A shooting at an Indiana middle school Thursday morning has left a teenage suspect dead, police report. According to local media, the suspect took his own life. Law-enforcement officials are said to have received a tip early Thursday that there was a threat at Dennis Middle School in Richmond, in the eastern part of the state. Police and school officials were notified that an armed individual was heading to the school with the intention of hurting people, Richmond Police Department Chief Jim Branum said, The Indianapolis Star reports. The Palladium-Item reports officers arrived at the scene around the same time as the suspect and gunfire was exchanged between them outside the building. The suspect then went inside the school, where officials say he took his own life. With the school on lockdown, the suspect couldn’t get into any of the classrooms, something that likely saved the lives of students and staff, Branum said, according to IndyStar. “The police response was exactly as it should have been,” Branum said. “Everybody here was prepared for a confrontation.” The school district reported at 9 a.m. local time that students were safe and that the building had been secured.
But parents who gathered at the scene told reporters that students had been worried an attack was imminent. “I’m mad. I’m scared. The kids have been talking about this kid for a week,” Rachel Ventura, the parent of a sixth- and an eighth-grader at Dennis, told the Palladium-Item. “They [administrators] look past things. They don’t think this is going to happen, and then it happens.”
