CENTENNIAL, Colorado (AP) — A student shot at least one other student at a Colorado high school Friday before he apparently killed himself, authorities said.
The shooter entered the school in a Denver suburb armed with a shotgun and looking for a teacher he identified by name, said Arapahoe County Sheriff Grayson Robinson.
“The teacher began to understand that he was being looked at and exited the school. One student confronted the armed student and was shot,” Robinson said.
The critically injured student was in surgery at a nearby hospital, said Jason Dunkel, spokesman for Littleton Adventist Hospital.
A third student was injured at Arapahoe High School, but it wasn’t clear whether that student was shot.
Police were outside the school, and students were seen walking toward the school’s running track with their hands in the air. Television footage showed students being patted down.
The school in Centennial about 8 miles (13 kilometers) east of Columbine High School in Littleton, where two teenage shooters killed 12 classmates and a teacher before killing themselves in 1999.
The shooting also came a day before the first anniversary of the school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, where a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Tracy Monroe, who had step-siblings who attended Columbine, was standing outside the high school looking at her phone, reading text messages from her 15-year-old daughter inside.
Monroe said she got the first text from her daughter, Jade Stanton, at 12:41 p.m. The text read, “there’s sirens. It’s real. I love you”
A few minutes later, Jade texted “shots were fired in our school.” Monroe rushed to the school and was relieved when Jade texted that a police officer entered her classroom and that she was safe.
Monroe was friends with a teacher killed in the Columbine shooting, Dave Carpenter.
“We didn’t think it could happen in Colorado then, either,” Monroe said.
More than 2,100 students attend Arapahoe High School where nine out of 10 graduates go on to college, according to the Littleton Public Schools website.
The school is about 8 miles (13 kilometers) east of Columbine High School in Littleton, where two teenage shooters killed 12 classmates and a teacher before killing themselves in 1999.
Friday’s shooting occurred the day before the one-year anniversary of the massacre of 20 children and six educators at school in Newtown, Connecticut.
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