14-year-old designs bulletproof wall to protect students during school shootings

Audrey Larson, a 14-year-old inventor from Connecticut, has designed a foldable bulletproof wall to protect students during school shootings.

“It’s a foldable two-panel barrier that comes out of the wall for kids to hide behind in the event of a lockdown and, ultimately, in the event of a school shooting,” Larson said Monday on “Good Morning America.”

Larson named her invention Safe K.I.D.S. for Kevlar-cellulose-nanocrystal-AR500-steel Instant Defense System.

{mosads}

“It’s really scary to just think about,” Larson said. “And that’s kind of what sparked that idea. Some of my friends were having anxiety about being at school and I don’t think that’s fair to any kid.”

Her invention won awards at the Connecticut Invention Convention and the National Invention Convention and Entrepreneurship Expo (NICEE), ABC news reports. She is now working to secure a patent for her design.

“From an engineering perspective I felt that it was very well thought out,” said Mary Lombardo, a judge at the Connecticut Invention Convention and vice president of engineering and innovation and research at United Technologies Corporation, “It was doable and really gave a very simplistic solution to a very difficult and complex social problem.”

Adam Coughran, the president of Safe Kids Inc, an organization that trains educators and students to deal with active shooters, said Larson’s design is “extremely innovative.” 

“Her solution solves a couple of very interesting problems in modern classrooms today,” he said.

Coughran pointed to a few logistical issues that might make the wall difficult to employ. He said that most classrooms are cluttered with desks that may hamper deploying the wall quickly and said that the wall also would have to be very large to shield everyone, especially if some are still running into the room from outside. 

Coughran, however, said that Larson’s invention could “easily be taken and spun off into other designs, such as those panels being slid together like a barn door or sliding glass door to cover an entire wall of windows.”