Posted 12:58 am Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Students In Shock Over Caffey Murders
By MALENA OGLES
Staff Writer
EMORY - Over the weekend text messages spread from cell phone to cell phone and by Monday morning most students at Rains High School knew three of their classmates were in jail for murder before the first bell rang.
Staff Writer
EMORY - Over the weekend text messages spread from cell phone to cell phone and by Monday morning most students at Rains High School knew three of their classmates were in jail for murder before the first bell rang.
On the same campus, students at the elementary and middle schools were told by counselors that two of their newest students, 13-year-old Matthew Caffey and his 8-year-old brother Tyler were victims in the brutal attack.
With 485 students at Rains High School and 91 of them in the senior class, Rains ISD superintendent David Seago said it is difficult to find a student who didn't know one of the victims or suspects.
"A lot of them are friends, cousins or somehow related to the kids that are incarcerated," he said. "Our counselors have been busy today."
Early Monday morning school principals met to discuss how to tell the students that 16-year-old freshman Erin Caffey, and seniors 19-year-old Charlie James Wilkinson, and 18-year-old Bobbie Gale Johnson, along with 20-year-old Rains High School graduate Charles Allen Waid, were in jail, suspected of murdering Caffey's mother, two little brothers and leaving Caffey's father bleeding from five gunshot wounds.
Rains County Sheriff's Office investigators said the 16-year-old and her boyfriend Wilkinson plotted her family's murder because her mother and father disapproved of the relationship and wanted them to break up.
"How do you explain that to an elementary schooler? I'm not sure," Rains ISD superintendent David Seago said.
In Tyler Caffey's 3rd grade classroom the teacher arranged the classroom so that there would not be empty desks where he would normally sit.
"We tell them if they want to cry that's fine. We tell them that even adults cry," he said.
Mostly, the counselors were there to listen.
At the junior high school where Matthew was an 8th grader, students cried in the hallways comforting each other.
At the junior high school where Matthew was an 8th grader, students cried in the hallways comforting each other.
"A lot of them are struggling with wondering how this could happen, and we may never know," Seago said.
Seago said counselors will remain available as long as needed. About a mile east of the Rains ISD campus at the Dairy Queen where Johnson had worked after school, coworkers were chatting about the fate of their friend.
Johnson was described as bubbly, cheerful and out going until she started dating Waid, in November.
"She changed so much when she got with him. It's just not the Bobbi we knew," coworker Breezy Bright said.
A little more than two weeks ago, the 18-year-old was fired from her job for excessive absences, and coworkers said they were constantly having to nag her about not skipping classes.
"All she wanted to do was spend time with him," Bright said.
Susie Collins, a retired Rains ISD teacher said Johnson was a freshman in her teen leadership class and described her as a good student.
"She was a highly motivated student, and was intelligent, articulate and seemed to have a very strong sense of right and wrong - a very strong value system," Collins said.
When Johnson met Waid, her interest in friends faded and her attention was devoted to her 20-year-old boyfriend who friends said was in the middle of a divorce and had a 5 month-old-child.
'He was nice, and treated her well, but we never saw her," friend Derek Williams said.
The Caffey's were new to the Rains ISD, having been home schooled up until this semester. When Wilkinson began dating Erin Caffey, the two girls started spending time together because Waid and Wilkinson were best friends.
Classmates said Caffey, and Wilkinson were often seen holding hand in the hallways.
"They were together a lot," Bright said. "He was a little weird, but nice."
Teachers said Wilkinson was considered a good student who rarely got into trouble.
He was known to be tardy, and had a few absences but no disciplinary problems that would land him in the principal's office.
"This was a shock. This is the kind of school that announces cows are out on the roadways so you need to be careful when you drive home," Bright said.
