Sheriff: Custodian stopped Wash. school shooting
(Update: Sheriff’s office reveals more details of shooting)
ROCKFORD, Wash. (AP) – Authorities say a school custodian was the staffer who stopped a student from continuing a shooting rampage that killed one student and injured three others at a Washington state high school.
The Spokane County Sheriff’s Office said Wednesday evening that the custodian approached the shooter at Freeman High School Wednesday morning during the incident and ordered him to surrender.
The sheriff’s office says a deputy who works as a school resource officer arrived shortly thereafter and took the shooter into custody.
Also on Wednesday evening, the sheriff’s office described the three students who were shot and wounded as seriously injured. Authorities said previously the injured students were expected to survive.
Earlier, authorities said the student killed a fellow student who attempted to stop him.
Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich said the shooter came to Freeman High School in Rockford armed with two weapons, and one jammed when he tried to fire it.
The sheriff says a student approached the shooter and attempted to block him before he was shot and killed.
Knezovich says the gunman then shot three other students before a school staff member stopped him.
The sheriff called it a courageous action by the staffer.
Knezovich says no officers fired their weapons and the gunman had been disabled by the time officers arrived.
Knezovich says the suspect is the county’s juvenile jail.
Classmate Michael Harper, who’s 15, told The Associated Press that the suspect had long been obsessed with past school shootings. He says he saw the student at school with a duffel bag.
The suspect is in custody and hasn’t been identified by authorities.
Harper, a sophomore, said the suspect had brought notes to school in the beginning of the year, saying he might get killed or jailed. Harper says some students alerted counselors.
The teen said the suspect wasn’t bullied, calling him “nice and funny and weird.”
