Dallas County Sheriff Adam Infante says the gunman in the shooting at Perry High School has been identified.
Multiple people have been wounded in a shooting at a high school in Perry, Iowa in the US, officials said.
The shooting at Perry High School took place just after 7:30 am (13:30 GMT) and resulted in “multiple victims”, Dallas County Sheriff Adam Infante said at a news briefing on Thursday.
He said the extent and exact number of injuries were still being determined.
A spokesperson for UnityPoint Health, which operates a nearby Des Moines hospital, confirmed that two gunshot victims had arrived there.
There were few students and faculty in the building at the time of the incident, Infante said.
The suspect in the shooting has reportedly died due to what investigators believe is a self-inflicted gunshot wound, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity.
At the briefing, Infante said that the shooter had been identified but gave no further details.
Eighteen-year-old Rachael Kares told The Associated Press that she was finishing jazz band practice when she and her bandmates heard what she described as four gunshots spaced apart.
“We all just jumped,” Kares said. “My band teacher looked at us and yelled ‘Run!’ So we ran”.
Kares added that she ran out past the football field with others from the school and heard people yelling, “Get out! Get Out!” as more gunshots were heard.
FBI and US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) agents have responded to the scene, and the US attorney general has been briefed, a US Department of Justice spokesperson said.
Dirk Cavanaugh, the mayor of Perry, said, “There are a bunch of speculative numbers floating around.”
“We have no confirmed numbers of who was involved yet,” he added.
The attack occurred as Iowa is expected to hold the first statewide contest for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination in 11 days.
Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur who founded a biotechnology company, was scheduled to hold a rally in Perry but changed the event to an in-person prayer after reports of the shooting, a campaign spokesperson said.
Source
:
Al Jazeera and news agencies
