ST LOUIS (Missouri), Oct 25: A school student and a teacher were shot dead
and several others injured in a mass shooting at a St Louis school on Monday.
The 19-year old shooter, a former student of the school, was soon killed in
police action.
The 61-year old health teacher who was killed was identified as Jean Kuczka,
a mother of five and a grandmother of seven. Alexandria Bell, 15, was the other
victim, a sophomore.
"My daughter was planning on coming out here to California and celebrate
her birthday with me on Nov. 18, but now we have to plan her funeral," Andre
Bell, Alexzandria's adoptive father, said.
The frightening incident took place at the Central Visual and Performing Arts
High School. The gunman was pronounced dead after a gunfight with authorities.
The school building that also has a school of medicine was locked down soon
after finding the shooter inside the premises. It was at 9 am. There was chaos.
The school was on the third floor.
The gunman was identified as Orlando Harris, a 2021 graduate of the school
with no criminal history, St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department said. He
was carrying an AR-15-style rifle and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. Police
said he had more than 600 rounds of ammunition.
He entered the school with a rifle in an “aggressive, violent manner" and had
almost a dozen 30-round magazines on him, sources said. Police arrived as soon
as they got a call and engaged him in a gunfight.
Several students escaped jumping out of the windows. The doors at the school
were locked and nobody knows how the shooter got in. And there were seven security
guards in the school building.
It is very easy to get guns in Missouri. The Missouri gun laws are very broad.
Anyone can carry them openly down any street. "There's really nothing we can
do," a police official admitted.
There have been 35 school shootings this year so far in the US.
