(Reuters) – A teenage shooter opened fire at a Wisconsin school yesterday, killing a fellow student and a teacher and wounding six other people before police found the suspect dead at the scene.
The latest school shooting to devastate a U.S. community took place at the Abundant Life Christian School, a private institution that teaches some 400 students from kindergarten through 12th grade in Madison, the state capital of about 270,000 people.
Two students who were wounded in the shooting had life-threatening injuries, Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes told a press conference. A teacher and three other students were shot and expected to survive. Two of those victims were released from the hospital, Barnes said.
The shooter, a student at the school who used a handgun, was found dead inside the school by officers who immediately entered campus upon arrival, police said. Officials declined to identify the shooter by name, age or gender, nor did they identify the victims.
CNN and the Associated Press, citing unnamed police sources, reported the shooter was a 17-year-old girl who turned the gun on herself after the rampage. Reuters could not verify the reports.
If confirmed, it would be a rarity, as only about 3% of mass shootings are carried out by females, studies show.
There was as yet no known motive for the violence, which authorities said took place in one space inside the school. The shooter’s family was cooperating with the investigation, police said.
“Today is a sad, sad day, not only for Madison, but for our entire country, where yet another police chief is doing a press conference to speak about violence in our community,” Barnes, a former school teacher, told reporters at an earlier press conference.
“Every child, every person in that building, is a victim, and will be a victim forever. These types of trauma don’t just go away,” Barnes said.
There have been 322 school shootings this year in the U.S., according to the K-12 School Shooting Database website. That is the second highest total of any year since 1966, according to that database – topped only by last year’s total of 349 such shootings.
“We need to do better in our country and our community to prevent gun violence,” Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said.
