St. Louis high school shooting leaves 3 dead, including suspect; multiple injured

Three people were killed in a shooting at a high school in St. Louis Monday morning, the police commissioner for the Metropolitan Police Department said. One of the deceased included the suspect.

Police commissioner Michael Sack said a suspect entered the Central Visual and Performing Arts High School in the 9 a.m. hour with a long gun, injuring several.

Sack said officers responded quickly and entered the building, following the sound of gunfire.

When police approached the suspect, they exchanged gunfire. The suspect was hit, Sack said, and later pronounced dead at the hospital.

Eight other people were taken to the hospital, Sack said, including an adult female and a female teenager who were also pronounced dead. Sack said he believed their deaths were due to gunfire.

Sack said the other victims faced a variety of other injuries, including shrapnel, and were being treated.

“This is a heartbreaking day for all of us. This is going to be tough,” he said. 

“While, on paper, we might have nine victims … we have hundreds of others. Everyone who survived here is going to take home trauma, even the officers who responded here, the firefighters, the paramedics who worked on people here are going to experience some degree of trauma.”

Sack said the suspect appears to be in his early 20s, and is still being identified.

“(The identity) will then lead to (revealing) any relationship to a person or the school itself,” Sack said. 

Sack said the doors were locked at the school and wouldn’t give details about how the suspect got indoors, but commended a “quick response” from school security. 

Aerial video from News Nation showed dozens of vehicles outside the school, including several ambulances. 

Dozens of students were also seen gathered at a corner in an apparent evacuation. 

FOX 2 St. Louis reported police officers were seen helping students scale fences and buildings, and that officers had their guns drawn at one point. 

One student, 16-year-old Taniya Gholston, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch she was in a room when the shooter entered.
“All I heard was two shots and he came in there with a gun,” Gholston said. “And I was trying to run and I couldn’t run. Me and him made eye contact but I made it out because his gun got jammed. But we saw blood on the floor.”

TV reports said officers entered the area with guns drawn shortly after 9 a.m. Crime tape was placed around the school and some parents arrived to pick up kids and check on their safety. The district, in a tweet, said students could be picked up at another school building or a nearby grocery store.

Central Visual and Performing Arts High School is a magnet school specializing in visual art, musical art and performing art. The district website says the school’s “educational program is designed to create a nurturing environment where students receive a quality academic and artistic education that prepares them to compete successfully at the post-secondary level or perform competently in the world of work.”

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