Fatal shooting reported at elementary school in United States
Bend police say an armed community member killed the teenage gunman at Silver Rail Elementary School, where a pupil and a teacher were critically injured.
- Four people were killed—three children and a teacher—in a shooting at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon.
- The 16-year-old gunman was shot and killed by an armed community member who pursued him into the school.
- Two other victims, a seven-year-old pupil and a 54-year-old teacher, were critically injured in the attack.
Four people died and two were critically injured when a teenage gunman attacked Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon, on Thursday (October 15).
An armed community member who followed the attacker into the school shot him dead, police said.
The surviving victims were a seven-year-old pupil and a 54-year-old teacher, both taken to hospital in critical condition.
Bend Police Chief Mike Krantz told a press conference that the children who died were aged five, eight and 11, and that the fourth person killed was a teacher.
Police disclosed the gunman’s age as 16 but provided no further details about him.
He had fired through locked doors to enter the building.
According to Krantz, a community member saw the teenager go inside and pursued him into the school.
Police did not name the person who intervened.
A call received by emergency responders at 12.59pm Pacific Daylight Time (7.59pm GMT) came from someone in a vehicle who reported being shot at repeatedly by a person with a long gun, Krantz recounted.
Within minutes, emergency services were receiving dozens of calls placing the gunman inside the school.
Law enforcement instructed the school to begin an immediate lockdown, according to Krantz.
Officers reached the scene at 1.02pm.
Shortly afterwards, one reported that the suspect had been shot.
Police then went into the building and established that he was dead.
The community member’s intervention drew thanks from Oregon Governor Tina Kotek, who attended the briefing alongside Krantz.
She thanked the person who “heroically intervened to stop further loss of life”.
“No parent should have to have this kind of day, and no community should have to live through this kind of day,” Kotek said.
Kotek continued: “And as we learn more about the children and the adults who have been killed or injured, and their families and their loved ones, we are going to do a lot of crying, and we are going to cry together, and we’re probably going to cry privately.”
Gun control campaigner Gabrielle Giffords, a former congresswoman who survived a mass shooting in 2011, described herself as “heartbroken” by the shooting. “This cannot continue to be a reality in our country. Leaders at every level must step up and act,” she said in a statement.
School shootings repeatedly bring gun legislation back into debate in the United States, where gun rights have constitutional protection under the Second Amendment.
Supporters of gun rights have argued that teachers should be armed as a means of defence.
Previous high-profile attacks include those at Columbine High School in 1999, Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018 and Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, in 2022.
Officials put Silver Rail’s enrolment at approximately 450 pupils, with around 40 staff.
Its classes run from kindergarten to fifth grade, catering generally for children aged five to 11.
Bend, a city of about 100,000 people in rural central Oregon, lies 175 miles (280km) south-east of Portland.
It sits in Oregon’s high desert, adjoining the Deschutes National Forest.
Krantz noted that every Bend police officer had spent a full day in August training to respond to an active shooter.
“Unfortunately, this is something we train for on a regular basis, and we must,” he said.
“This is going to be a long investigation.”
Source: Reuters
