Schoolboy, 14, shoots principal before turning handgun on himself
The shootings happened about 15 minutes before the start of classes at the Red Lion Area Junior High School, about 30 miles south-east of Harrisburg in south-central Pennsylvania.
The eighth-grader had multiple weapons and fired at least two shots with a handgun, said Red Lion Borough Police Chief Walt Hughes. The principal, identified by school district officials as Eugene Segro, was transported to a hospital in critical condition, police said.
A spokeswoman at York Hospital referred questions to the county coroner. The coroner's office did not immediately return calls.
Segro has been at the school for more than a decade and is believed to be in his 50s, said Terry Robinson, the school district's business manager.
Neither he nor Hughes was aware of any recent turmoil or student suspensions at the school. "There's a lot of things we don't know right now," Hughes said.
The school's approximately 875 students were sent to Red Lion Area Senior High School across the street after the shooting.
Officials planned to dismiss them for the day, as well as students from the high school and nearby Moore Elementary School, Robinson said.
Students who witnessed the shooting were being seen by counsellors, police said. "We have the basic security, the building has a locked door, we have security cameras, the things we have in every school," Mr Robinson said. Patrick McFadden, executive director of York County's Department of Emergency Services, said the student shot himself.
However, Hughes said the circumstances of the shooting were still under investigation. The same school district was the site of a machete attack on a kindergarten class that injured a principal, two teachers and 11 pupils in 2001.
A Tennessee man angry about his divorce and allegations he had molested his stepdaughters pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 264 years in prison.
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