CNN –
A teenager and an adult were killed Monday morning in a shooting at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School in St. Louis, Police Commissioner Michael Sack said.
Police located the shooter and he was shot during an exchange of gunfire, he said. He was later pronounced dead, Sack said. Police previously said the gunman was in custody.
Authorities did not immediately identify the victims or the shooter, but Sack said during a news conference that those killed were a woman who was pronounced dead at a hospital and a teenage girl who died at the scene. He said the shooter was a man who appeared to be in his 20s.
Eight victims were taken to an area hospital, the commissioner said. News of the shooting came through social media.
Police arrived within minutes, Sack said, and spoke with students who described the attacker as carrying “a long gun.”
Sack did not say how the gunman entered the school, but said the school’s doors were locked, which delayed the suspect and bought responding officers time.
“The security staff did an excellent job identifying the suspect’s efforts to break in and immediately notified other staff and made sure we were contacted,” Sack said.
The Metropolitan Police Department of the St. Louis reported the active shooter on Twitter and about 45 minutes later tweeted, “The scene is secure at this time and there is no active threat.”
The school district is devastated after Monday’s shooting, he said in a statement. CVPA and two neighboring schools have been evacuated to a reunification site, and all schools in the district will remain closed for the rest of the day, St. Louis.
Speaking by phone, math teacher David Williams said gunfire erupted shortly after 9 a.m. (10 a.m. ET) and everyone went into “drill mode,” turning off lights, locking doors and clustering in the corners so they couldn’t see each other.
There was a knock on the door and it shook, she said.
“Someone was trying to open the door,” Williams said.
Sirens blared in the distance and then Williams heard three shots, he said. Someone in an adult voice could be heard yelling, “You’re all going to die of shit,” she recalled.
Shortly after, a bullet came through one of the windows in her classroom, Williams said.
The shots picked up the pace, he said. Where the first three shots sounded like they came from a gun, the rapid fire of the subsequent shots led Williams to think they came from a semi-automatic weapon, he said.
Then, tactical team officers arrived, a huge group of them, well organized, and there was another round of gunfire before Williams heard a woman announcing herself as a police officer, he said.
Williams and the students ran for an emergency exit, he said, adding that the ordeal lasted about 40 minutes.
Police confronted the shooter on the third floor, where Williams’ classroom is located, Sack said.
The approximately 400-student high school is a magnet school about 6 miles southwest of downtown.
Students were being evacuated from campus “to safe and secure locations,” the district said. People are asked to avoid the area and parents have been told they can pick up their children at Gateway Stem High School, a mile and a half north of CVPA.
News of the shooting comes the same day Michigan teenager Ethan Crumbley pleaded guilty to murder charges in a Michigan school shooting last year that left four people dead and seven injured. On November 1, Nikolas Cruz will be sentenced for the February 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, where 17 people died.
As the shooting unfolded in St. Louis, a Michigan prosecutor addressed the nation’s gun violence in the wake of Crumbley’s guilty plea.
“It’s not just about sharing with other departments. Gun violence is preventable. That’s what I’ve learned, and the fact that there’s another school shooting doesn’t surprise me, which is horrible,” said Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald. “It’s preventable, and never , we should never allow this to be something we have to live with.”
The FBI field office in St. Louis is assisting local law enforcement in their response to the shooting, spokeswoman Rebecca Wu said. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives field office in Kansas City, Mo., is also assisting, spokesman John Ham said in a statement.