A gunman who held two girls hostage and shot one of them at a Colorado high school on Wednesday was killed by police who stormed the classroom building where he was barricaded, police said.
The man shot and critically wounded one of the two students he had held hostage at Platte Canyon High School in Bailey, Colorado, state police spokesperson Lance Clem said.
The injured girl was rushed by helicopter to a nearby hospital. Her classmate and fellow hostage was not injured, Clem said.
Clem said Swat officers used a ”flash-bang” grenade to stun the hostage-taker before storming the upstairs classroom where he was holed up with the girls. He said the man fired the shot that injured the student.
”Yes, he did shoot her,” Clem said.
The intruder, who was not immediately identified by police, walked into the school and opened fire shortly before noon on Wednesday, prompting evacuation of hundreds of students in a scene that drew comparisons to the 1999 Columbine school massacre.
State and local police and federal agents descended on the school and spent several hours surrounding it before the raid.
Platt High School has 460 students and is next to a middle school. Both were quickly evacuated when the shooting began.
The small mountain community of Bailey is about 48km south-west of Littleton, Colorado, where 15 people died during a rampage by two students at Columbine High School in the deadliest school shooting in US history.
On April 20 1999, students Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris went on a shooting rampage at Columbine, killing 13 people and wounding 21 others before they committed suicide. – Reuters