CENTENNIAL, Colo. (AP) — A
teenager who may have had a grudge against a teacher opened fire Friday
with a shotgun at a suburban Denver high school, wounding a fellow
student before killing himself.
The
wounded student, a 15-year-old girl, underwent surgery and was in
critical condition. Authorities originally said a second student was
wounded, but Arapahoe County Sheriff Grayson Robinson said Friday night
that the other girl taken to a hospital was covered in blood from the
first student and wasn't injured.
Robinson
identified the shooter as Karl Halverson Pierson, 18. The sheriff did
not elaborate on any possible motive except to say Pierson had a
"confrontation or disagreement" with the teacher. He didn't know if the
injured girl was intentionally shot.
Pierson
made no attempt to hide his weapon after entering the school from a
parking lot and asking for the teacher by name, Robinson said.
When
the teacher learned that he was being targeted, he left "in an effort
to try to encourage the shooter to also leave the school," the sheriff
said. "That was a very wise tactical decision."
Jessica Girard said she was in math class when she heard three shots.
"Then
there was a bunch of yelling, and then I think one of the people who
had been shot was yelling in the hallway, 'Make it stop,'" she said.
Two
suspected Molotov cocktails were also found inside the school, the
sheriff said. Robinson said one was lit and thrown, but no one was
injured.
The school was swiftly locked down. Within 20 minutes of
the first report of a gunman, officers found Pierson's body inside the
school, Robinson said.
Several other Denver-area
school districts went into lockdown as reports of the shooting spread.
Police as far away as Fort Collins, about a two-hour drive north,
stepped up school security.
Arapahoe
High students were seen walking toward the school's running track with
their hands in the air, and television footage showed students being
patted down. Robinson said deputies wanted to make sure there were no
other conspirators. Authorities later concluded that Pierson had acted
alone.
Nearby neighborhoods
were jammed with cars as parents sought out their children. Some parents
stood in long lines at a church. One young girl who was barefoot
embraced her parents, and the family began to cry.
The
shooting came a day before the anniversary of the Newtown, Conn.,
attack in which a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook
Elementary School.
Arapahoe
High stands just 8 miles east of Columbine High School in Littleton,
where two teenage shooters killed 12 classmates and a teacher before
killing themselves in 1999. The practice of sending law enforcement
directly into an active shooting, as was done Friday, was a tactic that
developed in response to the Columbine shooting.
Since
Columbine, Colorado has endured other mass shootings, including the
killing of 12 people in a movie theater in nearby Aurora in 2012. But it
was not until after the Newtown massacre that state lawmakers moved to
enact stricter gun control laws. Two Democratic lawmakers were recalled
from office earlier this year for backing the laws, and a third recently
resigned to avoid a recall election.
The
district attorney prosecuting the theater shooting, George Brauchler,
lives near Arapahoe High. At a news conference, he urged anyone who
needed help to call a counseling service and gave out a phone number.
Tracy
Monroe, who had step-siblings who attended Columbine, was standing
outside Arapahoe High on Friday looking at her phone, reading text
messages from her 15-year-old daughter inside.
Monroe
said she got the first text from her daughter, sophomore Jade Stanton,
at 12:41 p.m. The text read, "There's sirens. It's real. I love you."
A
few minutes later, Jade texted "shots were fired in our school." Monroe
rushed to the school and was relieved when Jade texted that a police
officer entered her classroom and she was safe.
Monroe's brother knew a teacher killed in the Columbine shooting, Dave Sanders.
"We didn't think it could happen in Colorado then, either," Monroe said.
After
hearing three shots, freshman Colton Powers said everyone "ran to the
corner of the room and turned off the lights and locked the door and
just waited, hoped for the best. A lot of people I couldn't see, but
they were crying. I was scared. I didn't know what to do."
His mother, Shelly Powers, said she first got word of the shooting in the middle of a conference call at work.
"I dropped all my devices, got my keys and got in my car," she said. "I was crying all the way here."
More
than 2,100 students attend Arapahoe High, where nine out of 10
graduates go on to college, according to the Littleton Public Schools
website. from Associate press
No comments:
Post a Comment