A shooting at a Georgia high school on Wednesday left one student injured, while a teenage suspect who fled the scene was later taken into custody, police said.
The shooting at Warner Robins High School involved two ninth-grade students and occurred just one week into the new school year, prompting a response from dozens of law enforcement officers. Warner Robins is about 102 miles (164 kilometers) southeast of Atlanta.
“Today a call that we train for every year happened to Houston County,” Sheriff Matt Moulton said at an evening news conference.
The injured student was taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. Moulton did not provide further details about the nature of the injuries.
According to the Houston County School District, the high school was placed under a code red lockdown, with students and staff secured inside their classrooms. It wasn’t immediately known whether the school had metal detectors in place.
Moulton declined to take questions at the news conference, citing the active investigation.
The sheriff said a group of students was inside a school bathroom when a verbal altercation between two students escalated into a physical fight. One student was shot at 2:15 p.m., and the suspect fled. A school resource officer arrived quickly, applied tourniquets to the student’s injuries and remained until emergency services personnel arrived.
Authorities said the suspect fled the school in an unknown direction. After reviewing surveillance footage, officers located and arrested the suspect an hour later in the Huntington Hills neighborhood, across the street from the school.
“The school threat protocol and our training was followed perfectly today," Moulton said. "Fortunately what could have been a much-worse incident was minimized to us only having one student injured.”
The school principal, Brett Wallace, said the school would be closed to students on Thursday and Friday and to staff on Thursday. Crisis counselors would be available at the school for staff on Friday and for students on Monday when they return.
He added that there would be no virtual learning for the students.
“We want our students to have the opportunity to be at home, surrounded by family, and to take the time they need to process, heal, and care for one another,” Wallace said in a statement.
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