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EWTN News is a service of Eternal Word Television Network, Inc. Irondale, Alabama. All rights reserved. EIN: 27-4581132
Copyright © 2026. All rights reserved.
EWTN News is a service of Eternal Word Television Network, Inc. Irondale, Alabama. All rights reserved. EIN: 27-4581132
The system uses artificial intelligence to detect shooters and alert school officials and law enforcement.
A Catholic school in Arkansas has adopted next-gen AI technology to help spot potential shooters and alert law enforcement before a shooting takes place.
The security company ZeroEyes said Trinity Catholic School in Fort Smith is the first private school in the state to utilize its gun detection platform, one that interfaces with the school’s own security system and leverages AI to identify school shooters before they enter the building.
Principal Zach Edwards told EWTN News that the school has been enhancing its safety measures over the past several years, including with controlled access points, increased fencing, and school-wide security cameras.
Located just outside of Forth Smith, Trinity sits on what Edwards described as a “large campus” of about 20 acres. Edwards said one safety consultant suggested the school consider a gun detection system.
There have been no school shootings locally, Edwards said, but the 2023 shooting at the Presbyterian Covenant School in Nashville, as well as the August 2025 shooting at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis, offered greater impetus to implement the detection system.
“We’d already started our approach to school safety, but after those two shootings, we made it an even bigger priority,” he said.
Chris Heilig, the senior adviser for schools safety and technology at ZeroEyes, told EWTN News that the platform utilizes an extensive internal database of guns and gun types in order to recognize weapons detected on security cameras.
At a central “operation center,” Heilig said, ZeroEyes employees monitor feeds of every security system around the country to which the AI platform has access. The feeds themselves are not monitored in real time, Heilig said; rather, the system alerts monitors when any one camera detects a gun threat, after which employees quickly review the footage and alert law enforcement if necessary.
Promotional material shows a ZeroEyes employee monitoring an AI-assisted security feed. | Credit: ZeroEyes
School officials including security officers are also alerted in the event of a shooter situation, Heilig said. Meanwhile, security cameras will continue to track a shooter’s movements around a building or campus, giving law enforcement critical information about a gunman’s whereabouts.
Heilig said ZeroEyes launched in 2018 and has steadily expanded its presence since then.
“It’s deployed on cameras across the country in 46 states,” he said. “It’s mostly in school buildings and districts. But it’s in the private sector, too, including in municipal facilities, businesses, warehouses, and health care facilities.”
“We’re consistently updating the database and changing our AI and how it detects guns,” he said. “It’s constantly evolving every day.”
Edwards, meanwhile, said the current climate calls for high-tech security to counteract threats to schools.
“I hope more Catholic schools in U.S. have the opportunity to invest in this kind of security,” he said. “It’s time. We need it.”
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At least 10 people are dead, including young teens, and many are wounded in a mass shooting in northern British Columbia, Canada.
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