Photo of Downtown Evergreen
On September 10, 2025, at 12:30, a shooter by the name of Desmond Holly Evergreen fired shots inside and outside of the High School. The shooter fired shots at two individuals, one of them being named Mathew Silvertone, before turning the gun on himself; he later died at a hospital.
The shooting started inside the school, where the first victim was shot. The shooter was trapped inside the school due to the school’s lockdown procedures, working prevented the shooter from exiting the school, where he hit the second victim. He then later shot himself at that spot. According to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, the shooting lasted over 9 minutes with no officers firing a shot. The shooter shot over 20 rounds.
Many Heritage students are feeling different emotions about this event, which hit close to home., Tiernan Galligan ‘27 says, I’m not too different. I didn’t really affect me directly, but it definitely did put a scare into my mind, seeing that happen after a while of it not happening.”
In 2025, students are accustomed to lockdown drills and real-life risk assessments. Many, though, cannot think of a real school shooter threat. Many students at Heritage feel safe, a senior at Heritage High School, Deagan Clendenning, said this:” Yes, I believe that I personally am prepared, if there ever was an event.”
Today, in the state of Colorado, over 13 school shootings have happened since the Columbine shooting in the late 90’s. One of those shootings since then has happened in Littleton Public Schools, which was at Arapahoe High School on December 13, 2013.
A former Heritage High School student at the time, now Heritage High School teacher, Mrs. Sarah Linville was a junior at Heritage when shots were fired inside Arapahoe High School. She remembered,” I remember it was, like, a Friday, and it was a math class. We went into lockdown for over an hour, I think. We knew it wasn’t at our school, and we knew it was at Arapahoe, mostly from parents who worked in the district texting their kids, and that’s how the word got around.”
Like most school shootings, emotions were high.” It was a weird day, ’cause no one really knew what to do after that. They cancelled everything in the district for the weekend, and we all tried to support each other the best we could,” says Linville
LPS rallied around Arapahoe after that sad day. LPS has enhanced security at all LPS schools since 2013. Students around Lps walked out of school on Wednesday, September 17, 2025, at 1:30. Other schools around Lps walked and called for an end to gun violence in school.