15-year-old to boy who shot him: ‘I forgive you’

Austin Hancock, who opened fire in a school cafeteria of an Ohio junior-senior high school in February, was sentenced yesterday to six years in the Ohio Department of Youth Services. He’s 15. He’ll be released when he’s 21.

He was also ordered to have no contact with any of his victims or their families.

So the last words he’ll hear directly from any of them came from Cooper Caffrey, who was one of Hancock’s best friends.

Hancock shot Caffrey.

“I want you to know that I forgive you. People think that’s crazy and keep telling me I should be mad and I have a right to be mad, but I’m not. It hurts that my friend would choose to hurt all these people,” Caffrey said.

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“I want the victims to know they were not targeted,” Hancock said before he was sentenced. Then he hugged his father and kissed his stepmother and was led away.