High school shooting in Washington
Heavily-armed teenager kills one, wounds three.
LOS ANGELES: A student shot and killed another student and wounded three others at a high school in the North- western state of Washington before being disarmed, authorities said.
The shooting took place at Freeman High School in Spokane County, Washington state, 460km from Seattle, where witnesses described a scene of terror as the heavily armed shooter stalked the halls.
County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich told reporters the shooter was a student who was armed with more than one weapon, reportedly a rifle and a handgun.
“He proceeded to take his weapons out. At that point he attempted to fire one weapon and it jammed,” the sheriff said.
“He went to his next weapon and a student walked up to him, engaged him, and that student was shot. That student did not survive,” he said.
“He then fired more shots around down the hallway, striking three more students and those students are in the hospital,” he said.
Knezovich said the shooter was finally disabled by “a member of the Freeman community”, before police arrived on the scene.
The Spokesman-Review, a local news site, said the student was tackled by a school custodian.
It said the bloodshed began out- side a biology class on the school’s second floor.
“I was putting my backpack away and I heard a loud pop, and I turned around. He was walking around,” Elisa Vigil, a 14-year-old freshman, told the Spokesman-Review.
“He had his pistol. His face was completely passive. He shot someone in the head. I crouched down in the hall.
“I looked up and a girl screamed, ‘Help me, help me, help me.’ The hall was empty. She was shot in the back. I looked to my right, and there was a boy and he was shot in the head.”
The three wounded students were all girls, it said. They were reported in stable condition at a local hospital.
Students told the news site the shooter was a sophomore who had ridden the school bus to classes with his weapons concealed in a duffel bag.
“We need to understand what’s going on in our society that students feel they need to take a weapon to solve the problems they are dealing with,” Knezovich said.
Michael Harper, 15, told the Spokesman-Review that he was a good friend of the shooter.
“He was weird,” Harper was quoted as saying.
“He never really seemed like that person who had issues. He was always nice and funny and weird.”