Police confirm two dead in WA State school shooting
Posted October 24, 2014 6:35 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
MARYSVILLE, WA (NEWS1130) – Two are dead and four have been hurt in a shooting inside a high school in Washington State.
A gunman opened fire inside the cafeteria just before lunch time at Marysville Pilchick High School.
Police say three of the injured are in critical condition after all were shot in the head. The fourth is in stable condition. “We are confident there is only one shooter and the shooter is deceased,” said Marysville Police Cmdr. Robb Lamoureux in a briefing.
The shooter has been identified as 14-year-old freshman Jaylen Fryberg.
A rep with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives says they have “successful trace” of the weapon used in the shooting, and say and it was legally acquired.
One student said a teacher grabbed the teen’s arm during the shooting in an effort to stop him, and Fryberg shot himself in the neck during the struggle.
“Everyone ducked under the tables and then everyone started sprinting out the doors,” a freshman student tells KOMO News. “Everyone was screaming, ‘Keep running!’ and to call the cops… We all had to help each other hop over and get out to the neighbourhood to start calling our parents. I didn’t see the kid, but I know other kids did. He just pulled out the gun in the middle of the cafeteria and started shooting,” she adds.
Charlie Harger with Seattle’s KOMO News has been at the church near the school where students were reunited with their parents.
“It really is like a war scene. These kids have been through so much and no matter how much you see it on TV or hear it on the radio, until you actually experience it, it’s like nothing they’ve ever seen before, obviously,” he recounts.
“What I found striking, was just talking to these kids as they are to either meet up with their parents or in the other cases when parents are waiting to meet with their kids, and the amount of tension… and then release when the two of them meet. I can’t tell you how many just sobbing, parents and children, reunited and just so glad to know that their safe. It really was an emotional scene.”
Harger says just last week Fryberg was named the prince for the freshman class for homecoming.
He adds there have been reports from a number of sources that the shooting was over a girl.
As of 3 p.m., hospital officials said one of the victims, a 15-year-old boy, is out of the operating room and is stable.
Marysville is about a five-minute drive north of Everett along the I-5.
