Student, 17, kills sixth-grader, wounds five others, police say

A 17-yearold opened fire at a smalltown high school before classes resumed on the first day after the winter break, killing a sixthgrader and wounding five others Thursday as students barricaded in offices, ducked into classrooms and fled in panic.

The suspect, a student at the school in Perry, died of what investigators believe is a self-inflicted gunshot wound, an Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation official said.

Authorities said one of the five people wounded was an administrator, later identified as Principal Dan Marburger.

Authorities identified the shooter as Dylan Butler, 17, and provided no information about a possible motive.

Two friends and their mother who spoke with The Associated Press said

Butler was a quiet person who had been bullied for years.

Perry has about 8,000 residents and is about 40 miles northwest of Des Moines, on the edge of the state capital’s metropolitan area.

It is home to a large pork-processing plant and low-slung, single-story homes spread among trees now shorn of their leaves by winter.

The high school and middle school are connected, sitting on the east edge of town.

Authorities said Butler had a pump-action shotgun and a small-caliber handgun.

Mitch Mortvedt, the state investigation division’s assistant director, said authorities also found a “pretty rudimentary” improvised explosive device and rendered it safe.

The suspect’s motive is being investigated, and authorities are looking into “a number of social media posts” he made around the time of the shooting, Mortvedt added.

Shortly before Thursday’s shooting, Butler posted a photo on Tiktok inside the bathroom of Perry High School, the official said.

The photo was captioned “now we wait” and the song “Stray Bullet” by the German band KMFDM accompanied it. Investigators have found other photos Butler posted posing with firearms, according to the official.

Sisters Yesenia Roeder Hall and Khamya Hall, both 17, said Butler was bullied relentlessly since elementary school, but it escalated recently when his younger sister started getting picked on, too. Officials at the school didn’t intervene, they said, and that was “the last straw” for Butler.

“He was hurting. He got tired. He got tired of the bullying. He got tired of the harassment,” Yesenia Roeder Hall, 17, said.