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Several US schools in Colorado, Florida, and Georgia will start the next school year with drones equipped with pepper gel, flashing lights, and sirens, which seek to stun and stop an active shooter in a matter of seconds.
The so-called 'Campus Guardian Angel' drones, the first of their kind to be installed in schools across the country, are designed to deploy in seconds and enter classrooms ahead of police officers.
As a last resort, these drones can ram an attacker at speeds of up to 100 kilometers per hour.
They can travel through hallways at about 80 kilometers per hour, remotely piloted from the headquarters of the manufacturer, Mithril Defense, in Austin (Texas), with the goal of locating an attacker within 15 seconds.
In Georgia and Florida, the drones are funded by the states themselves.
In Colorado, however, they are being funded with private money by the school testing them, John Adams Academy, after the county declined to contribute the $200,000 originally planned. Louisiana, for its part, passed a law to test them in four schools.
The installation of the drones responds to concerns about school shootings in the United States, including the Columbine (Colorado) shooting in 1999, which left 13 dead, and the Parkland (Florida) shooting in 2018, with 17 dead, some of the deadliest in the country.
A more recent one in Winder, Georgia, in 2024, left four dead, and its perpetrator, 16-year-old Colt Gray, was sentenced this Tuesday to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
So far this year, 102 incidents involving firearms have been recorded on school grounds in the United States, although they reached a high in 2023 with 352, according to the specialized K-12 School Shooting Database.
[Publicidad]