On Monday, a middle school student in Nevada used a handgun that he took from his parents to shoot one of his teachers, and then himself. Two other students at Sparks Middle School were also wounded in the shooting; one shot in the stomach and the other in the shoulder.
One student described the moment when the shooter killed the teacher: “We were by the basketball court, and we heard a pop, like a loud pop, and everybody was screaming, and then the teacher came to investigate,” the student said. “The student was pointing a gun at the teacher after the teacher told him to put it down, and the student fired a shot at the teacher, and the teacher fell, and everybody ran away.”
Authorities are not clear about the motive behind the boy’s behavior. “As you can imagine, the best description is chaos,” said Tom Robinson, deputy chief of the Reno Police Department. “It’s too early to say whether he was targeting specific people or just going on an indiscriminate shooting spree.”
Few details have been released, but city officials did release a statement saying that “the school and community are secured at this time.” School was cancelled for the week at both Sparks Middle School and a nearby elementary school.
