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1,000-plus gather to mourn Tenn. school shooting victim

LAFOLLETTE, Tenn. - Teachers lined the streets of this mountain community Saturday to honor an assistant principal who was killed as administrators tried to wrestle a gun away from a student.

Several hundred people attended a funeral Mass for Ken Bruce, 48, who was remembered as a peacemaker and a role model respected by students.

"Children loved him. He wasn't the type to intimidate kids or anything," said Campbell County Sheriff Ron McClellan. "They knew they could come to him with anything."

After the service at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church, more than 1,000 teachers lined the route to a nearby cemetery.

"Our strength is coming from our faith," his widow, Jo Bruce, said after the funeral. "Our job here is to help heal this community that he gave his life for."

A visitation on Friday had drawn 4,000 people, including Gov. Phil Bredesen.

Saturday's service concluded with the release of about 50 balloons in the school's colors. They contained student remembrances about Bruce and witticisms he used, such as "grinning like a possum eating sawbriars" or "useless as a screen door on a submarine."

Authorities said Tuesday's shooting at the 1,400-student Campbell County Comprehensive High School began when Ken Bartley Jr., a 15-year-old freshman, was called to the office because other students had seen him with a gun on campus.

When Bruce, principal Gary Seale and assistant principal Jim Pierce began questioning the boy, he allegedly opened fire. The administrators and an unidentified teacher wrestled the .22-caliber pistol from him.

Bruce, 48, was shot in the chest and died at a hospital. Seale, 55, was shot in the lower abdomen and Pierce, 56, was hit in the chest; both remain hospitalized.

Bartley was being held without bail. District Attorney Paul Phillips wants to try him as an adult on a charge of first-degree murder.

Jo Bruce, a social worker in the nearby Oak Ridge school district, said she felt sympathy for the gunman's family.

"Any 14- or 15-year-old child that does something like that has got to be very troubled," she said. Her husband had served in the Army for 20 years before becoming a teacher in 1992.

The high school, closed since the shooting, is scheduled to reopen Monday. McClellan said police will be out in force to "give students and parents a feeling of security."

[Last modified November 13, 2005, 03:00:43]