DENVER (AP) – A student said he shot two of his peers at a suburban Denver High School on Wednesday, before dying and dying.
The handgun shooting was reported at Evergreen High School in Evergreen, Colorado, around 12:30pm, about 30 miles west of Denver in Rocky Mountain Foothills.
Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Jackie Kelly responded with a shot of her finding a law enforcement officer who had found the shooter within five minutes of her arrival.
No law enforcement officer in response to the shooting fired the shot, Kelly said.
More than 100 police officers from the surrounding area rushed to the school to help, Kelly said. A 1999 school shooting at Columbine High in Jefferson County killed 14 people. Woman who passed away earlier this year of complications from her injuries in the shooting.
The teens were originally listed in critical condition, said Kevin Cullinan, CEO of St. Anthony Hospital. Their age was not released.
By evening, a teenager was in a stable state with what Dr. Brian Blackwood, the hospital’s trauma director, called a life-threatening injury. He refused to provide more details.
With over 900 students, the high school is primarily surrounded by forests. It is about a mile from the heart of Evergreen and has a population of 9,300.
After the shooting, parents gathered outside a nearby elementary school waiting to be reunited with their children.
Wendy Numan said her 15-year-old daughter, a sophomore at Evergreen High School, didn’t answer the phone immediately after filming, the Denver Post reported. When her daughter finally called, it was from a borrowed phone.
“She said it was okay. She barely could speak,” Numan said, restraining her tears. She collected her daughter’s run from school.
“So scary,” she said. “It feels like we live a bit of a bubble here. Obviously, no one is immune.”
Eighteen students who fled the shooting were evacuated to a walkway home after the first group knocked on the door for help, resident Don Saigan told Denver’s KUSA-TV. One student said he heard a gunshot while in the school cafeteria and ran out of school, Saigan said.
Cygan, a retired educator who is well versed in lockdown training to prepare for the possibility of a shooting, said he defeated all the students’ names and the names of parents who arrived and picked up later. His wife, a retired nurse, was able to calm down and treat the teens for shock, he said.
“I hope they feel like they’ve run to the right house,” he said.
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Brown was reported from Billings, Montana.
