Student, 15, killed in shooting at school

A 15-year-old boy was killed in a shooting at a junior high school in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, authorities said Monday, the first day back inside classrooms for a school district hit hard by weeks of winter weather.

The student, who was not named because he is a juvenile, died of his injuries Monday afternoon at Arkansas Children’s Hospital after he was shot by another 15-year-old boy at the school, Watson Chapel Junior High, Chief Kelvin Sergeant of the Pine Bluff Police Department said in an interview.

The student with the gun, who was uninjured and also not named, was taken into custody, the police chief said. He was found on a street in a nearby neighborhood by officials with the Arkansas Department of Corrections, which had joined the investigation and deployed its dog team, Sergeant said.

He said in an interview that the police did not yet know a motive or how the two students were related. But he said he was “fairly confident” that the shooting “was not random and was targeted.”

The police were initially called to the school at 9:59 a.m. on the report of a shooting, Sergeant said. When officers arrived, they found the injured 15-yearold boy with an apparent gunshot wound. He was taken to a nearby hospital and then transferred to Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock, the capital, about 44 miles away.

The shooting occurred during a period when students were moving between classrooms, Sergeant said, although he did not know how many were in the hallways. As a precaution, the school followed protocol for handling a shooting, he said, and students were ushered to a gymnasium on campus. A little before noon, the school district said on Facebook that the shooting was “an isolated incident” and that the “students are safe at this time.”

The student with the gun was transported to the Jack Jones Juvenile Justice Center, a detention facility.