Nation School rampage in L.A. County kills 2 — student in custody.
A 16yearold pulled a handgun from his backpack at a high school in Santa Clarita (Los Angeles County) on Thursday morning and shot five students, killing two, authorities said. The gunman was in grave condition after shooting himself in the head, they said.
The suspect has not yet been identified, but police said he was a student at the school, Saugus High School, and that Thursday was his birthday.
The students who died were a 16yearold girl and a 14yearold boy, authorities said. The other victims were identified as a 14yearold girl, a 15yearold girl and a 14yearold boy, all wounded by gunfire.
The gunman fired a .45caliber semiautomatic pistol in the quad of the school just after 7:30 a.m. and it was caught on video, said Capt. Kent Wegener of the Los Angeles County Sheriff ’s Department. He added that there were no more bullets in the gun when it was recovered.
Medical staff transferred the suspect to the hospital before the police had identified him, Wegener said.
“Among those who were transported turned out to be the suspect,” said Alex Villanueva, the county sheriff.
Wegener said the gunman’s girlfriend and mother were with detectives at a Santa Clarita police station. Officers also searched the suspect’s home, he said, which is less than 2 miles away from the school.
Images from the scene showed paramedics transporting the wounded on stretchers, outdoor tables littered with the backpacks of students who had fled, and tearfilled reunions between parents and students.
Sherri Risley, 50, said her daughter, who is 16, had known the suspect since both of them were in elementary school together.
“You grew up with someone your whole life and then this happens, and it’s really close and it’s surreal,” Risley said.
Another student, Sharon Orelana Cordova, told KNBCTV that she hid under a table in a nurse’s office until officers came to get her.
“When I got out I saw this person lying on the ground,” she said, “with blood all over.”
Santa Clarita is home to many firefighters, police officers and other emergency medical workers, some of whom dropped their children off at the school and may have also responded to the shooting to aid authorities, Villanueva said.
At the high school, tucked in a suburban Southern California neighborhood of ranch homes, below brown, rolling hills, a swarm of police, sheriff ’s and highway patrol sport utility vehicles surrounded Saugus High School.
Clusters of officers holding long guns stood around a campus where murals read “California Distinguished School.” Jill Cowan, Nicholas BogelBurroughs and Jacey Fortin are New York Times writers.