Photos
The shooting occurred about 1:30 p.m. in a classroom as students were leaving for the day. Witnesses reported hearing a loud boom and then somebody came on the school’s loudspeaker system and yelled for a lockdown.
The lockdown was later lifted and parents were able to pick up their children on foot about 2 p.m.
Police say they found a gun in the classroom and have detained a 9-year-old boy.
The victim, an 8-year-old girl, is reported to be in critical condition but alert and conscious. She was flown to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, where she is undergoing surgery.
The victim’s grandmother, Cindy Kocer, told KOMO-TV the girl is quiet and smart and asked people to pray for her.
It’s unknown whether the incident was accidental or intentional.
The student who fired the shot was transferred to the school recently, said the husband of the teacher who was in the classroom when the shooting happened.
Bill Poss said his wife, Natalie, told him the child is a “troubled kid” who changed the dynamics of the otherwise peaceful classroom.
The shooting is the first at a Washington school since February 2010, when 30-year-old Jed Waits, of Ellensburg, fatally shot Jennifer Paulson, a special-education teacher at Birney Elementary School in Tacoma. Waits later died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The last shooting involving a student was in January 2007 when Douglas Chanthabouly fatally shot fellow student Samnang Kok in a hallway before the start of classes at Tacoma’s Foss High School. Chanthabouly’s lawyers said he had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and thought Kok was a member of a street gang out to hurt him and his brother.
Chanthabouly was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to more than 23 years in prison.
“I’ve always felt safe and I don’t feel safe anymore,” Jennifer Barber, 32, told The Kitsap Sun when she arrived to pick up her fourth-grade daughter. “We’ve got serial killers running around, third-graders with guns. It’s ridiculous.”
Patty Glaser, a spokeswoman for the school district, said Armin Jahr Elementary School will be open on Thursday. She said grief counselors will be available for teachers, students and parents.
