US school shooter armed with rifle, 600 rounds: Police

Officers say police responded swiftly to St Louis assault, but it surely stays unclear how gunman entered the highschool.

The gunman who killed a instructor and a 15-year-old woman in a lethal faculty taking pictures within the US metropolis of St Louis, Missouri, was closely armed and geared up with lots of of rounds of ammunition, police say.

Police Commissioner Michael Sack stated on Tuesday that the gunman, 19-year-old former scholar Orlando Harris, had an AR-15-style, semi-automatic rifle and greater than 600 rounds of ammunition throughout Monday’s assault. Harris was killed in an alternate of fireplace with police.

“This might have been a lot worse,” Sack stated, noting that the attacker had entered the varsity in “an aggressive, violent method” that left “no thriller about what was going to occur”.

The assault at Central Visible and Performing Arts Excessive Faculty was the newest faculty taking pictures to roil the USA, the place using high-powered rifles in such incidents has sparked debate over gun reform within the nation.

Seven college students, aged 15 and 16 years outdated, have been injured within the taking pictures, and all are stated to be in secure situation.

One of many college students was injured whereas leaping out of a three-storey window to flee the taking pictures whereas others erected barricades in opposition to the doorways or huddled within the nook of their lecture rooms to keep away from the attacker.

One scholar described coming head to head with Harris however surviving as a result of his gun had jammed.

Bodily training instructor Jean Kuczka, 61, was killed after she moved herself between the gunman and her college students. “My mother beloved youngsters,” her daughter Abby informed the St Louis Submit-Dispatch newspaper. “She beloved her college students. I do know her college students checked out her like she was their mother.”

Scholar Alexandria Bell, 15, who additionally was killed within the taking pictures, was described as “joyful, fantastic and only a nice individual” by her father, Andre Bell.

“She was the woman I beloved to see and beloved to listen to from. Irrespective of how I felt, I might all the time discuss to her, and it was alright. That was my child,” he informed native information outlet KSDK-TV.

On Tuesday, Sack learn a word left behind by Harris, which described a lifetime of loneliness and isolation that the attacker stated had created the “excellent storm for a mass shooter”. A number of individuals inside the varsity have stated that they heard Harris yell, “You’re all going to die!”

Sack informed reporters that Harris had ammunition strapped to his chest, extra in a bag and a few in magazines discovered dumped in stairwells.

The police commissioner didn’t say how Harris was in a position to enter the varsity, which was locked and guarded by seven safety guards.

The response of legislation enforcement to mass shootings at colleges has come underneath larger scrutiny following a lethal assault earlier this 12 months in Uvalde, Texas, the place it emerged that legislation enforcement officers had stood outdoors a classroom for greater than an hour earlier than confronting the shooter.

A timeline laid out by Sack on Tuesday would counsel that the response to the St Louis taking pictures was far more immediate, with legislation enforcement alerted to the attacker at 9:11am native time, officers arriving on the scene 4 minutes later, and the gunman shot by 9:25am.

Raymond Parks, a dance instructor on the faculty who was threatened by the attacker however was left unscathed, stated that “you couldn’t have requested for higher” from the police response.