Two cops, student shot dead in US school shootings
WASHINGTON: Two campus police officers were shot and killed at a college in the US state of Virginia on Tuesday, while one student was killed and another wounded in a shooting at a school in Minnesota the same day.
Two agents, a campus law enforcement officer and a campus safety officer, were shot before the suspect fled the scene at the college in Virginia, Virginia state police said in a statement on Twitter.
Multiple law enforcement agencies arrived on the campus of Bridgewater College around 1.20pm local time in response to active shooter reports, according to the same statement, which the school also posted to its website.
The suspect, a 27-year-old man named Alexander Wyatt Campbell, was later apprehended, Virginia state police said, adding that he had a “nonlife-threatening gunshot wound”.
It was not yet clear if he had been shot by police or if the wound was self-inflicted. He has already been charged with murder, police said.
The town of Bridgewater, about two and a half hours south of the US capital of Washington and where Bridgewater College is located, sent out an alert around 1.30pm warning of an active shooter situation, local media reported. The school issued an all-clear notice on its website around 4.30pm.
Virginia governor Glen Youngkin tweeted, “I have been briefed on the situation at Bridgewater College. The shooter is in custody and state and local police are on the scene.”
The officers were identified by the school as John Painter and J J Jefferson. The pair “were shot and killed on campus while protecting us”, a statement from college president David Bushman on its website said.
Shooting in Minnesota
The shooting in Minnesota occurred in the town of Richfield just outside of Minneapolis around noon, officials said, leaving one student dead and another wounded.
The attackers opened fire on the students on a sidewalk outside the South Education Center before speeding away in a car, Richfield police chief Jay Henthorne told the StarTribune newspaper.
Two suspects were later arrested, the paper said, noting that friends of the victim had identified the slain student as Jamari Rice, who some local journalists said was the son of Black Lives Matter activist Cortez Rice.
Cortez Rice was arrested last year and charged with attempting to intimidate a judge handling the trial of ex-police officer Kim Potter officer who killed a Black man in April when she said she mixed up her taser with her pistol during a traffic stop.