A school shooting was stopped in Richmond, Indiana Thursday morning, Indiana State Police said.
Richmond police officers received a tip of a potential threat at Dennis Intermediate School, reports Kicks 96. As police arrived, they noticed the suspect about to enter the school. The suspect saw police and ran inside, fleeing to a stairwell.
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Police said the shooting stopped after the suspect shot out the glass window on a locked door. The suspect then took his own life, reports Fox 59.
“Officers received information this morning that there could possibly be someone en route to commit a violent act at Dennis Intermediate School here in Richmond,” Sgt. John Bowling with Indiana State Police told reporters. “Officers responded rapidly. They did confront a suspect outside the school. Shots were exchanged, and the teen suspect decided to take his own life.”
The suspect, a 14-year-old male, has not been identified. The school district said he previously attended the middle school, but it is not clear what school he was attending or why he targeted the school.
Bowling said no other students or officers were injured. He credited the tipster with saving lives.
“Someone knew something, and they said something,” he said, reports CNN.
After Richmond Community Schools received the tip, they told police and put all schools in the district on lockdown, district spokeswoman Bridget Hazelbaker said.
Peggy Lewis told Fox 59 she spoke with the suspect’s father and was near the school at the time of the incident.
“He said, ‘No I’m actually his father’ and he was telling me how his son had been bullied and they took him out of school and they thought he was doing well. But he thinks he’s been planning this for a while,” Lewis told the outlet. “He just said his son took all of his guns this morning and told him he didn’t take him, wherever, he said if he didn’t take him he was going to kill him too.”
Students were taken to Richmond High School and parents were told to pick up their children at the nearby Civic Hall Performing Arts Center.
Richmond is a city of about 37,000 and is close to the Ohio border.
The incident happened a day before the sixth anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting n Newtown, Connecticut, which left 20 students and six educators dead. According to Education Week, 113 people were killed or injured in a school shooting in the U.S. in 2018.
