A shooting at an elementary school in Bend, Oregon, has left multiple victims, police said Thursday, adding that the suspected shooter is dead.
Four people, including three children, were killed in the shooting, US networks reported, citing unnamed law enforcement sources.
“We don’t have confirmation yet who shot the suspect. It may have been a bystander. At this time, we have multiple victims,” Sheila Miller, a spokesperson for the Bend Police Department, said at a news conference.
At least two people were transported to a hospital, but there were no details on their condition.
Bend is a city of some 100,000 people in central Oregon, about 175 miles (280 kilometers) southeast of Portland.
Students evacuated as police respond to shooting
An updated post later said law enforcement was escorting students by bus to a separate location, where they could reunite with their families. Silver Rail Elementary School serves kindergarten through fifth grade, roughly children aged 5 to 11. It has about 450 students and 40 staff members, Miller said.
Miller said officers were alerted to a critical incident at 1 p.m. local time (2000 GMT) and arrived at the scene about two minutes later.
“Seconds later, we received word over the radio that the suspect in this incident was down,” she said.
US grapples with recurring mass shootings
The United States, where firearms are widely available, experiences frequent gun violence, with thousands of people killed each year. It has the highest rate of gun-related deaths among high-income countries.
The deadliest school shooting in US history took place at Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007. South Korean student Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people and wounded 17 others before taking his own life.
There have been more than 365 mass shootings in the US so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people are shot, excluding the shooter.
This is a developing story…
Edited by: Sean Sinico
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