Gunman Kills H.S. Student in New Orleans
The Associated Press
Apr 14 2003 1:36PM
NEW ORLEANS (AP) - A gunman shot and killed a
student and wounded three others Monday at a New
Orleans high school, police said.
Chief Eddie Compass said the three were not believed to
have life-threatening wounds. The gunman apparently
slipped into the neighborhood surrounding John
McDonogh High School and was being sought by officers,
Compass said.
Two people were taken in for questioning but they were
not called suspects.
``Our tactical units have swept all the buildings. The
children are completely safe,'' Compass said.
There was no immediate word on possible motive.
Students were ordered to stay in their classrooms after
the shooting around 10:30 a.m.
One of the students, a 15-year-old, was in surgery at the
Medical Center of Louisiana with more than one wound,
spokesman Jerry Romig said. A 16-year-old was
wounded in the thigh, another 16-year-old in the buttocks.
Ninth-grader Garick Jacob, 14, said he was in the gym
when it happened.
``Somebody pulled out a gun,'' he said. ``They started
shooting and I started running.'' He said he did not see the
shooting but it sounded like about 30 shots, adding, ``I
was really scared.''
John McDonogh High is in the Mid-City neighborhood,
about a mile north of the French Quarter on Esplanade
Avenue. The school is one-block from the Degas House,
where the French painter Edgar Degas stayed with
relatives when he visited New Orleans in the 1870s. It is
now a bed-and-breakfast.
Traffic in the area was shut down, and hundreds of people
gathered outside, some of them crying. Parents were not
allowed inside.
Darlene Claiborn, a mother who rushed to the school, said
her daughter called her from inside a classroom on a cell
phone.
``How can this happen in a school?'' she demanded.
``They have guards in there. They're supposed to have
security.''
In another, unrelated campus shooting Monday, a gun
went off in a Shreveport school - apparently accidentally -
while one student was showing it to another, hitting the
second boy in the stomach, police and school officials
said. The student who brought the gun ran away; police
were looking for him.
04/14/03 13:32 EDT
