UNDER FIRE

14 Wounded in America’s Second School Shooting This Week

Two students were killed by a 15-year-old student in Kentucky. One was wounded in Texas on Monday. The academic year is halfway over and there have been almost 50 shootings.

Two teenagers are dead after a school shooting in Kentucky, one day after a shooting wounded one girl at a Texas school.

The shooting occurred at Marshall County High School in Benton, Kentucky, around 8 a.m. on Tuesday. A 15-year-old male entered the school and opened fire with a handgun, officials said at a press conference. Fourteen people were shot and two of them, both 15-year-old students, were killed, Gov. Matt Bevin told reporters. The shooter is in in custody and will be charged with murder, officials said.

“Everyone is just scared. Just terrified for their kids,” Mitchell Garland, father of a 16-year-old sophomore, told the AP.

“To walk in, the backpacks laying around, the phones laying around, going off… it’s indescribable,” Marshall County Attorney Jeffery Edwards told the Louisville Courier-Journal.

Benton is 35 miles away from West Paducah, Kentucky, where a 14-year-old student killed three classmates in 1997. The Heath High School shooting was overshadowed two years later by Columbine, where two gunmen killed 13 students.

On Monday, a gunman shot a 15-year-old girl at Italy High School in Texas. The victim was hospitalized with a gunshot wound. The alleged shooter, a 16-year-old student, was charged with two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, the Ellis County district attorney said Tuesday. The suspect has not been named.

Ellis County police know where the suspect obtained the .380 semi-automatic handgun, according an AP report.

“I saw him take out the gun and shoot the girl. After he shot her twice, he tried to shoot the guy she was with. He just went out the back door,” sophomore Edgar Rodriguez told CBS-Dallas Fort Worth.

A teacher approached the shooter when he was firing, according to a KWTX.

The victim is in recovery at Parkland Memorial hospital. “It’s an amazing demonstration of her strength,” said Ellis County school official Lee Joffre.

There have been 47 school shootings in the United States so far this school year, not counting this week’s incidents, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, an advocacy organization. There were 36 school shootings occured from August 2016 to May 2017, according to Everytown. The nonprofit defines a school shooting as “any time a firearm discharges a live round” inside a school or on a campus; they record nonfatal and fatal shootings, including suicide attempts.

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Elisha Brown

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