By MICHAEL PHILLIS and JIM SALTER
ST. LOUIS (AP) — A gunman broke right into a St. Louis highschool Monday morning, fatally taking pictures a girl and a teenage woman and wounding six others earlier than police killed him in an alternate of gunfire.
The taking pictures simply after 9 a.m. at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School pressured college students to barricade doorways and huddle in classroom corners, soar from home windows and run out of the constructing to hunt security. One terrorized woman mentioned she was eye-to-eye with the shooter earlier than his gun apparently jammed and she or he was in a position to run out.
Others inside the college mentioned they heard the shooter declare: “You are all going to die.” The metropolis’s police chief mentioned quick actions by a safety guard and cops who “ran to the gunfire” helped finish the taking pictures earlier than extra folks had been killed or harm.
Speaking at a information convention, Police Chief Michael Sack mentioned the shooter was about 20 years outdated however didn’t present a reputation for him or his victims. He declined to say if the girl killed was a trainer.
St. Louis Schools Superintendent Kelvin Adams mentioned seven safety guards had been within the faculty on the time, every at an entry level of the locked constructing. One of the guards observed the person making an attempt to get in at a locked door, however couldn’t. The guard notified faculty officers and ensured police had been contacted, Sack mentioned.
“It was that timely response by that security officer, the fact that the door did cause pause for the suspect, that bought us some time,” Sack mentioned.
He declined to say how the person ultimately received inside, armed with what he described as a protracted gun. Central Visual and Performing Arts shares a constructing with one other magnet faculty, Collegiate School of Medicine and Bioscience, which additionally was evacuated. Central has 383 college students, Collegiate 336.
Officers labored to get college students out of the three-story brick constructing, then “ran to that gunfire, located that shooter and engaged that shooter in an exchange of gunfire,” killing him, Sack mentioned.
Monday’s faculty taking pictures was the fortieth this 12 months leading to accidents or demise, in line with a tally by Education Week — essentially the most in any single 12 months because it started monitoring shootings in 2018. These embody the killings at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, in May, when 19 kids and two academics died. Monday’s St. Louis taking pictures got here on the identical day a Michigan teenager pleaded responsible to terrorism and first-degree homicide in a college taking pictures that killed 4 college students in December 2021.
Some of the six folks hospitalized suffered gunshot wounds, whereas others had been struck by shrapnel, Sack mentioned. He didn’t present any info on their situations.
One scholar, 16-year-old Taniya Gholston, instructed the St. Louis Post-Dispatch she was in a room when the shooter entered.
“All I heard was two shots and he came in there with a gun,” Gholston mentioned. “And I was trying to run and I couldn’t run. Me and him made eye contact but I made it out because his gun got jammed. But we saw blood on the floor.”
Ninth-grader Nylah Jones instructed the Post-Dispatch she was in math class when the shooter fired into the room from the hallway. The shooter was unable to get into the room and banged on the door as college students piled right into a nook, she mentioned.
Janay Douglas’ 15-year-old daughter received caught in a hallway when the college was locked down. Douglas mentioned she acquired a name from her daughter letting her know she had heard photographs.
“One of her friends busted through the door, he was shot in the hand, and then her and her friends just took off running. The phone disconnected,” Douglas mentioned. “I was on my way.”
The taking pictures left St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones shaken.
“Our children shouldn’t have to experience this,” Jones mentioned on the information convention. “They shouldn’t have to go through active shooter drills in case something happens. And unfortunately that happened today.”
The faculty district positioned all of its faculties on lockdown for the rest of the day, and canceled all after-school actions, together with sports activities.
Central Visual and Performing Arts High School is a magnet faculty specializing in visible, musical and performing arts. The district web site says the college’s “educational program is designed to create a nurturing environment where students receive a quality academic and artistic education that prepares them to compete successfully at the post-secondary level or perform competently in the world of work.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com”