3 dead after murder/suicide shooting at San Bernadino elementary school

World Today

San Bernadino Shooting

Three have died, including an eight year old boy, in what may have been a murder/suicide shooting at North Park Elementary School in San Bernadino, CA Monday morning. Another student was also injured and is in critical condition.

A teacher and the suspected shooter, a white male, were found dead at North Park Elementary School, according to a tweet from San Bernardino Police Department Chief Jarrod Burguan. The identities of the three fatalities have not been released.

Police Capt. Ron Maass says, “The children we do not believe were targeted. The suspect had come to the classroom to visit the adult female [who] was in the classroom.”

“We believe the teacher knew who the shooter was,” a spokesperson for the school said.

The 600 other students at the school were bused to safety at California State University’s San Bernardino campus, several miles away. Television news footage showed students, escorted by police officers, walking off campus hand-in-hand. The police chief stated that students at the school were being taken to El Cajon Valley High School “for safety.”

Aerial footage showed students gathered on a field and a blacktop basketball court inside the fenced-in grounds of the campus as school buses lined up.

Students evacuating elementary school

In this frame from video provided by KABC-TV, faculty and students evacuate North Park School Elementary School as emergency personnel respond to a shooting inside on Monday, April 10, 2017, in San Bernardino, Calif. (KABC-TV via AP)

North Park Elementary will be closed for at least two days as authorities investigate this deadly shooting.

San Bernardino is no stranger to tragic gun violence. In December of 2015, 14 people were killed and 22 others seriously wounded in a terrorist attack carried out by a self-proclaimed Islamic extremist couple.

Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik carried out the mass shooting at an office Christmas party and planned additional bombings, but were killed in a violent shootout with police.