Shooter kills teacher, three children at Oregon elementary school

• Three children and one teacher were killed in a shooting at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon. A 16-year-old suspect was shot dead by an armed bystander.
• Police said the attacker forced entry by shooting at locked doors. Another child and a teacher were critically injured, and officers gave emergency aid at the scene.
• Families waited anxiously as students were moved to safety. Leaders called it an “unthinkable tragedy” and renewed demands for stronger gun control.

LOS ANGELES – A teenager shot and killed three children and a teacher on Oct 15 at an elementary school in the US state of Oregon, police said, adding the assailant was later killed by an armed bystander who pursued him into the building.

Officers rushed to Silver Rail Elementary in Bend, a city of about 100,000 in the nation’s north-west, after reports of a shooter on campus in the afternoon on Oct 15.

The three children who died on the scene were aged five, eight and 11, said Bend police chief Mike Krantz. Another child and a teacher were being treated for critical injuries after the shooting.

The United States, where firearms are readily available, has a long and painful history of gun violence, with thousands of people killed every year. It has the highest rate of gun-related deaths among all developed nations.

People gathered in the city’s Drake Park in the evening on Oct 15 for a candelight vigil remembering the victims.

“I’m in total complete shock, and scared and sad,” said Betsy, who did not give her last name. She spent around 10 minutes contemplating a circle of candles and flowers.

“It’s awful, but it also has brought people together,” she told AFP.

Krantz, the police chief, told journalists that the department first learnt of an active shooter after a call from a person who reported being shot at multiple times by a person carrying a long gun.

Dozens of emergency calls then reported that a shooter had entered the school and all law enforcement in the area were called to the scene, Krantz said.

Officers arrived at 1:02pm local time (4.02am on Oct 16 Singapore time) within minutes of the calls, said the police chief.

“Moments later, an officer reported that the suspect had been shot by a community member who had seen the suspect enter the school and pursued him into the school and engaged him,” Krantz continued.

“Our officers entered the building and confirmed the suspect was dead.”

One seven-year-old and one 54-year-old teacher with critical injuries were transported to a local hospital, he said.

The police chief said the investigation was in its early stages, but told the press conference it appeared “the shooter had forced their way into the school by shooting at locked doors.”

He added that the 16-year-old shooter was a Bend resident.

‘Unthinkable tragedy’

Between 400 and 450 children attend Silver Rail Elementary, where more than 40 staff work, a police spokesperson had said earlier.

After a lockdown, Bend-La Pine School District said law enforcement was escorting students in buses to a separate location, where families could reunite with their children.

The district’s superintendent, Steve Cook, tearfully called the day’s events “an unthinkable tragedy”.

“We are heartbroken. We are horrified. This is the kind of thing you hear about in other places, and pray that it never happens here,” he told reporters.

Parents were anxiously waiting at the site near a church, where parent Drew Sharp told CBS News: “I have faith that he’s okay and that he’ll be alright.”

Sharp said his son was a fifth grader, the highest grade in the school, and that children were disembarking from the bus youngest to oldest.

“Which makes sense,” Sharp said, but “it’s just more time waiting.”

Classes on Oct 17 at schools across the district along with activities and athletic events were cancelled, Bend-La Pine said in a statement.

The elementary school is approximately 270km south-east of the city Portland. It serves primary-age students in kindergarten through fifth grade.

‘Cannot keep accepting this’

The deadliest school shooting in US history took place at Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007, when South Korean student Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people and wounded 17 others before taking his own life.

There have been more than 360 mass shootings in the US so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as four or more people shot.

“Our hearts are with the terrified children and the families anxiously waiting to hear that their loved ones are safe,” GIFFORDS, a gun safety organisation, said on X.

“We cannot keep accepting this as a fact of life.”

The Oct 15 shooting was followed by a painfully familiar chorus of calls for action on gun control, pleas that have resulted in little meaningful change.

In the face of decades of massacres akin to the one on Oct 15, the powerful US pro-gun lobby has given millions of dollars to primarily conservative politicians in a successful bid to keep gun laws loose.

“They’re killing our babies. Shredding our kids with lead. Forcing us to live in fear,” said Janelle Bynum, an Oregon congresswoman, in a statement.

“This continues to happen,” she said later, speaking on CNN. “And it seems as if the adults don’t care.” AFP