Student Shot in Baltimore on First Day of School

27 Aug, 2012

(Reuters) – A fifteen-year-old Baltimore high school student shot and critically wounded a fellow student in a school cafeteria on Monday, the first day of school after the summer holiday, police said.

The shooting took place just before 11 a.m. at Perry Hall High School, which was voted one of America’s Best High Schools by Newsweek magazine in 2010.

The male victim, 17, was in critical condition at the University of Maryland’s Shock Trauma unit, said Julia Hardgrove, a spokeswoman for the Baltimore County Police Department.

Hardgrove said police believe the attacker “did not target” his victim, but chose him at random. She said several other students suffered minor injuries.
The suspect was tackled by faculty members and held until police arrived, officials said.

The shooting is the latest incident of gun violence in a summer plagued by troubling shootings in the United States.

In July, a gunman killed 12 people and wounded 58 at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. In August, a suspect described by authorities as a white supremacist killed six people outside a Sikh temple in Wisconsin before committing suicide.

Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley called Monday’s shooting “a senseless act of violence.”
“I’d like to thank the teachers and administrators for their courageous and life-saving actions,” he said in a statement.

“This can happen anywhere,” Baltimore firefighter Christopher Cole, the father of a freshman, told the Baltimore Sun newspaper. “No matter where you go to school.”

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