Russia school shooting: at least 7 students dead
A shooter dressed in Nazi emblems opened fire at a school in...
According to the city’s police commissioner, a 19-year-old gunman started shooting gunfire at a high school in St. Louis, Missouri, on Monday, killing two people and injuring seven others before being fatally shot by cops.
Police Commissioner Mike Sack informed a news conference in the early evening that the assailant may have suffered from mental illness, notwithstanding the absence of an obvious motivation for the shooting.
Sack stated that students fled Central Visual and Performing Arts High School as police arrived and reported that the shooter was equipped with a weapon.
After storming the school, police engaged in gunfire with the perpetrator, and he was shot dead, ending the rampage 15 minutes after the initial requests for help were made at 9:10 a.m., according to the commissioner.
Sack told reporters that the suspect was 19-year-old Orlando Harris, who graduated high school last year and had no prior criminal record.
“There are suspicions that there may have been some mental illness that he was experiencing. We’re working on developing that information right now,” he remarked.
Sack reported that a 61-year-old educator and a 16-year-old girl were slain. Four further adolescents experienced gunshot wounds, and three additional adolescents sustained additional injuries during the chaos.
The newspaper St. Louis Post-Dispatch identified the instructor as Jean Kuczka, who taught health and physical education, citing relatives.
“While on paper we might have nine victims … we have hundreds of others,” Sack said. “Everyone who survived this is going to take home trauma.”
The violence marked a spate of school shootings in the United States this year that have resulted in scores of deaths and injuries. In May, a gunman in Uvalde, Texas, killed 19 children and two adults in one of the bloodiest incidents.
Sack declined to comment on how the suspect in Monday’s massacre obtained access to the school attended by 380 pupils, though he noted that barred doors impeded his ability to enter.
The high school has seven security personnel and metal detectors, according to a school representative at a news conference. According to Sack, the security personnel were unarmed.
David Williams, a math teacher, told the Post-Dispatch that the school’s principal used the code phrase for a school shooter to inform staff and students over the public address system. He described hearing many gunshots outside his classroom and added that a window was shot out in his classroom door.
In the May school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, police and other law enforcement personnel were criticized for waiting more than an hour before engaging the shooter, who was barricaded inside two classrooms with students and teachers. In this case, the suspect entered the school through an unlocked door.
Catch all the World News, Breaking News Event and Latest News Updates on The BOL News
Download The BOL News App to get the Daily News Update & Follow us on Google News.