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The
slain student was trying to convince the shooter, whose first
gun had jammed, not to carry out the morning rampage when he was
shot dead, Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich told
reporters.
The gunman then fired on three other students in a second-floor
hallway of Freeman High School in Rockford, Washington,
Knezovich said. The surviving victims, who were in their
mid-teens, were listed in stable condition, a local hospital
said.
Knezovich declined to identify the suspect or discuss what may
have motivated the gun violence in detail but said: "It sounds
like a case of a bullying-type of situation."
He said that a member of the staff at Freeman who he described
as "very courageous" was able to capture the gunman before
police officers arrived on scene to take him into custody. He
was being held at Spokane County juvenile jail.
"Fortunately that one (gun) jammed. This would have been a lot
worse if it didn't," Knezovich said. "These are senseless,
tragic events that really don't need to happen and I don't
really understand them."
"But we need to figure out what's gone wrong with our society
that our children decide that they need to take weapons to deal
with the issues that they're facing," he said.
A freshman who witnessed the shooting told local KREM-TV that
the shooter, a classmate since elementary school, stalked the
hallway with a pistol and second gun, appearing calm as he fired
at his victims and the ceiling.
The girl said that the suspect was an "outgoing" boy who she
would not have thought capable of such violence. But she said
other students had told her that he had made an ominous post
about his intentions on a social media account.
Following the shooting at the school of 327 students, some
parents abandoned their cars stuck in traffic and walked up to a
mile to reach their children, KHQ-TV reported.
"This morning’s shooting at Freeman High School is
heartbreaking. All Washingtonians are thinking of the victims
and their families," Governor Jay Inslee said on Twitter.
The United States has had an average of 52 school shooting
incidents a year since a gunman killed 26 young children and
educators in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012, according to
Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun-control group founded in
response to that massacre.
(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Additional reporting
by Suzannah Gonzales in Chicago, Sharon Bernstein in Sacramento
and Derek Caney and Gina Cherulus in New York; Editing by Lisa
Shumaker)
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