US Police shot and killed a student outside a Wisconsin middle school on Wednesday after receiving a report of someone with a weapon, the state’s attorney general said in the first law enforcement briefing on gunshots that sent children fleeing and prompted an hourslong lockdown of local schools.
Authorities had previously said an active shooter who never got inside the building was “neutralized” outside Mount Horeb Middle School. State Attorney General Josh Kaul told reporters Wednesday evening no one else was harmed and that an investigation is ongoing. “This incident took place outdoors. The subject in this case never gained entry,” he said.
Authorities described the student as a juvenile male but didn’t provide an age or indicate which of the Mount Horeb district’s schools he attended.
Top official denied taking questions on killing
Kaul declined to answer several questions about what happened once police responded, including whether the student had fired a weapon, what type of weapon he had, and whether he tried to get inside the school. Authorities said multiple Mount Horeb officers, wearing body cameras, had fired weapons but they did not say how many. Police remained on the scene hours afterwards while students were kept locked down in buildings late into the afternoon before slowly being released to relatives.
For panicked kids and their terrified parents, it was an anxious, unsettling wait. Parents described children hiding in closets, afraid to communicate on cell phones, and one middle schooler said his class initially fled the school gym on in-line skates. The district used Facebook posts throughout the day to give updates, with the earliest around 11:30 a.m. reporting all district schools were on lockdown. Authorities in Mount Horeb said the “alleged assailant” was the only person harmed, and witnesses described hearing gunshots and seeing dozens of children running.
Panicked students rushed out of school
Several hours later, school buses remained lined up for blocks outside the middle school and police tape surrounded the middle school, the nearby high school and playing fields between both buildings. “An initial search of the middle school has not yielded additional suspects,” a post around noon said. “As importantly, we have no reports of individuals being harmed, with the exception of the alleged assailant.”
Earlier, the district posted without elaborating that “the threat has been neutralized outside of the building” in Mount Horeb, a small village about 40 kilometres west of the state capital of Madison. Jeanne Keller said she heard about five gunshots while in her shop The Quilting Jeanne, just down the block from the middle school. “It was maybe like pow-pow-pow-pow,” Keller told The Associated Press by phone. “I thought it was fireworks. I went outside and saw all the children running ... I probably saw 200 children.”
One middle schooler said his class was in the school gym practising in-line skating when they heard gunshots. Max Kelly, 12, said his teacher told the class to flee. He said they skated to a street, ditched their in-line skates and ran to a nearby convenience store and gas station and hid in a bathroom.
(With inputs from agency)
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