American teen guns down one, wounds five in Iowa school

A 17-year-old has opened fire at a small-town Iowa high school on the first day of school after the winter break, killing a sixth-grader and wounding five others as students barricaded in offices and fled in panic.

Among those wounded by the shooter in Perry school were four other students and a school administrator, said Mitch Mortvedt, assistant director of the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, on Thursday.

Perry has about 8,000 residents and is about 64 kilometres northwest of Des Moines, on the edge of the state capital's metropolitan area.

It is home to a large pork-processing plant, and low-slung, single-storey homes spread among trees now shorn of their leaves by winter. The high school and middle school are connected, sitting on the east edge of town.

Perry High School senior Ava Augustus said she was in a counsellor's office when she heard three shots.

She and other people barricaded the door, preparing to throw things if necessary, with a window being too small for an escape.

"And then we hear 'He's down. You can go out,'" Augustus said through tears.

"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."

Three gunshot victims were taken by ambulance to Iowa Methodist Medical Center in Des Moines, a spokesperson for its health system said.

Some other patients were transported to a second hospital in Des Moines, a spokesperson for MercyOne Des Moines Medical Center confirmed, declining to comment on the number of patients or their statuses.

Vigils were planned on Thursday evening at a park and a local church. A post on the high school's Facebook page said it would be closed on Friday, with counselling services planned at the public library on Friday and Saturday.

In Washington, US Attorney General Merrick Garland was briefed on the shooting.

FBI agents from the Omaha-Des Moines office are assisting with the investigation led by the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation.

Witnesses

An active shooter was reported at 7:37 am on Thursday, and officers arrived seven minutes later, Dallas County Sheriff Adam Infante said. Emergency vehicles surrounded the middle and high school.

Zander Shelley, 15, was in a hallway when he heard gunshots and dashed into a classroom, according to his father, Kevin Shelley.

Zander was grazed twice and hid in the classroom before texting his father at 7:36 am.

Kevin Shelley, who drives a garbage truck, told his boss he had to run.

"It was the most scared I've been in my entire life," he said.

Rachael Kares, an 18-year-old senior, was wrapping up 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 and many others from the school ran out past the football field, as she heard people yelling, "Get out! Get out!" She said she heard additional shots as she ran, but didn’t know how many. She was more concerned about getting home to her 3-year-old son.

"At that moment, I didn’t care about anything except getting out because I had to get home with my son," she said.

Erica Jolliff said that her daughter, a ninth grader, reported getting rushed from the school grounds at 7:45 am.

Distraught, Jolliff was still looking for her son Amir, a sixth grader, one hour later.

"I just want to know that he’s safe and OK," Jolliff said. "They won’t tell me anything."

'Psychological sickness'

The shooting occurred in the backdrop of Iowa's first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses.

GOP candidate Vivek Ramaswamy had a campaign event scheduled in Perry at 9 am, about 2.4 kilometres from the high school, but cancelled it to have a prayer and intimate discussion with area residents.

Mass shootings across the US have long brought calls for stricter gun laws from gun safety advocates, and Thursday's did within hours.

But that idea has been a non-starter for many Republicans, particularly in rural, GOP-leaning states like Iowa.

As of July 2021, Iowa does not require a permit to purchase a handgun or carry a firearm in public, though it mandates a background check for a person buying a handgun without a permit.

Ramaswamy said the shooting is a sign of a "psychological sickness" in the country.

In Des Moines, GOP rival and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said that gun violence "is more of a local and state issue" in an interview with the Des Moines Register and NBC News.

The high school in Perry is part of the 1,785-student Perry Community School District.

The town is more diverse than Iowa as a whole, with census figures showing that 31 percent of the residents are Hispanic, compared to less than 7 percent for the state. Those figures also show that nearly 19 percent of the town’s residents were born outside the US.