By Adeleye Kunle
St. Louis police say three people are dead, including the shooter, after a shooting at a St. Louis high school Monday morning, October 24.
Speaking at a news conference, Police Commissioner Michael Sack said the three dead included a woman, a teenage girl, and the shooter, described as a man about 20 years old.
The shooting happened just after 9 a.m. at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School in south St. Louis, Missouri.
As soon as the shooting started, students barricaded doors and hid in classroom corners. Others jumped from windows and ran out of the building to seek safety.
Sack said security officials initially became alarmed when the shooter tried to get into the locked school building. He declined to say how the man got inside.
Sack said officers “ran to that gunfire, located that shooter and engaged that shooter in an exchange of gunfire,” killing him.
Sack declined to name the victims and did not say if the woman who was killed was a teacher.
Six other injured people were hospitalized. Sack said some suffered gunshot wounds, while others were struck by shrapnel. He did not provide any information on their conditions.
One student, 16-year-old Taniya Gholston, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch she was in a room when the shooter entered.
“All I heard was two shots and he came in there with a gun,” Gholston said. “And I was trying to run and I couldn’t run. Me and him made eye contact but I made it out because his gun got jammed. But we saw blood on the floor.”
Another student, ninth-grader Nylah Jones, told the Post-Dispatch she was in math class when the shooter fired into the room from the hallway. The shooter was unable to get into the room and banged on the door as students piled into a corner, she said.
Central Visual and Performing Arts High School is a magnet school specializing in visual art, musical art and performing art with about 400 students.
