A girl of 14 shot and wounded a female classmate before apparently taking her own life in an attack on a Texas high school.
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Alpine is a town of 5,900 residents in western Texas, about 200 miles southeast of El Paso.
During the shooting investigation, several bomb threats were called in for other locations in Brewster County. Relatives told of the girl had only been living in the town for six months.
The incident was just the latest in a long series of shootings at U.S. schools that have claimed dozens of lives.
The victim has been hospitalized with non-life threatening injuries, the sheriff said.
In the ensuing confusion that followed during this morning’s shooting, a Homeland Security agents responding to the scene was injured when a US Marshall accidentally shot him outside the school.
“My teacher. yelled to everyone to get into the closet”, said the junior, whom CNN is not naming because she is a minor. Officers from other jurisdictions descended on Alpine in force.
A Twitter user, identified only as key, wrote at 8:25 a.m.: “as a student of alpine high, I want to thank the law enforcement for their wonderful effort to keep us safe”.
Alpine police Chief Russell Scown said his department heard about 9 a.m. local time (10 a.m. ET) that students were running out of the school. Emergency responders at one point thought two shooters may have been involved.
After an emergency board of trustees meeting Thursday afternoon, officials at the Alpine Independent School District issued a statement closing its three schools Friday.
The district’s superintendent says counselors and clergy will be available when students return to campus Monday.
The first shooting happened outside a restroom in the school’s band hall, Dodson said.
The sheriff said the threat was later deemed a hoax, but that it required officers to rush to the university from the high school. Officers and bomb-sniffing dogs had to search for explosives in each building of the university, Dodson said.
“There was blood on the floor in the cafeteria that I saw when we went past it on our way out of the school”, the student said.
There was also a threatening note left at a motel in Marathon, Texas, about 30 miles east of Alpine.
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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said earlier that he’s monitoring developments in the Alpine shooting and promised to provide support for law enforcement agencies investigating the matter.
