Police Shoot Student Outside Wisconsin Middle School: What Happened?

Police shot and killed a student outside of a middle school in Wisconsin on Wednesday after getting a report of someone with a gun, the state’s attorney general said in the first law enforcement meeting about the shootings that sent kids running and locked down local schools for hours.

Before, the police said that an active shooter outside of Mount Horeb Middle School was “neutralized” before he or she got inside. State Attorney General Josh Kaul told reporters Wednesday night that no one else was hurt and that the case is still being looked into.

“This happened outside.” “In this case, the subject never got in,” he said.

The student was described by authorities as a boy juvenile, but they did not say how old he was or which school in the Mount Horeb district he went to.

Several questions about what happened after the cops arrived were not answered by Kaul. These questions included whether the student had fired a gun, what kind of gun he had, and whether he tried to get into the school. The police said that several Mount Horeb officers carrying body cameras had fired their guns, but they did not say how many.

Police stayed at the scene for hours afterward, and students were locked in buildings until late afternoon when they were slowly let go to be with their families. Kids who were scared and their scared parents had a long, scary wait. Parents said their kids were hiding in rooms because they were afraid to use their cell phones. One middle schooler said his class initially ran out of the school gym on in-line skates.

Throughout the day, the district sent out updates on Facebook. The first one, at about 11:30 a.m., said that all district schools were on lockdown. Mount Horeb police said the “alleged attacker” was the only person hurt, and witnesses said they heard gunshots and saw a lot of kids running away.

After several hours, school buses were still parked in a line that went for blocks outside the middle school. Police tape surrounded the middle school, the close high school, and the fields between the two buildings. “A first search of the middle school has not turned up any other suspects,” a post around noon said. “Possibly even more important, we have heard of no one else being hurt besides the alleged attacker.”

The district had earlier posted that “the threat has been neutralized outside of the building” in Mount Horeb, a small village about 25 miles (40 kilometers) west of Madison, the state capital. They did not say more than that.

The Quilting Jeanne, owned by Jeanne Keller, heard five gunshots while she was there. The shop is right next door to the middle school. Keller told The Associated Press over the phone, “It might have been like pow-pow-pow-pow.” “I believed it was fireworks. I went outside and saw lots of kids running… “I think I saw 200 kids.”

Some kids in middle school said that they heard gunshots while their class was in the hall practicing in-line skating.

Max Kelly, 12, said that his teacher told the class to run away. When they got to a street, he said, they took off their in-line skates and ran to a nearby gas station and convenience store. They then hid in a bathroom. Kelly was reunited with his parents and sat on a hillside with them early Wednesday afternoon while they waited for his younger brothers to get out of school. He didn’t have any shoes on.

“I don’t think anywhere is safe anymore,” Alison Kelly, his mother, who is 32 years old, said.

Mount Horeb police said they couldn’t give any information in the hours after the crime. The Dane County Sheriff’s Office told reporters to go to a staging spot but didn’t give them any new information.

Parents who were worried waited for their kids for hours in a bus station. Kaul said that police were worried about the possibility of an ongoing threat, but he didn’t say anything else. He said that investigators wanted to talk to the kids while they were with their parents again.

Nathaniel Hurd, 44, and Shannon Hurd, 44, were waiting for their 13-year-old son Noah, who was still in the locked-down school. She said that Noah texted her and told her he loved her. Shannon Hurd said she almost fell down the stairs at work on her way to school.

Saying, “I just want my kid,” and “School should be a safe place for them.”

Stacy Smith, 42, was at the bank on Wednesday when she saw police cars speed by and got a text message saying there was a shooter.

At first, she couldn’t get in touch with her two kids, Abbi, a junior, and Cole, a seventh-grader. When she finally called Abbi, the girl told her in a whisper that she was hiding in a room and couldn’t talk. She finally got in touch with both of them and found out they were fine.

“Not here,” she said in shock. “This is talked about everywhere else but here.”

There are many things that schools across the country have tried to do to stop mass killings from happening, ranging from physical security measures and active shooter drills to technology like detailed digital maps. A lot of people also depend on teachers and officials to spot early signs of mental health problems in their students.

Steve Salerno, superintendent of the Mount Horeb Area School District, said, “This could have been a far worse tragedy” if the recent security changes hadn’t been made. He said that kids told school staff right away that they saw a strange person outside the building, but they didn’t say more.

According to Salerno, it’s something that people pray to God every day so that they never have to go through.

About 7,600 people live in the town, which is also the main office of the outdoor gear store Duluth Trading Company. Mount Horeb advertises itself as the “troll capital of the world,” a reference to the troll sculptures that can be found all over its center area.