At 10:41 am, Tuesday morning, a shooter dressed in black reportedly pulled a gun out of his backback at Gardena High School and fired—possibly accidentally. The bullet hit two students, one in the head, one in the neck, conditions unknown according to the LA Times.
He has since surrendered to police. The alleged shooter is reportedly a student.
Parents with children at Gardena High have been advised to text 90247 to the number 888777, and they would receive a text message back providing them with information about when they could pick up their children.
ABC7 says that one student is in serious condition, one critical.
It is now sounding increasingly likely that the gun went off unintentionally when the student dropped the back pack.
Other students identified the student who allegedly had the gun, reportedly a 15 year old, making it easier for the police to take him into custody.
UPDATE: The LA Times has an eyewitness account by a student. Here’s the opening:
A Gardena High senior who was sitting next to students who were shot described a scene of chaos and fear inside the classroom when gunfire erupted Tuesday morning.
Miguel Lopez, 17, said he was in his health class when a gun went off as a male classmate was reaching into his backpack. The student, whose name Lopez did not know, was not pointing the gun at anyone, he said.
Two students sitting next to him in the rear corner of the room were shot, Lopez said. A boy was grazed in the shoulder. [Note: he was actually shot in the neck.] A 15-year-old girl next to him was shot in the temple.
“I’m scared and I don’t know what’s going on,” Lopez told the Los Angeles Times by cellphone. Lopez was sitting with classmates inside the dean’s office, where they had been escorted by security after the shooting.
In a 1 pm update, Andrew Blankstein and Victoria Kim write that the alleged shooter apologized to the kids his gun hit then ran from the classroom.
Tragic, tragic, tragic—all the way around.
UPDATE: 3:10 PM
It looks like the alleged shooter brought the gun to school on at least one other occasion because he was fearful about his safety.
Of course. I guessed as much. (I’m sure many others did too.)
Many are asking why the school’s metal detector failed to pick up the presence of a gun in a backpack. (Why in the world have a metal detector if it cannot manage that most primary function?)
The 15 year old girl who was shot in the head is said to be in “grave” condition.
FURTHER UPDATES ON THE FEMALE STUDENT’S CONDITION
From the LA Times
Dr. James Ausman, who heads a team of surgeons at the hospital, said the extent of the girl’s injuries likely would not be known until Wednesday, when doctors can determine whether she can speak or move her arms and legs. The left side of the brain controls speech and motor movement on the right side of the body.
Dr. Gail Anderson Jr., the chief medical officer at the Torrance medical center, said the bullet fractured but did not puncture the girl’s skull and that the energy from the bullet caused trauma to the brain. The girl remains in critical condition.
The metal detector is used only on every 5th kid that comes to school and in random classroom checks. That’s the LAUSD policy, real bright huh? Looks like the same round that went through and through to the neck of the first student went in through the temple of the second, she’s in much worse shape.
Every fifth kid? Oh, great. That’s reassuring. Yes, I understand that the bullet was a through-and-through with the first kid, then hitting the girl in the head. Terrible, terrible, terrible.
I’m about to update above.
Every fifth kid? Some say those searches were very infrequent.
An unnamed kid at the school said the searches happened, “once in a blue moon.”
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/01/random-weapon-searches-occurred-once-in-a-blue-moon-gardena-student-says.html
Correction to previous comment, there was a kid named and quoted…
“A shooter dressed in black,” you reported as did the LA Times. Why that hidden reference to the Columbine shooters? Teens wear black sweatshirts, jeans, t-shirts. Does that implicate every youth wearing black as a potential shooter?
Since the TSA is so good at making sure we don’t have bombs in our underwear, on public transportation. Maybe they should naked body scan every child or grope the children on their way to public school each day.
Would that make you feel safer???
Since kids are going to get guns illegally anyway. Let’s require gun safety courses for all students, perhaps combined with the sex education.
Good point, Donna. I didn’t catch that. It was in the early moments. But, still…. I could have left it out.
What jumps out at me is, this student carried a gun in his bad because he “feared for his safety.” In what WAY, exactly? WAS he being harassed and threatened, was this just paranoia?
This raises the bigger issue of safety at schools, are there gangs there who terrorize other students? And WHAT was he going to do if he DID feel threatened? Clearly, whip out the gun to scare the perpetrator: where, at school, or on the way to/ from school? Was he afraid of other students? What are administrators doing to address the issue of students feeling safe at and to/ from school?
Apparently LAUSD is planning to step up searches of students (how much time will that add in the mornings when students rush to school barely awake anyway? and the cost?) but I haven’t heard discussion of ensuring that students who DO feel threatened have adults and school police to go to to help them.