“I’m not sure. He just pulled out a gun and started shooting.” .
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One student mistook the first shot for a potato chip bag being popped.
The sheriff said authorities were working to determine a motive.
“My heart is in my neck, literally”, she said. “Our deputy was in school at that time and was in the cafeteria just a short time before that shooting too place”.
The school has said none of injuries is believed to be life-threatening.
Cotter said the student was compliant and allowed the search of his backpack, where the handgun was found. About five second later, he heard “bang, bang, bang”.
He told the librarian “there is a shooting really going on”, and was led down the hallway into a connecting office.
At that point the librarian led the students down the hallway and into an office connected to the library.
“We know why he fled the building but we’re not going to release that at this point”.
It helped also, Stephens said, that of the 100,000 new police officers put on the street under the Clinton administration, 10,000 ended up in schools.
A medical official said one of the boys was shot once and the other had multiple gunshot wounds. “It was very quiet”, he said.
The school’s spokeswoman says students and staff reacted promptly as they’ve been trained in active shooter situations. “I mean he needs prayer and have God watch over him and everybody else”, said Doucette. The student ran from the scene and was caught.
He described the scene at the school following the shooting as “chaotic”.
Cincinnati State’s Middletown Campus is also on a lockdown due to what they said was a “shooting report” at the Madison high school.
The Ohio Department of Education collects the emergency management plans that schools are required to submit.
While school violence makes breaking news alerts and headlines nationwide, “the biggest risk facing young people are either in their homes or in the community”, Stephens said. “You think it can’t happen to you but it does”.
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The suspect opened fire around 11:30 am on Monday morning.
