Armed with a pistol and rifle, the shooter’s face reportedly “was passive” in the hallway of a high school in the tiny town of Rockford, Wa., near Spokane. He tried to fire a weapon, but it jammed, and another boy confronted him, the Associated Press reports. “He went to his next weapon,” Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich said. “A student walked up to him, engaged him, and that student was shot. That student did not survive.” Three other students were seriously injured by gunfire Wednesday morning at Freeman High School. A custodian stopped the shooter, a heroic action the sheriff said prevented more bloodshed. The injured victims were expected to survive.
The suspect, who a classmate described as being obsessed with previous school shootings, was taken into custody. Witnesses described a panicked scene when shots rang out, with bullets hitting the ceiling and students screaming and running down the hallway. Michael Harper, a 15-year-old sophomore, said the suspect had brought notes earlier saying he was going to do “something stupid” and might get killed or jailed. Some students alerted counselors, but it wasn’t clear what school officials did in response. Harper said the shooter had many friends and was not bullied, calling him “nice and funny and weird” and a huge fan of the TV show “Breaking Bad.”