Another high school has turned into a scene of carnage, this time in western Kentucky.
Two students were killed Tuesday morning at Marshall County High School when a 15-year-old classmate opened fire. Gov. Matt Bevin said 17 other people were injured, 12 of them suffering gunshot wounds. Speaking at a news conference, Bevin said one girl died at the scene. A boy died at a hospital..
Police said they apprehended and arrested the accused shooter at the scene, but no motive has been released. Kentucky State Police Commissioner, Rick Sanders, said they person they have in custody is a 15-year-old student who they intend to charge with murder and attempted murder.
Sanders said the incident began at 7:57 A.M. Tuesday when the suspect went into the Marshall County High School with a handgun and began shooting. He said the 911 calls started to come in shortly after and that first responders were on scene by 8:06 A.M.
Sanders added Kentucky State Police had recently been in the county teaching students how to respond to an active shooter situation and commended the students for doing as they were taught.
As word of the shooting spread across the Benton, Kentucky, parents panicked about the fate of their children.
Daniel Austin, a 17-year-old special needs student, was hospitalized. His parents called his cell phone incessantly until someone in the emergency room picked up and said Daniel had been shot.
His mother Andrea rushed to the hospital, bewildered as to why this happened.
“Teachers love him. Students love him. I don’t think anything can say one bad thing about him,” Andrea Austin said. “And that’s not because I’m his mom. Everybody loves him.”
Austin said her son was shot in the right arm, which might need to be amputated. She lauded the heroics of a fellow student and a teacher, who quickly scooped up Daniel after the gunfire stopped, rushed him to a car and drove him to a hospital.
The violence in Marshall County, a rural area near the western tip of Kentucky, stunned the governor.
“It is unbelievable that this would happen in a small, close-knit community like Marshall County,” Bevin said in a statement. “This is a tremendous tragedy and speaks to the heartbreak present in our communities.
The attack in Kentucky also came day after a school shooting in Texas.
On Monday, a 15-year-old female student was shot in the city of Italy, officials said. She was taken by helicopter to a hospital in Dallas.
The suspect, a 16-year-old male, was “apprehended within minutes,” city officials said.
The motive for that shooting also remains unclear.