Deputy Head dies after school shooting rampage

The deputy head gunned down by a pupil during a school shooting rampage lost her fight for life today.

Vicki Kaspar, 58, vice principal of Millard South High School in Omaha, Nebraska, was mortally wounded yesterday when policeman’s son Robert Butler opened fire, forcing terrified pupils returning from the Christmas break to take cover in the kitchen.

Butler, 17, who had attended the school for no more than two months, also wounded principal Curtis Case, 45, before fleeing and shooting himself dead in his car.

Butler’s father is an Omaha Police Department detective and investigators were interviewing him to learn more about what may have led to the shooting.

Authorities refused to speculate about why Butler targeted the administrators.

Ms Kaspar died in hospital today, hours after the shooting, police said. Mr Case was said to be in a stable condition.

Jessica Liberator, a second-year student at Millard South, said she was in the cafeteria when another administrator “rushed in to tell everybody to get in the back of the kitchen”.

She said she started to cry when students heard a knock on the kitchen door and a cafeteria worker yelled for everybody to get down, but it was a false alarm.

Butler had transferred in November from a high school in Lincoln, south west of Omaha.

In a rambling Facebook post filled with expletives yesterday, Butler warned that people would hear about the “evil” things he did and said the school drove him to violence.

He wrote that the Omaha school was worse than his previous one and that the new city had changed him. He apologised and said he wanted people to remember him for who he was before affecting “the lives of the families I ruined”. The post ended with “goodbye”.

A former classmate of Butler’s from Lincoln, Conner Gerner said he remembered him as being energetic, fun and outgoing. He said Butler sometimes got in trouble for speaking out too much in class, but did not seem angry.

Butler’s stepgrandfather, Robert Uribe, said today the news still seemed unreal to him and did not seem to fit with the polite teenager he knew.

“I have no idea what led to this,” said Mr Uribe, who last saw Butler about a month ago.

Lincoln school chiefs would not provide details about Butler’s student record, but Lincoln Southwest High School principal Rob Slauson said Butler was involved in few, if any, activities before transferring to his new school.

John Manna, whose older son graduated from high school with Ms Kaspar’s son in 1996, said: “I can’t think of a nicer person. I can’t see how anyone would be cross with her.”

The news shocked the suburban neighbourhood in west Omaha where Mr Case and his family live.

“I’m really sad,” said Judy Robison, who lives six houses away. “There’s been shootings downtown, but we’re really pretty insulated out here.”

Authorities first received reports of the shooting at around 12.50pm local time yesterday. The school was immediately locked down, but within two hours, students were being released in groups.

Crystal Losole, whose son and a nephew are juniors at the school, said she got a call from her son when he was hiding in the kitchen.

Hugging him later and weeping, Ms Losole said when she learned of the shooting, “my knees kind of buckled”.

The school on the west side of Omaha has about 2,100 pupils.