The shooting came after an altercation in one of the school’s main hallways before classes on Monday morning, with text messages from a student sent to his or her mother at 7:13 a.m. the student had fled the scene.
The fight was broken up by the school’s resource officer, who engaged the single shooter, police said.
“We are incredibly saddened that we had a loss of life on one of our campuses,” Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Superintendent Dr. Clayton Wilcox said. “And what makes it doubly worse is it was one of our students who was the shooter.”
Wilcox said an investigation would take place and the school would try to improve the situation for the future.
“We don’t actively search every bad that comes into school each and every day. I will tell you from one perspective, yes we failed. Maybe we didn’t intervene early enough in a bullying situation. I don’t really know what took place,” he said. “I don’t know how a young person gets a handgun in the state of North Carolina but we'll look into all those things and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Neither the shooter nor the victim has been identified.
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One student said that he was in the cafeteria eating breakfast when he witnessed the fight that led to the shooting.“I’m right there, I hear pop, pop, pop, and everyone’s running, people are trampling over each other.”
“It was right there in front of me,” he added, noting that a number of students fled the scene and ducked into nearby classrooms.
“We worked really hard on school security the last six or seven months,” Wilcox said. “We will review procedures and security plans and perhaps will do things that are a little more aggressive.”
The school was placed in lockdown and then lifted at approximately 9:15 a.m.
Families were told they could pick up their children but that students were free to stay on campus as classes would proceed for those remaining.
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