A gunman opened fire at a performing arts high school in St. Louis on Monday just as classes were getting underway, killing two people and injuring at least seven others before he was fatally shot while exchanging gunfire with the police, the authorities said.
Lt. Col. Michael Sack, the interim commissioner of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, said an adult woman died at a hospital and a teenage girl was pronounced dead at the scene at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School. Both had been shot, he said.
The others who were hurt “suffered a variety of injuries, from shrapnel injuries to gunshots,” Colonel Sack said.
Colonel Sack did not identify the suspect but said he appeared to be about 20 years old. The suspect died at a hospital, Colonel Sack said.
“Here is a safe place where kids go to grow, to learn, to develop and something like this happens — it’s just heartbreaking,” Colonel Sack said of the school.
The police responded just after 9 a.m. to reports that shots had been fired at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School, a spokeswoman for the St. Louis Public Schools said.
“Police responded quite heavily and quite quickly,” the spokeswoman, Lori Willis, said. Photos published by local news outlets and shared online by people driving by showed dozens of police cars at the busy intersection in south St. Louis where the school sits.
Ms. Willis noted that the school shares a campus with another high school, the Collegiate School of Medical and Bioscience, and said that both were on lockdown for a period of time.
Colonel Sack said the school was locked and the doors were secured before the gunman, who was “armed with a long gun,” entered the school. Colonel Sack did not say how the gunman was able to get inside.
“The shooter was quickly stopped by police inside” the Central Visual and Performing Arts High School, the district said on Twitter. Ms. Willis said the gunman was described as slim and dressed entirely in black. A motive for the shooting and the gunman’s connection to the school were not immediately clear.
Kelvin Adams, the superintendent of schools for the St. Louis Public School District, credited members of the school’s faculty and staff for rallying the students to evacuate the building quickly.
For hours after the shooting, the district was working to reunite students with their families at another school, Ms. Willis said.
David Williams, a math teacher at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School, told The St. Louis Post-Dispatch that he heard gunshots outside his classroom before a bullet shattered a window in the classroom door. He said he then heard a man say that everyone was going to die.
Nylah Jones, a ninth grade student at the school, told The Post-Dispatch that she was in a math class when shots were fired into the room from the hallway. She described how students gathered in a corner of the classroom and tried not to move as the gunman banged on the door.
Mayor Tishaura O. Jones of St. Louis responded to the shooting by saying “Help us Jesus” on Twitter.
At the news conference outside the school, she said, “To be here for a such a devastating and traumatic situation breaks my heart, especially as a mother.”
Addressing students and faculty members at the news conference, Representative Cori Bush, Democrat of Missouri, said, “Our hearts go out to each and every one of you, but as we are thinking about how to help, we will also be here on the ground to help.”
State Representative Peter Merideth, whose district includes the school campus, said on Facebook that he was praying for the students and staff members, including his niece, who is a teacher at the school.
The Central Visual and Performing Arts High School, with an enrollment of about 380, and the Collegiate School of Medical and Bioscience, which has about 260 students, are magnet high schools that share a campus at a busy intersection in south St. Louis. The Collegiate School of Medical and Bioscience is ranked fifth in the state by the U.S. News & World Report.
Michaela Marie Cole graduated from the performing arts school in 2017. Ms. Cole, now 23, said it was “a dream school.” She said she thought it was going to be like “High School Musical” and the reality was not far off. “We actually did flash mobs,” she said.
But like many high school students in the United States, her education included active-shooter training. She said the school used a code to alert students to a shooting on campus: Miles Davis.
“We thought we were never going to need this,” she said.
