A teenage gunman armed with a rifle shot and killed a student Tuesday and injured a teacher shortly after classes started at a U.S. school and was found dead as police arrived, authorities in Oregon said.
The shooting follows a series of attacks at or near school campuses across the country.
After the shooting stopped, police spotted the suspect slumped on a toilet in a bathroom but couldn’t see what was happening with him.
Officers used a robot with a camera to investigate and discovered the suspect was dead and that he had likely killed himself, Troutdale police spokesman Sgt. Carey Kaer said.
The 14-year-old victim was killed in the boys’ locker room, Troutdale police Chief Scott Anderson said.
The chief has said the name of the gunman is being withheld until his family is notified.
The teacher’s injuries weren’t life-threatening, and he was treated at the scene. He has been identified as Todd Rispler, a 50-year-old physical education instructor, and police say he initiated the school lockdown.
The attack panicked students, and a lockdown was ordered.
Morgan Rose (15) said she hid in a locker room with another student and two teachers.
“It was scary in the moment. Now knowing everything’s OK I’m better,” she said.
Daniel DeLong (15) said he saw a physical education teacher at the school with a bloodied shirt.
“It just, like, happened so fast, you know?” he said.
The first reports of shots fired came at 8 a.m. on the next-to-last-day of classes.
Students were eventually led from the school with hands on their heads. Parents and students were reunited in a supermarket parking lot.
The Oregon violence came less than a week after a gunman opened fire on a college campus in neighbouring Washington state, killing a 19-year-old man and wounding two others. It follows a string of mass shootings that have disturbed the nation, including one on Sunday in Nevada that left two Las Vegas police officers and a civilian dead.
Gun control is a fiercely divisive issue in the United States, where the right to bear arms is enshrined in the Constitution, alongside such basic rights as free speech and freedom of religion.
