LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Nearly 25 years after a school shooting in Kentucky that killed three students, Michael Carneal is up for parole this week.
It happened Dec. 1, 1997, at Heath High School in Paducah, Kentucky. He was 14 years old when he opened fire on a prayer circle before classes began on the Monday morning after Thanksgiving break. Three girls were killed: Nicole Hadley, 14, Jessica James, 17, and Kayce Steger 15. Five others were injured.
Carneal pleaded guilty in 1998. He was sentenced to the maximum sentence for a shooter his age: life with parole after 25 years.
Carneal is now 39 and serving his time at the Kentucky State Reformatory in La Grange. On Monday, the state parole board begins a two-day hearing for Carneal. The two-day hearing is being held by video conference and is open to the public.
One of the students injured in the Heath High School shooting, Missy Jenkins Smith, will speak during the hearing. She was 15, when the bullets fired by Carneal left her paralyzed and in a wheelchair. He was a boy she considered a friend from marching band.
"Twenty-five years seemed like so long, so far away," Jenkins Smith recalls thinking at the time of the sentencing. She doesn't support Carneal being granted parole. She worries that he is not equipped to handle life outside of prison and could still harm others. She also doesn't think it would be right for him to walk free when the people he injured are still suffering.
Jenkins Smith met with Carneal in prison in 2007. He apologized to her, and she said she has forgiven him. "A lot of people think that exonerates him from consequences, but I don't think so," she said.
Commonwealth’s Attorney Daniel Boaz, the lead prosecutor for the area that includes Paducah, wrote a letter to the Kentucky Parole Board on Sept. 9 opposing Carneal’s release.
"I experienced and witnessed the immediate effects of Michael Carneal’s actions on December 1, 1997 and have dealt with the effects of his actions since then," Boaz wrote.
The families of the children who were killed suffered a "loss is too vast to be put into words," he wrote. While incarcerating Carneal for the rest of his life "may seem like a harsh penalty, it is only a pittance in comparison to what these families suffer."
Carneal's parole hearing is scheduled to start at 11 a.m. Monday with testimony from those injured in the shooting and close relatives of those who were killed. Click here to watch the hearing.
On Tuesday, Carneal will make his case from the Kentucky State Reformatory in La Grange. If the board rules against release, they can decide how long Carneal should wait before his next opportunity for parole.
Carneal is the first school shooter eligible for parole in Kentucky and could become the first school shooter granted parole in the U.S.
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Copyright 2022. WDRB Media. The Associated Press contributed to this report. All rights reserved.
