A gunman opened fire at a public school near Spokane, Wash., on Wednesday morning, killing one person and wounding five others before being caught, according to reports.
Three of the victims were admitted to Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center and Children’s Hospital in Spokane, chief physician Dr. Jeff Collins told The Spokesman-Review.
“We’re all hands on deck,” Collins told the paper. “We train for this regularly.”
Three patients are in stable condition, hospital spokeswoman Liz DeRuyter said. No others were expected, she said.
Their ages and the extent of their injuries weren’t immediately available.
“The shooter is in the back seat of a patrol car right now,” Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich said at the scene, the Seattle Times reported.
Spokane public schools posted a tweet shortly before 2 p.m. EST that a lockdown was in effect near Freeman High School in Rockford.
At least five ambulances and a LifeFlight helicopter were sent to the scene, the newspaper reported.
Annie Baxter, whose two daughters attended a middle school across the street from the high school, told the Spokesman-Review that kids were running into buildings when she pulled up at about 10:15 a.m. local time.
Classes were about to begin because it’s a “late start” day, Baxter said.
“They did a modified lockdown drill yesterday,” she said. “I thought it was weird because they wouldn’t do (a drill) two days in a row.”
Baxter told the paper she was being held in a multipurpose room with about 30 other people in Freeman Elementary School.
She said she was told that at least one person was shot but is expected to survive.
“I saw someone carrying a gurney into the elementary school but I didn’t know why,” she said.
In addition to the Freeman school district, the Central Valley and Mead districts also were on lockdown due to the shooting, KHQ reported.
Freeman High School has 331 enrolled students.
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