Houston, Texas | Police and local media reported that a gunman opened fire on a Texas school Wednesday, wounding several people.
“We are at the scene of a school shooting in Timberview,” Arlington Police said on Twitter.
Pictures broadcast on television showed a strong police presence around the institution, which accommodates less than 2,000 students in this city located between Dallas and Fort Worth, in the north of the state.
The local NBC station claimed that the shooting killed “several people”.
“At least two people have been injured” and police are “actively looking for the suspect,” Mayor Jim Ross told NBC.
“It appears that several teachers were affected, and at least one student was seen being carried on a stretcher,” said Ontario Hewitt, a parent of a student interviewed by local CBS at the scene.
Students confine themselves to the school. “My daughter is in class,” Hewitt said, “and my son is a little scared.”
School authorities indicated on Twitter that they are organizing the creation of a staging area for families of students, who will “be evacuated by bus once the school is secured”.
School shootings have been a real disaster in American society since the Columbine, Colorado massacre in April 1999.
They are usually reported by local media, but rarely make national media headlines. Only a bloodbath, as happened at a school in Parkland, Florida in February 2018, that killed 17 people, has now caused a shock wave.