Gunman, Victim Dead in Oregon School Shooting
A shooting at an Oregon high school Tuesday morning left one student and the gunman dead, the local police chief said.
Police responded to a report of gunfire about 8:00 a.m. at Reynolds High School in Troutdale, east of Portland, a Troutdale police official said.
“A gunman entered the high school this morning, shot one student. Unfortunately, that student has died,” said Troutdale police chief Scott Anderson, according to the French news agency AFP.
“The gunman was located and the gunman is also deceased. … The situation is contained,” he added.
A local law enforcement official said that 30 to 40 Troutdale officers responded to the scene. Multnomah County Sheriff’s deputies also were involved, police said.
About an hour later the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office said the situation was under control.
The Oregonian reported that teacher Todd Rispler was also injured in the shooting.
Nikki Vance, the mother of a student at the school, said Rispler has taught at the school since at least 1999, The Oregonian reported.
Lt. Steve Alexander, a spokesman for the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office, said police believe there was just one shooter.
Second largest school in Oregon
Reynolds High, with 2,800 students, is the second largest high school in Oregon, drawing students from five surrounding cities, according to The Oregonian. It is named for a now-defunct aluminum plant that operated near the school.
Students were evacuated from the school, hands on their heads, and reunited with their parents in a nearby supermarket parking lot, the AP reported.
About 60 law enforcement officers and 19 medical personnel were on the scene at the school, according to local KOIN television.
The shooting is the latest in a spate of such incidents over the past few weeks in the western United States, AFP reported.
On May 23, a college student, who had mental problems and was the son of a Hollywood director, went on a gun rampage at a college campus in Santa Barbara, north of Los Angeles, killing six people and then himself.
On June 5, a gunman killed one person and injured two others on a college campus in Seattle, in what the local mayor denounced as America’s “epidemic of gun violence.”
On Sunday, a couple with possible links to anti-government militia shot dead two police officers execution-style in a Las Vegas pizza restaurant, before killing another civilian nearby and then themselves.
