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Teen’s warning thwarts Vermont school shooting: 'It was a matter of lives at hand'

Angela McDevitt, 17, a student at Arlington HS, is being credited with thwarting a possible mass school shooting.

POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y. (Poughkeepsie Journal) — Angela McDevitt didn’t recognize the person she knew in the messages she received.

Her friend Jack Sawyer of Poultney, Vt., told her he planned “on shooting up” his former high school and had been preparing to do so for two years.

“I was very conflicted on what to do because this was not the Jack that I knew in person,” McDevitt said.

The 17-year-old junior at Arlington High School in Lagrangeville, N.Y., decided to bring the Facebook messages to the attention of a school official. And because of that, officials in New York and Vermont are praising McDevitt for helping to prevent a mass shooting at the Fair Haven, Vt., school of about 400 students.

Sawyer, an 18-year-old former Fair Haven student, pleaded not guilty Friday afternoon to charges that include attempted murder.

In an exclusive interview with the Poughkeepsie Journal on Tuesday, McDevitt said she and Sawyer had met at Ironwood, a residential treatment center and private school in Maine. Both were battling behavioral disorders and depression.

There, in a rustic farm setting geared toward healing, life revolved around chores, meals cooked over open fires, animals and the outdoors.

Now, the two have been thrust into the national debate over gun control and school shootings — Sawyer as he sits behind bars, and McDevitt as she pleads for stricter gun control and compassion for those suffering from mental health issues.

“He was just a very kind person when I knew him,” she said. “I was very sad. I was very conflicted but I knew that I had to (report Sawyer’s messages) because it was a matter of lives at hand. It wasn’t a matter of just hurting someone’s feelings.”

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