Tragedy broke through the morning of the second to last day of the year at Reynolds High School in Oregon Tuesday when a gunman with a rifle killed a student. The gunman was found dead a short time later, authorities said.
SWAT teams descended on the school, which includes grades 9 to 12, and has more than 2,800 students this morning after receiving a report of a shooting, Troutdale Police Chief Scott Anderson said. The school was put on lockdown as a room-by-room search was conducted. Troutdale, an eastern suburb of Portland, is home to about 16,000 people.
Anderson said the identities of the gunman and his victim would be released after their families were notified, and he did not report how the gunman died. He also reported that a teacher had been wounded in the shooting.
According to USA Today, Reynolds track coach Todd Rispler told KGW-TV he was grazed on the hip but was not seriously hurt. He was treated at the scene and released.
Freshman Daniel DeLong, 15, said he saw a physical education teacher at the school with a bloodied shirt.
"I'm a little shaken up," DeLong told USA Today. "I'm just worried."
He said he was texting friends to make sure they were all OK.
"It just, like, happened so fast, you know?" he said.
According to their twitter feed, Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are heading to Reynolds High School to assist in the investigation.
Also on Twitter, many people are lamenting how the students should be celebrating the end of the school year, not tortured by yet another school shooting. #RHshooting and #PrayforReynoldsHS are bustling with activity, as people represent a range of opinions in the debate over gun control and school shootings.
Some early reports on twitter, like @ABC7, point to the tragedy as being a murder/suicide, with the shooter killing himself after killing the unidentified victim, but nothing has been confirmed by authorities yet.
