A sixth grade student was killed, with four students and a school administrator injured, in a shooting on Thursday morning at Perry High School in Perry, Iowa. The shooter, a teenage student, appears to have acted alone and was also found dead at the scene with a self-inflicted gunshot wound after opening fire, officials said.
Mitch Mortvedt, assistant director of the Iowa Department of Criminal Investigations, said police received an alert of an active shooter inside the high school about 7:37 a.m. Mortvedt confirmed during a press briefing that the shooter, 17-year-old Dylan Butler, opened fire in the school Thursday morning, the beginning of the second semester for the Perry Community School District following winter break. Butler was armed with a pump-action shotgun and a small-caliber handgun, and a “rudimentary” explosive device was also found. It was rendered safe by the state fire marshal and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Mortvedt added that Butler made posts on social media shortly before the shooting, but his motivation is unknown and the shooting remains under investigation.
The high school and middle school in Perry are connected with a cafeteria near the hallway, and Mortvedt said there may have been students from different grades in the cafeteria at the time of the shooting. Dallas County Sheriff Adam Infante said fewer students and faculty members were in the building at the time than would have been after classes had begun: “It’s still unclear how many are inured or the extent of injuries. There is no further danger to the public. We are working backwards trying to figure out everything that happened and make notifications.” Infante said all students were reunified with their parents within the first two hours of the incident.
The first officer arrived on the scene about 7 minutes after the alert, with about 150 officers responded within the hour. Infante said. Law enforcement agencies that respond included the Perry Police Department, Dallas County Sheriff’s Department, Polk County Sheriff’s Department, Des Moines Police Department and the Iowa Department of Criminal Investigations.
Perry, situated about 40 miles northwest of Des Moines in central Iowa, has a population of 7,800. The high school was named a Blue Ribbon School by the U.S. Department of Education last month.
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