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| Students comfort each other at Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colo., on Friday, Dec. 13, 2013, where a student shot at least one other student at a Colorado high school Friday before he apparently killed himself, authorities said. The shooter entered Arapahoe High School in a Denver suburb armed with a shotgun and looking for a teacher he identified by name, said Arapahoe County Sheriff Grayson Robinson |
CENTENNIAL, Colo.
(AP) -- A teenager who may have had a grudge against a teacher
opened fire Friday with a shotgun at a suburban Denver high school,
wounding two fellow students before killing himself.
Quick-thinking
students alerted the targeted teacher, who quickly left the building,
and police immediately locked down the scene on the eve of the Newtown
massacre anniversary, a somber reminder of how commonplace school
violence has become.
One of the wounded
students, a girl, was hospitalized in serious condition. The other
student suffered minor gunshot-related injuries and was expected to be
released from the hospital Friday evening, authorities said.
A third person was being treated for unspecified injuries but had not been shot, a hospital spokeswoman said.
Arapahoe
County Sheriff Grayson Robinson initially reported that the most
seriously hurt student was wounded after confronting the gunman, but he
later said that did not appear to be the case.
The
gunman made no attempt to hide the weapon when he entered the school
from a parking lot and started asking for the teacher by name, Robinson
said.
When the teacher learned that he was
being targeted, he left "in an effort to try to encourage the shooter to
also leave the school," the sheriff said. "That was a very wise
tactical decision."
Jessica Girard was in math class when she heard three shots.
"Then
there was a bunch of yelling, and then I think one of the people who
had been shot was yelling in the hallway `Make it stop,'" she said.
A
suspected Molotov cocktail was also found inside the high school, the
sheriff said. The bomb squad was investigating the device.
Within 20 minutes of the first report of a gunman, officers found the suspect's body inside the school, Robinson said.
Several
other Denver-area school districts went into lockdown as reports of the
shooting spread. Police as far away as Fort Collins, about a two-hour
drive north, stepped up school security.
Arapahoe
High students were seen walking toward the school's running track with
their hands in the air, and television footage showed students being
patted down. Robinson said deputies wanted to make sure there were no
other conspirators. Authorities later concluded that the gunman had
acted alone.
Nearby neighborhoods were jammed
with cars as parents sought out their children. Some parents stood in
long lines at a church. One young girl who was barefoot embraced her
parents, and the family began to cry.
The
shooting came a day before the anniversary of the Newtown, Conn., attack
in which a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook
Elementary School.
Arapahoe High stands just 8
miles east of Columbine High School in Littleton, where two teenage
shooters killed 12 classmates and a teacher before killing themselves in
1999. The practice of sending law enforcement directly into an active
shooting, as was done Friday, was a tactic that developed in response to
the Columbine shooting.
Since Columbine,
Colorado has endured other mass shootings, including the killing of 12
people in a movie theater in nearby Aurora in 2012. But it was not until
after the Newtown massacre that state lawmakers moved to enact stricter
gun-control laws. Two Democratic lawmakers were recalled from office
earlier this year for backing the laws, and a third recently resigned to
avoid a recall election.
The district
attorney prosecuting the theater shooting, George Brauchler, lives near
the high school. At a news conference, he urged anyone who needed help
to call a counseling service and gave out a phone number.
Tracy
Monroe, who had step-siblings who attended Columbine, was standing
outside Arapahoe High on Friday looking at her phone, reading text
messages from her 15-year-old daughter inside.
Monroe
said she got the first text from her daughter, sophomore Jade Stanton,
at 12:41 p.m. The text read, "There's sirens. It's real. I love you."
A
few minutes later, Jade texted "shots were fired in our school." Monroe
rushed to the school and was relieved when Jade texted that a police
officer entered her classroom and she was safe.
Monroe was family friends with a teacher killed in the Columbine shooting, Dave Sanders.
"We didn't think it could happen in Colorado then, either," Monroe said.
After
hearing three shots, freshman Colton Powers said everyone "ran to the
corner of the room and turned off the lights and locked the door and
just waited, hoped for the best. A lot of people, I couldn't see, but
they were crying. I was scared. I didn't know what to do."
His mother, Shelly Powers, said she first got word of the shooting in the middle of a conference call at work.
"I dropped all my devices, got my keys and got in my car," she said. "I was crying all the way here."
More
than 2,100 students attend Arapahoe High, where nine out of 10
graduates go on to college, according to the Littleton Public Schools
website.
