A school shooting in Iowa, where Republican nominating contests begin next week for the US presidential election, prompted prayers from among those wanting to be the party’s candidate, but elicited no substantial policy proposals among the top contenders.
The incident saw a sixth-grade student killed and five people wounded after a teenager opened fire on the first day of classes following the winter break, law enforcement officials said.
People took shelter in classrooms, barricaded offices and fled the barrage of bullets fired by the suspect, a 17-year-old pupil at the school in Perry, who died of what investigators believe was a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Perry High School principal Dan Marburger was among the five who were injured on Thursday as students returned from their winter break, authorities said.
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The victim, a sixth grader, aged about 12, had not yet been named on Friday.
The perpetrator was identified as Dylan Butler by authorities, but no information was provided about a possible motive.
Two friends and their mother told the Associated Press that Butler was a quiet person who had been bullied for years.
Authorities said Butler had a pump-action shotgun and a small-calibre handgun.
Mitch Mortvedt, the state investigation division’s assistant director, said authorities also found a “pretty rudimentary” improvised explosive device and rendered it safe.
The suspect’s motive was being investigated and authorities were looking into “a number of social media posts” he made around the time of the shooting, Mr Mortvedt added.
Shortly before the shooting, Butler posted a photograph on TikTok inside a toilet at Perry High School, a law enforcement official said. The photograph was captioned “now we wait” and the song Stray Bullet by the German band KMFDM accompanied it.
Sisters Yesenia Roeder and Khamya Hall, both 17, said alongside their mother, Alita, that Butler had been bullied relentlessly since elementary school, but matters escalated recently when his younger sister was picked on, too.
Perry High School senior pupil Ava Augustus was awaiting a counsellor in a school office when she heard three shots. Unable to flee through a small window, she and others barricaded the door and were ready to throw things at the assailant, if necessary.
She said: “And then we hear: ‘He’s down. You can go out.’ And I run and you can just see glass everywhere, blood on the floor. I get to my car and they’re taking a girl out of the auditorium who had been shot in her leg.”
Hundreds of people gathered for a candlelight prayer vigil on Thursday evening at a local park where, hours earlier, pupils had been brought to reunite with their families after the shooting.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who is locked in a close battle for second place in Iowa with former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, said authorities had a “responsibility to create safe environments” at school, but the federal government “is probably not going to be leading that effort”.
Most of the candidates ardently oppose any efforts to regulate guns and routinely dismiss calls for more gun control after mass shootings as attempts to politicise tragedies.
Vivek Ramaswamy, who is polling fourth in Iowa, said in a statement that he cancelled a campaign event due to take place in Perry, where the school shooting happened, and changed it into “a prayer and conversation”. Ms Haley offered her sympathies on the social media platform X.
Former president Donald Trump, the clear front-runner who looks set to face president Joe Biden in November’s election, made no public comment about the incident. – AP/Reuters