LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A juvenile was arrested Tuesday in the shooting of a high school student that prompted a school-wide lockdown and evacuation, police in Louisville, Kentucky, said.
Sgt. Phil Russell said the alleged shooter was picked up about three hours after a Fern Creek Traditional High School student was wounded Tuesday afternoon.
The wounded student had non-life threatening injuries and was reunited with parents at University Hospital, Russell said. He didn’t say if the injured student and shooter knew each other or if the shooter was a student at Fern Creek.
Russell said the suspect left the 1,400-student school immediately after firing the shot.
“It appears it is an isolated incident that happened just inside the school,” Russell said. “Obviously a large crime scene, but it was isolated to just inside the building.”
Video from television stations showed police escorting students with their hands over their heads out of the school in the southern part of the city to a nearby softball field.
Police cars surrounded the 91-year-old school.
Dajon Rhodes, a 17-year-old junior at the school, was on the third floor when she heard shots fired.
“I just heard a loud pow-pow and I took off running,” Rhodes said.
Rhodes, who said she has a class with the student who was shot, she ran from the room away from the sound. After a few minutes, students were herded back into the classrooms and the doors locked. The police came and told everyone to get on the ground and stay away from the door.
“They were running around with their guns out,” Rhodes said.
Tiata Rodgers, parent of a senior at Fern Creek said her 17-year-old son called right after hearing a gunshot.
Rodgers said her son whispered into the phone, but she didn’t believe him. Rogers said her son told her, “No this is real. They’re shooting.” The student said after the shooting “everybody just went running everywhere, shoving kids in classrooms and locking the doors,” Rodgers said.
Rodgers lives nearby and made beeline for the campus.
“I jumped up and ran over here,” Rodgers said.
Jefferson County Public Schools spokesman Ben Jackey said the school went into lockdown with students put in classrooms. After police arrived, students were led out before being taken to a nearby park for dismissal.
Students at a nearby elementary school with a later dismissal were restricted to their building, Jackey said.
“This is senseless. This is unacceptable,” Jackey said. “This cannot happen in our school. This is not the type of things students should be exposed to.”
Traffic around the school was backed up as parents streamed into the area to pick up their children. Officers were directing traffic to a nearby park, but parents were parking their cars and walking down the street to meet their children.
The school, which opened in 1923, concentrates on communications, media and arts. It has a student-run radio station, WFHS.
Earlier Tuesday, a student was shot by a fellow student outside a North Carolina high school just minutes before classes began, and the suspect then waited for police to arrive, authorities said.
That shooting happened around 7:40 a.m. as the two male students argued in an on-campus courtyard at Albemarle High School, Albemarle Police Chief William Halliburton said at a news conference.
The shooter put down his gun after firing two shots, walked into the principal’s office and waited for police, Halliburton said.
