18-year-old student grabbed a gun and opened fire during a classroom brawl at a Texas high school on Wednesday, two individuals were shot and two others were injured, according to authorities.
After the shooting at Timberview High School in Arlington, a suburb of Dallas, assistant police chief Kevin Kolbye reported a suspect, Timothy George Simpkins, had been apprehended.
Simpkins, who surrendered himself in after fleeing the school, will face three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, according to Kolbye. A.45 calibre gun was seized, according to police.
Kolbye told reporters, “This is not a random act of violence.” “A student got into an altercation and pulled out a weapon.”
According to the police officer, three people were taken to the hospital, two of them had gunshot wounds. A 15-year-old boy was in critical condition, according to local media, while the other injuries were not life-threatening.
A fourth individual, a pregnant woman, was treated and released on the site after suffering minor injuries.
More than “two or three shots” were fired, according to Kolbye.
He remarked, “We recognise this is a painful experience for these youngsters.” “We’ve beefed up security at all of our Arlington schools by adding more police officers.”
Following the incident, the school was locked down, and Arlington police set up a secure space for parents to reunite with their children.
Following the incident, television footage showed a large police presence surrounding the school, with armed policemen scanning the sprawling campus and ambulances and fire vehicles on the site.
After the lockdown was lifted, a fleet of yellow school buses was dispatched to transport pupils from the school.
Timberview High School has approximately 1,900 pupils enrolled.
Following a year of mostly online instruction, US schools have returned to the classroom, reigniting fears of on-campus shootings, which have been reported in many small-scale events in recent weeks.
According to data obtained by The Washington Post, more than 256,000 children have been exposed to gun violence in US schools since 13 people were killed in the Columbine High School massacre in Colorado in 1999.
Those caught up in the conflict, such as witnesses and those forced to flee educational facilities as gunshots began, are included in the statistic.
According to a database maintained by the Washington Post, there were 29 school shootings in 2018 and 27 in 2019. Shootings at colleges and universities, suicides, and unintentional discharges are not included in the Post’s numbers.
In 2018, a former student at a high school in Parkland, Florida, killed 17 people in the deadliest recent school shooting in the United States.
(With inputs from various sources)
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The Chenab Times News Desk