Student Injured in Antioch Shooting Sues AI Detection Company

We’ve written a lot about the use of AI to detect firearms. Proponents of the technology claim it not only works but can work faster than any other tool available to prevent school shootings. Some of these systems call the police immediately upon noticing a gun, even if it hasn’t been drawn.

Assuming, of course, they don’t misidentify a bag of Doritos as a firearm. Or a clarinet.

The problem with AI is that it’s more artificial than actually intelligent. It makes massive mistakes, and because of how it works, it can create panic and confusion when it creates a false positive.

But a student injured in the Antioch High School is taking aim at the company the school used for its AI gun detection system for failing to recognize the threat.

A student injured during the deadly shooting at Antioch High School has filed a lawsuit against the company behind the school’s AI-powered gun detection system, alleging the technology failed to detect the shooter’s handgun before shots were fired.

The lawsuit, filed May 1 in Davidson County Circuit Court, was brought by Antonyous Henin, who was 17 years old at the time of the Jan. 22, 2025 shooting at Antioch High School. The complaint names Virginia-based Omnilert LLC and Lebanon-based System Integrations, Inc. as defendants.

On January 22, 2025, 17-year-old Soloman Henderson opened fire in the Antioch High School cafeteria, killing 16-year-old Josselin Dayana Corea Escalante before taking his own life.

According to the complaint, Henin was injured and another student was wounded.

At the time of the shooting, Antioch High School did not have traditional metal detectors in place. Instead, the school had AI-powered security cameras designed to identify weapons….
The lawsuit alleges Antioch High School had an Omnilert gun detection system installed and operational at the time of the shooting. The system was designed to use artificial intelligence to detect visible firearms and trigger emergency alerts.

Henin’s attorneys claim Omnilert marketed the system as technology that could “detect firearms — both indoors and outdoors — before a shot is fired” and “turn passive cameras into life-saving tools.”

Yeah, well, that worked out swimmingly, didn’t it?

Now, I’m not a legal expert, so I can’t really get into the validity of this lawsuit, but as someone who has seen a lot of lawsuits happen in his lifetime and followed them to some degree or another, I can’t help but feel like there might be something here.

After all, Omnilert was there and apparently functioning as intended, yet failed to recognize a firearm until it was too late. Its marketing also likely gave school system officials a false sense of security, thus discouraging them from taking other steps to make sure students were safe, such as metal detectors.

If that’s the case, I think Henin has a good chance of winning.

The truth of the matter is that AI is surrounded by too much hype for where it is. Yes, it can be a valuable tool, but it’s not a digital god, all-seeing and all-knowing. It’s something created by people, that’s programmed to do things based on what people tell it, and even if it works just as intended every single time, there are still holes.

Couple that with the ghosts in the machine, which always seem to make computer systems do weird things out of the blue, and there’s no way anyone should just trust that an AI detection system is everything they need.

Some of this, I feel, is on the school system for being that gullible, but Omnilert also likely sold the system to the schools as an end-all, be-all gun violence prevention tool, and it’s not.

If we’re going to sue gun companies for marketing their firearms with the wrong sort of flavoring for some people, even if they work just as intended, then we should most definitely sue companies that claim their system works when it doesn’t.