Four students were wounded in a Dallas high school shooting on Tuesday, a school police official said, while a teacher’s quick thinking is being credited for thwarting further violence.
The students were injured at Wilmer-Hutchins High School, said Assistant Chief Christina Smith of the Dallas Independent School District Police Department. She said the suspect has not been arrested, a reversal from an earlier news conference in which an official said a person had been captured.
Police have identified the suspect but were not disclosing the identity to the public, Smith said.
All four students were taken to nearby hospitals to be treated for non-life-threatening injuries, Smith said. Jason Evans, a Dallas Fire-Rescue spokesman, told the Dallas Morning News that three of the students were between the ages of 15 and 18 and that all were injured by gunfire.
Officials did not explain how the shooter got the gun onto campus, which requires students to walk through metal detectors and carry only clear backpacks. However, Smith said the gun was brought in outside of regular intake hours.
“So it was not a failure of our staff, of our protocols, or of the machinery that we have,” Smith said.
Teacher directed suspect away from campus
Dallas Independent School District Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde said at a news conference that a teacher in the classroom directed the suspect away from the school, preventing the situation from escalating.
“The teacher is a very humble individual, and he was able to direct the student away from the campus so that he could take care of, first, the injured students, and secondly, to ensure that the alleged suspect did not enter into the rest of the school building,” Elizalde told reporters. “So that’s why I know how much more was avoided because he was directed away from the school.”
Police responded to the shooting shortly after 1 p.m. local time. Students were seen leaving the campus and heading toward the nearby Wilmer-Hutchins Eagle Stadium as frantic parents arrived to look for their children.
“This is absolutely unacceptable and unimaginable but it is happening across schools in America,” Elizalde said.
Classes were canceled for the rest of the week. She urged the public not to normalize the shooting, adding that students not only need to be safe but also feel safe.
“I refuse to say that we will normalize these behaviors. I refuse and I hope that everyone joins me,” she added. “This can never become acceptable. We can and we must eradicate these types of situations. We must all come to grips with the fact that the solution is a collective responsibility. This is not something that a school can individually do.”
Parent after shooting: ‘This is going on too much at this school’
On April 12, 2024, another shooting happened at the same high school when a student was shot inside a classroom in a targeted attack stemming from a dispute, according to CBS News. After the shooting, students participated in a walkout to protest a failure in campus security, KXAS-TV reported.
Tara Dobbin said her oldest son was at Wilmer-Hutchins during last year’s shooting, and that her youngest was there on Tuesday and had to jump from a classroom window after hearing gunfire, escaping to a nearby elementary school, KXAS-TV reported.
“This is going on too much at this school,” Dobbin told the outlet. “Last year, my oldest son was a senior here, and there was a shooting. Now he’s here with same thing going on. It’s ridiculous.”
Freshman Salondra Ibanez told KDFW that she heard gunshots while her teacher was going over classwork but that it took a while for her to realize what the sounds were.
“I was processing it and it went off again and it was faster this time,” Ibanez told the outlet. “So that’s when me and my classmates, we got up and we went behind the teacher’s desk and I was making sure my classmates were OK and then we went into the storage room and we waited there until we got escorted out.”
Gov. Greg Abbott calls shooting ‘senseless act of violence’
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called the shooting a “senseless act of violence” and said he has offered support to law enforcement in bringing justice to the person responsible.
“I offered to support the school district families, students, and staff and to provide law enforcement with the tools they need to arrest the criminals involved and bring them to justice,” Abbott said in a statement. “Since I’ve been governor, Texas has provided over $3 billion in school safety funding. This session, I am seeking an additional $500 million to further safeguard schools across the state.”
Critics have long condemned Abbott’s handling of gun violence at schools, especially after the May 2022 mass shooting that killed 19 elementary school children and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas. The governor declined to make 21 the minimum age to legally purchase combat-style rifles, like the one used by 18-year-old Salvador Ramos.
“We want to end school shootings, but we cannot do that by making false promises,” Abbott said during a debate at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley on Sept. 30, 2022. “We need to get to the bottom of what is really ailing our communities, and that is the mental health that is leading people to engage in school shootings.”
This story has been updated to add new information.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Dallas high school shooting: 4 students injured; suspect at large
