Texas school shooting: One girl dead and one wounded in shooting at local high school
Police say girl opened fire on second pupil before killing herself at Alpine High School
A girl at a high school in western Texas shot a fellow pupil before fatally turning the gun on herself, according to local police.
Officers told WABC the incident happened in a toilet before 9am at Alpine High School in Brewster County.
Brewster County Sheriff Ronny Dodson said that the injured student ran outside the school after they had been shot. They were rushed to the Big Bend Medical Centre with non-life-threatening injuries. He added that a police officer was also accidentally shot by a marshal responding to the incident – but their injuries were also not considered life-threatening.
The campus was evacuated while other schools were placed on lockdown and law enforcement officers launched a hunt for the shooter. The Alpine Avalanche reported that students had been released to their parents for the duration of the day.
Alpine High School, in the western desert region of Texas about 220 miles southeast of El Paso, has about 280 pupils.
Mr Dodson confirmed that the situation has ended, although nearby schools remain on lockdown.
Police recovered a semi-automatic pistol next to the shooter's body. Mr Dodson said the gun had "plenty" of ammunition, but did not clarify how much.
Reports indicate that the shooter had only lived in Alpine for six months. The sheriff told reporters that he knew her grandparents, who said she was a straight "A" student and saw no indication of a potential threat.
Pupils, two weeks into their new term after summer holiday, described their harrowing account of the incident, which caused significant panic in the school.
“There was blood on the floor in the cafeteria that I saw when we went past it on our way out of the school,” one student told CNN. “One of the officers told us to keep our hands up and run out of the building, so I only saw the blood quickly.”
“It was so scary and very intense. I've never been so scared in my life.”