmer-Hutchins High School last year was sentenced to five years in prison Tuesday morning for injuring a classmate.
Ja’Kerian Rhodes-Ewing, 18, pleaded guilty to aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and unlawfully carrying a firearm in connection with the April 12, 2024, shooting. Aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, a second-degree felony, carries a punishment of up to 20 years in prison.
This was the first of two shootings at the high school in as many years. Fear and ire resurfaced on campus in April when police say another teen was let into the school through a locked side door and began firing. Four peers and a teacher were injured.
In court Tuesday morning, Rhodes-Ewing donned a tan Dallas County jail uniform with his right hand wrapped in a bandage.
His attorney, Kobby Warren, declined to comment outside the courtroom near downtown Dallas. A spokeswoman for the Dallas County district attorney’s office also declined to comment.
Rhodes-Ewing, then 17, brought a revolver into the Dallas ISD campus — despite security measures such as a metal detector, clear backpacks and bag check — and fired inside a classroom. A student was struck in the thigh, authorities said in an arrest-warrant affidavit. Police said Rhodes-Ewing injured the classmate “intentionally.”
The teen fled the school and was later taken into custody near the school’s stadium. He has remained jailed in lieu of $200,000 bail, records show.
Days after the shooting, about 40 students walked out of class, demanding district leaders do more to protect them. A Dallas ISD police official at the time attributed the security lapse to human error and systems failure and pledged to beef up student safety.
Similar demonstrations were staged earlier this year after the latest shooting.
Dozens of students protested and renewed discussions around school safety, while officials said the shooting may not have been preventable and was not a result of a breakdown in protocol. The accused shooter, 17-year-old Tracy Haynes, was being held at the Dallas County jail as of Tuesday, according to records.
A judge recently declined to lower his multimillion-dollar bail.