A 13-year-old student at a Nevada middle school opened fire on Monday on campus, killing a math teacher before turning the gun on himself, authorities said.
Two other students were seriously wounded in the shooting, which according to witnesses occurred on the school’s basketball court as lessons for the day were about to begin.
“We were at the basketball court, and we heard a pop — like a loud pop — and everybody was screaming, and the teacher came to investigate,” a student, told the Reno Gazette-Journal.
“I thought it was a firecracker at first, but the student was pointing a gun at the teacher after the teacher told him to put it down, and the student fired a shot at the teacher, and the teacher fell and everybody ran away.” The harrowing incident occurred around 7:15 am as the school’s 600 students were arriving for classes in the town of Sparks, 7 kilometres east of Reno near Nevada’s border with California.
“I was hanging around with my friends, and then a kid started getting mad, and he pulled a gun, and he just shot my friend,” one student told local reporters.
A teacher approached the armed boy, who warned the teacher to back away before shooting him, the student said.
The teacher was identified as Michael Landsberry, 45, a former US Marine, who according to witnesses had tried to persuade the shooter to put down the gun. He is survived by his wife and two step-daughters.
“To hear he was trying to protect those kids doesn’t surprise me at all,” his sister-in-law, Chanda Landsberry, told the Reno Gazette-Journal. “He could have ducked and hid, but he didn’t. That’s not who he is.” The name of the suspected gunman was not released. According to US news reports he used a gun that belonged to his parents.
Middle schools in the US generally encompass students in grades 6 to 8, ranging in age from 11 to 14.