i rise today to commend south orange town schools superintendent ken mitchell in my district for his quick reaction and bravery as he single-handedly prevented what could have been a terrible tragedy in south orange town middle school. according to reports a man came into the school, stormed past security, and demanded at gun point that mr. mitchell make changes to a letter on swine flu. he certainly picked the wrong person to threaten when he took on mr. mitchell, a former hockey player and coach. the 55-year-old superintendent was able to tackle him and disarm him before police were able to break into the locked office to apprehend the suspect and thankfully no one was hurt. why someone would enter a school with a gun is something i'll never understand. it's disturbing to even fathom what could lead someone to choose to do that. however it is heartening to realize that someone like ken mitchell is standing in their way. the dedication shown by mr. mitchell to the children should be be an example to all. our nation has witnessed too many deaths of our children in their schools. the p

lied like to call -- so i'd like to call attention to an act of heroicness yesterday morning at south orange town middle school in new york, in rock land county, 45 minutes from new york city, a disgruntled man with a gun stormed into the school superintendent and grabbed the superintendent by the neck tie and started threatening him and making demands. at least three gun shots were fired. this is the kind of situation that would have scared most everyone but as we've learned now, ken mitchell is no ordinary person. with his safety and the state of his students on the line he showed remarkable courage and wrestled the gunman down to the frowned. he was able to grab the gun, kick it out of the way and get the gunman pinned on the ground. usually, when a s.w.a.t. team arrived at the scene of a crime they are the ones to do the serious crime fighting but this time by the time they got there they walked in on the school superintendent who had already disarmed and pinned to the ground the dangerous criminal. to top it off the superintendent mitchell recognized one of the s.w.a.t. team members he had o