Three die as school shooting rocks US
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Your support makes all the difference.AMERICA again suffered the trauma of teenage murder in its schools yesterday, as a 15-year-old boy in Springfield, Oregon, opened fire in a cafeteria, killing one and injuring at least 20. Two other bodies, thought to be those of his parents, were found in the boy's house.
The country has suffered a series of school killings by children, with five incidents since the school year started. Yet the incidents are likely to do little to bring about gun control in a nation obsessed with bearing arms.
The killer, Kip Kinkel, entered Thurston High School cafeteria armed with a rifle and a handgun as the school's 1,700 students were preparing for the day at around 8am. He climbed on to a table and sprayed the room with bullets from what one witness said was a .22 semi-automatic rifle until he ran out of ammunition. Despite being wounded, Jake Ryker, a fellow pupil and a star of the school wrestling team, tackled him as he reached for a pistol and disarmed him.
A picture of the arrested boy showed a slight, elfin-faced boy. He is likely to be charged with aggravated murder, but will not face the death penalty. "He always said that it would be fun to kill someone and do stuff like that," said Robbie Johnson, a fellow pupil.
"Yesterday he told a couple of people he was probably going to do something stupid today and get back at the people who had expelled him."
Kip Kinkel had been a pupil at Thurston High, but had been expelled the day before for trying to bring a gun in.
Thurston High School in Eugene, a suburb of Springfield in Oregon, is a middle-class school in a middle-class suburb - not the sort of place where a shooting would have been expected.
It is just over a month sinceMitchell Johnson and Andrew Golden, 13 and 11 respectively, opened up on their fellow students in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Four girls and their teacher were killed.
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