Officials said police responded quickly to the attack in St Louis, but it remains unclear how the gunman entered the high school.
The gunman killed the teacher and the 15-year-old female student school shooting in the US city of St Louis, Missouri, heavily armed and armed with hundreds of rounds of ammunition, police said.
Police Commissioner Michael Sack said Tuesday that the gunman, a 19-year-old former student Orlando Harris, had AR-15 .-style semi-automatic rifle and more than 600 rounds of ammunition in Monday’s attack. Harris was killed in an exchange of fire with police.
“This could have been much worse,” Sack said, noting that the assailant entered the school with an “aggressive, violent attitude” making it “no mystery as to what would happen.”
The attack at Central High School of Visual and Performing Arts is the latest school shooting roll over United States, where power usage is high rifle in such incidents have sparked debate about gun reform in the country.
Seven students, aged 15 and 16, were injured in the shooting, and all are in stable condition.
One of the students was injured when he jumped out of a three-story window to escape the shooting while the other students set up barricades in front of the entrance or huddled in the corner of the classroom to avoid the attacker.
One student described confronting Harris but survived because gun was stuck.
Physical education teacher Jean Kuczka, 61, was killed after she moved between the gunman and her student. “My mother loved the kids,” her daughter Abby told the St Louis Post-Dispatch. “She loves her students. I know her students looked at her as if she were their mother.”
Student Alexandria Bell, 15, who was also killed in the shooting, was described by her father, Andre Bell, as “fun, wonderful and a wonderful person”.
“She’s the girl I love to meet and love to hear from. No matter how I feel, I can always talk to her, and it’s okay. That’s my baby,” he told local news agency KSDK-TV.
On Tuesday, Sack read a letter left by Harris, which described a life of loneliness and isolation that the attacker said had created “the perfect storm for an individual.” Mass shooting game“. Several people in the school said they heard Harris shouting, “You’re all going to die!”
Sack told reporters that Harris had the bullets strapped to his chest, more in his pocket, and some of the magazines were found thrown on the stairs.
The police commissioner did not say how Harris was able to enter the school, which is locked and guarded by seven security guards.
Law enforcement’s response to mass shootings at schools has come under closer scrutiny following a deadly attack earlier this year in Uvalde, Texas, where it emerged executive Officers stood outside a classroom for more than an hour before confronting the shooter.
A timeline released by Sack on Tuesday would suggest the response to the St Louis shooting was much quicker, with law enforcement alerting the attacker at 9:11am. Locally, officers arrived on the scene four minutes later and the gunman opened fire before 9:25 a.m.
Raymond Parks, a dance teacher at the school who was threatened by the attacker but was not injured, said “you couldn’t ask for better” from police response.
