Washington state school shooting suspect held on $500,000 bail

[April 29, 2015]  By Victoria Cavaliere
 
 SEATTLE (Reuters) - A Washington state teenager who fired a gun inside his high school in an apparent attempt to provoke an on-campus guard into killing him made his first court appearance on Tuesday and was ordered held on $500,000 bail, officials said.

The 16-year-old student shot off two rounds from a revolver that struck the floor and ceiling inside a stairwell on Monday at North Thurston High School in Lacey, outside Olympia, Lacey police said. Nobody was hurt.

The teen appeared in a Thurston County courtroom represented by a public defender on Tuesday and will remain in a juvenile detention facility if he cannot post the bail, an official in the county prosecutor's office said.

He will face weapons charges in coming days, the official said.

It was unclear how the boy intended to plead to the pending charges. Authorities have not released his name because he is a juvenile.

The teen told police after the incident he had no intention of hurting anyone, but had hoped discharging the gun on school grounds would force the armed officer on campus to shoot him, Lacey Police Commander Jim Mack said.

Mack said the boy had recently transferred to the school and faced bullying.

Government studies teacher Brady Olson tackled the teen before more shots could be fired. Olson told reporters on Tuesday that he came upon the student on the stairs smoking a cigarette and carrying a .357-caliber handgun.

"When we went down, my first thought was get the gun away from him," Olson said. "I located the gun and I was able to flick it across the floor to prevent him from using it any further."

Olson also said he tried to reassure the student pinned beneath him, telling him: "it's not the end of the world and there are things that we can do to help you out."

After the shots rang out, panicked students fled from the building, which was just beginning the school day. Classes resumed on Tuesday.

The incident marked the latest in a series of campus shootings that have sparked a national debate over gun control, and came months after a student at another Washington state high school shot dead four people before turning the gun on himself.

(Reporting by Victoria Cavaliere and Eric M. Johnson in Seattle; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Lisa Lambert)

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