A shooting at a Dallas high school on Tuesday wounded four students and drew a heavy police response to the campus, where authorities said they had identified a suspect but had not made an arrest.
Three of the students were injured by gunfire and the fourth was injured in their lower body, according to the Dallas Fire-Rescue Department. The department said units were dispatched to Wilmer-Hutchins High School just after 1 p.m. and that the four students, all of whom are male, were taken to hospitals with injuries ranging from serious to not life-threatening.
“Quite frankly, this is just becoming way too familiar. And it should not be familiar,” said Stephanie Elizalde, superintendent of the Dallas Independent School District, at a news conference.
Christina Smith, assistant police chief for the Dallas Independent School District, said at the news conference that the investigation was fluid and she did not have any information on what led to the shooting. Although she said police had identified a suspect, she provided no other details, including whether authorities knew the suspect’s whereabouts.
The three who were shot were between the ages of 15 and 18, while the age of a person with a “musculoskeletal injury” was not known, Dallas Fire-Rescue said.
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School district officials and police gave few details during the news conference held several hours after the shooting, which drew a large number of police and other law enforcement agents to the roughly 1,000-student campus.
“I know that there are many questions and we’re not going to have all of the answers right now because some of the information will be inaccurate,” Elizalde said.
Authorities said other students and their parents had been safely reunited after the students had evacuated earlier in the day from the campus. Aerial television footage taken above the high school Tuesday afternoon showed multiple police vehicles thronging the complex.
Elizalde said that there would be no school at the high school for the rest of the week but that counselors would be available to students.
Smith said that the gun didn't come into the school during “regular intake time.” She said "it was not a failure of our staff, of our protocols, or of the machinery that we have.” But she said she could not elaborate on that.
Shauna Williams, who has two students at the campus, said after the shooting that she was now considering homeschooling them. At the same school last April, one student shot another in the leg.
“I can’t keep going through this as a parent,” she told Dallas television station KDFW. “I’m telling you, it’s very frightening to think about losing your child, your kids.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said in a statement that “our hearts go out to the victims of this senseless act of violence.”
