A student armed with a handgun held 23 other students and a teacher hostage for several hours on Monday at a high school in Marinette, Wis., and then shot himself after the police stormed the building, the authorities said.
All of the hostages were found to be unharmed after about five hours of being held hostage, the police said. The gunman was taken to a local hospital after shooting himself, said the local police chief, Jeff Skorik. His condition was not known Monday night.
The incident began after 3 p.m., before school let out, when a male student entered a classroom at Marinette High School carrying a handgun, the Marinette police said. He kept the class and the teacher in the room as the rest of the school emptied and evening set in.
By late Monday, scores of law enforcement officials and other state authorities from all over eastern Wisconsin had gathered near the school, which was cordoned off, and police negotiators spoke by telephone to the teacher.
The student first released five hostages around 9 p.m.; the rest were released a short time later.
Chief Skorik of the Marinette police said the armed student had no demands during the standoff and provided no sense of why he had taken people hostage. Investigators met with his parents, whom they did not name publicly, as the standoff continued, the police said.
Families of the students trapped at the school gathered in a room usually reserved for jurors at the local courthouse in Marinette, a city of 11,700 about 50 miles north of Green Bay.
Administrators from the high school, which has about 800 students, were meeting with the parents, the police said, and reviewing a class roster to sort out exactly who was still inside. Mental health counselors were also on hand.
The authorities became aware of the hostage situation after receiving a call from a school administrator. A teacher — apparently the one who was held — had turned away some students at the door of their Western Civilization class, a student’s parent told The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, but the students did not understand until far later that a standoff was unfolding.
Read More
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/us/30hostage.html?src=twrhp
All of the hostages were found to be unharmed after about five hours of being held hostage, the police said. The gunman was taken to a local hospital after shooting himself, said the local police chief, Jeff Skorik. His condition was not known Monday night.
The incident began after 3 p.m., before school let out, when a male student entered a classroom at Marinette High School carrying a handgun, the Marinette police said. He kept the class and the teacher in the room as the rest of the school emptied and evening set in.
By late Monday, scores of law enforcement officials and other state authorities from all over eastern Wisconsin had gathered near the school, which was cordoned off, and police negotiators spoke by telephone to the teacher.
The student first released five hostages around 9 p.m.; the rest were released a short time later.
Chief Skorik of the Marinette police said the armed student had no demands during the standoff and provided no sense of why he had taken people hostage. Investigators met with his parents, whom they did not name publicly, as the standoff continued, the police said.
Families of the students trapped at the school gathered in a room usually reserved for jurors at the local courthouse in Marinette, a city of 11,700 about 50 miles north of Green Bay.
Administrators from the high school, which has about 800 students, were meeting with the parents, the police said, and reviewing a class roster to sort out exactly who was still inside. Mental health counselors were also on hand.
The authorities became aware of the hostage situation after receiving a call from a school administrator. A teacher — apparently the one who was held — had turned away some students at the door of their Western Civilization class, a student’s parent told The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, but the students did not understand until far later that a standoff was unfolding.
Read More
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/us/30hostage.html?src=twrhp
No comments:
Post a Comment