Official: 2 students, 1 teacher wounded in school shooting
TOWNVILLE, S.C. — A teenager opened fire at a South Carolina elementary school Wednesday, wounding two students and a teacher before the suspect was taken into custody, authorities said.
Anderson County Coroner Greg Shore told the Anderson Independent Mail that authorities were responding to a death “believed to be related” to the school shooting about 2.5 km away.
Shore said the students do not appear to have life-threatening injuries.
Anderson County emergency services director Taylor Jones told reporters that all other students at the Townville Elementary School were safe following the shooting. The students were bused to a nearby church and reunited with their parents. They hugged and kissed.
Jamie Meredith, a student’s mother, said some of the children went into a bathroom during the shooting.
“I don’t know how they knew to go in the bathroom, but I know her teacher was shaken up. I know all the kids were scared. There was a bunch of kids crying. She didn’t talk for about five minutes when I got her,” she told WYFF.
Television images showed officers swarming the school. Some were on top of the roof while others were walking around the building. Students were driven away on buses accompanied by police officers.
All of the roads to the school have been blocked off. The school is in a very rural part of the state and surrounded by working farms.
Townville Elementary had about 300 students in its pre-kindergarten to sixth-grade classrooms last year, according to its annual state report card last spring.
The rural town is located about 177 kmnortheast of Atlanta along Interstate 85 near the Georgia-South Carolina state line.