Motive remains a mystery in Georgia classroom shooting

Police are still trying to figure out what prompted a popular Georgia high school teacher to barricade himself in his classroom Wednesday and fire a gun out a window when the principal tried to open the door. Jesse Randal Davidson, 53, has refused to tell detectives why he fired the gun, although investigators say it does not appear he wanted to hurt students or fellow teachers. The incident prompted a lockdown and evacuation at Dalton High School in Dalton, Ga., with frantic students fleeing what they feared was a mass shooting in progress. Students described Davidson as a well-liked teacher who also called play-by-play on local radio for the school’s football and basketball teams. In 2012, administrators named him the school’s teacher of the year. But Davidson had shown troubling signs of mental instability in recent years. In March 2016, he tried to convince police he’d hired two friends to kill someone. Officers could find no evidence to back his claims and eventually took him to a local hospital for suicidal thoughts. In January 2017, he abruptly left campus after saying he didn’t feel well. Police found him sitting on a curb about a mile away. When they couldn’t get him to respond, they took him to the hospital. Gun control advocates, including students in Dalton, are using Wednesday’s incident to question President Donald Trump’s plan to arm teachers to prevent school shootings.