A 17-year-old high school student shot two school administrators Wednesday in Denver, according to police. Later that night, authorities discovered a body in the woods near his car and identified that the body belonged to the shooter.
One administrator was released from the hospital in the afternoon while the other remains hospitalized in serious condition, The Associated Press reported.
The shooting happened at East High School — a school of 2,500 students fraught with stress about school shootings after a student was killed outside the school recently, according to AP.
What happened in the Denver school shooting?
Just before 10 a.m., the suspect was being searched as a routine “part of a ‘safety plan’ that required him to be patted down daily,” officials told AP.
Upon the search, a gun was discovered, and “the student fired several shots, injuring both administrators,” The New York Times reported.
How are Denver school officials responding to the shooting?
In response to the incident, Denver Public Schools Superintendent Alex Marrero informed the school board that “he will have an armed officer at each of the district’s comprehensive high schools for the rest of the year,” according to Chalkbeat Colorado.
School board members voted to remove police officers from schools in 2020, but Marrero says he’s willing “to accept the consequences,” per Chalkbeat Colorado. The board responded in support of the decision.
“The Board of Education supports the decision of Superintendent Marrero to work in partnership with local law enforcement to create safer learning spaces across Denver Public Schools for the remainder of this school year,” the board wrote, per Chalkbeat Colorado. “In addition we will continue to work collaboratively with our community partners including law enforcement and our local and state legislature to make our community safer.”
According to the Gun Violence Archive, the shooting at East High School marks the 18th shooting in 2023 “at an elementary or secondary school in the U.S. in which at least one person was injured or killed,” per CNN.