Police shot and killed a student outside a Wisconsin middle school Wednesday as officers responded to a report of a person with a gun, officials said.
No one else was hurt in the incident outside Mount Horeb Middle School, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul said in an evening news conference. The attorney general said the investigation was ongoing and declined to disclose details of what led up to the police shooting.
“Police officers from the Mount Horeb Police Department responded to a report of an individual with a weapon outside the middle school. Police officers responded to that threat and they used deadly force,” Kaul said, adding that the individual was a student in the Mount Horeb Area School District.
As is protocol, some officers will be placed on leave following the shooting, Kaul said.
The Mount Horeb Area School District posted on its Facebook page that the school system was locked down around 11:16 a.m. An “active shooter” near the middle school “did not breach entryway,” the district said.
“An initial search of the middle school has not yielded additional suspects. As importantly, we have no reports of individuals being harmed, with the exception of the alleged assailant,” the district said.
Some parents were reuniting with their children Wednesday evening, Kaul said. That reunification process took longer because police were concerned there may have been an additional threat after the student was killed. However, investigators determined that was not the case, Kaul said.
District Superintendent Steve Salerno, who also addressed reporters at the media briefing Wednesday, said some security measures at the middle school prevented what could have been a worse tragedy.
“We have a system in place that before anyone can come into our schools, they must ring through a doorbell and state the nature of their business,” Salerno said. “I’m most proud of some of our faculty and staff. As you can imagine they had a number of concerns, not the least of which were their own children who would be in those buildings themselves. Yet we know them to be just loving, professional individuals. They rose to the occasion.”
Salerno also lauded quick-acting students who reported someone approaching the school.
“Those students were able to communicate immediately as to what they had seen. And staff were able to take … decisive action quickly,” Salerno said.
Mount Horeb is a village about 25 miles southwest of the state capital, Madison.
The incident stoked fears among witnesses, students and parents.
Jeanne Keller said she heard about five gunshots while in her shop just down the block from the campus that includes the middle school.
“It was maybe like pow-pow-pow-pow,” Keller said. “I thought it was fireworks. I went outside and saw all the children running. … I probably saw 200 children.”
Max Kelly, 12, said his teacher told the class to get out of the school. He said they skated to a street, ditched their in-line skates and ran to a nearby convenience store and gas station and hid in a bathroom.
Kelly was reunited with his parents and sat on a hillside with them early Wednesday afternoon, waiting for his younger siblings to be released from their own schools. He still wore socks, his shoes left behind.
“I don’t think anywhere is safe anymore,” said his mother, 32-year-old Alison Kelly.
