Cops: Teen Shoots Fellow Student, Goes to Class

Police in Santa Rosa, California, say suspect blended in with other students
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Oct 22, 2019 7:10 PM CDT
Cops: Teen Shoots Fellow Student, Goes to Class
Xiomara Martinez, left, embraces her sister Alondra Moya after Moya and other students were released from a lockdown after a student of Ridgewway High School in Santa Rosa, Calif., was arrested for shooting another student across from the high school Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2019.   (Kent Porter/The Press Democrat via AP)

A teenage gunman blended into a classroom Tuesday after shooting a fellow student multiple times just outside a Northern California high school, an attack that prompted an hourslong lockdown of more than 10,000 students and staffers in a complex with three schools, authorities said. Using surveillance footage, officers tracked the 17-year-old shooter to a physical education classroom at Ridgway High School in Santa Rosa, north of San Francisco, after a less than two-hour manhunt. They arrested him on suspicion of attempted murder, the AP reports. Police Capt. John Cregan said authorities were still looking for the shooter's handgun, which he put into a backpack and handed off to someone in a vehicle. He then went to the nearest classroom, following the school's lockdown protocol.

The shooter was "behaving normally," and the teacher and other students didn't realize he carried out the violence, Cregan said. "It's disturbing to see that he was able to go right around to his normal business," Cregan told the AP. "It's a scary situation." Police do not yet know if the person who took the backpack and drove away knew a gun was inside. Authorities said the two students argued before the shooting and believe the violence was isolated. The victim, a 16-year-old boy, was in stable condition after being shot twice in the upper body on the sidewalk outside the high school shortly before second period began. Witnesses told police that the shooter fired three to four rounds before fleeing, authorities said. The victim fell down before getting up to run to a vehicle, which dropped him off at a hospital, Cregan said. Dozens of students were in the area at the time.

(More school shooting stories.)

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