Orlando Harris additionally left behind a handwritten word providing his rationalization for the taking pictures on Monday at Central Visible and Performing Arts Excessive College, St. Louis Police Commissioner Michael Sack informed reporters.
Tenth-grader Alexzandria Bell and 61-year-old bodily training instructor Jean Kuczka died and 7 college students had been wounded earlier than police killed Harris in an change of gunfire.
On Tuesday, Sack learn Harris’ word wherein the younger man lamented that he had no mates, no household, no girlfriend and a lifetime of isolation. Harris known as it the “good storm for a mass shooter.”
Sack mentioned Harris had ammunition strapped to his chest and in a bag, and that extra magazines had been discovered dumped in stairwells.
“This might have been a lot worse,” Sack mentioned.
The assault compelled college students to barricade doorways and huddle in classroom corners, leap from home windows and run out of the constructing to hunt security. One woman mentioned she was eye-to-eye with the shooter earlier than his gun apparently jammed and she or he was in a position to run out. A number of individuals inside the varsity mentioned they heard Harris warn, “You’re all going to die!”
Harris graduated from the varsity final 12 months. Sack, talking at a information convention, urged individuals to come back ahead when somebody who seems to endure from psychological sickness or misery begins “talking about buying firearms or inflicting hurt to others.”
Alexzandria was a brilliant, charismatic woman with a sassy character who was working laborious to enhance her dancing and her grades, mentioned Central’s principal, Kacy Seals-Shahid. She was a member of the varsity’s junior varsity dance staff, her father mentioned.
“Alexzandria was my every part,” her father, Andre Bell, informed KSDK-TV. “She was joyful, fantastic and only a nice individual.”
“She was the woman I cherished to see and cherished to listen to from. Irrespective of how I felt, I may at all times speak to her and it was alright. That was my child,” he mentioned.
The morning of the taking pictures, Alexzandria’s mother introduced her daughter’s glasses to the varsity when she seen {the teenager} had left them residence. Her mother acquired to the varsity earlier than Alexzandria arrived by faculty bus.
“When Alex acquired off her bus, I requested her, ‘Aren’t you going to wish these as a result of you may’t see with out these?” Seals-Shahid mentioned.
Abby Kuczka mentioned her mom was killed when the gunman burst into her classroom and she or he moved between him and her college students.
“My mother cherished youngsters,” Abbey Kuczka informed the St. Louis Submit-Dispatch. “She cherished her college students. I do know her college students checked out her like she was their mother.”
The seven injured college students are all 15 or 16 years outdated. Sack mentioned 4 suffered gunshot or graze wounds, two had bruises and one had a damaged ankle – apparently from leaping out of the three-story constructing. All had been listed in secure situation.
The varsity in south St. Louis was locked, with seven safety guards on the doorways, St. Louis Colleges Superintendent Kelvin Adams mentioned. A safety guard initially turned alarmed when he noticed Harris attempting to get in one of many doorways. He had a gun and “there was no thriller about what was going to occur. He had it out and entered in an aggressive, violent method,” Sack mentioned.
That guard alerted faculty officers and made certain police had been contacted.
Harris managed to get inside anyway. Sack declined to say how, saying he did not need to “make it simple” for anybody else who needs to interrupt into a college.
Police supplied this timeline: A 911 name got here in at 9:11 a.m. alerting police of an lively shooter. Officers – some off-duty sporting avenue garments – arrived at 9:15 a.m. Police situated Harris at 9:23 a.m. on the third ground, the place he had barricaded himself inside a classroom. Police mentioned in a information launch that when Harris shot at officers, they shot again and broke by the door.
At 9:25 a.m., when Harris pointed his rifle at police, they fired a number of pictures. He was secured by police at 9:32 a.m.
Police mentioned Alexzandria was present in a hallway and died on the scene. Kuczka was present in a classroom and died at a hospital.
Central Visible and Performing Arts shares a constructing with one other magnet faculty, Collegiate College of Drugs and Bioscience. Central has 383 college students, Collegiate 336.
It was the fortieth faculty taking pictures this 12 months leading to accidents or loss of life, based on a tally by Schooling Week – essentially the most in any 12 months because it started monitoring shootings in 2018. The lethal assaults embody the killings of 19 kids and two academics at Robb Elementary College in Uvalde, Texas, in Could.
The gunman pointed his weapon at Raymond Parks, a dance instructor on the faculty, however didn’t shoot him, Parks mentioned. The children in his class escaped exterior and Parks stopped visitors and get somebody to name the police. They got here shortly.
“You could not have requested for higher,” Parks mentioned of the police response.
Ashley Rench mentioned she was educating superior algebra to sophomores when she heard a loud bang. Then the varsity intercom introduced, “Miles Davis is within the constructing.”
“That is our code for intruder,” Rench mentioned.
The gunman tried the door of the classroom however didn’t power his method in, she mentioned.
When law enforcement officials began banging, she wasn’t certain at first if it actually was regulation enforcement till she was in a position to look out and see officers. “Let’s go!” she informed the youngsters.